Comment by PaulStatezny
1 hour ago
Here's how it's been going:
1. Indy developer releases a game or trailer of a game. 2. Within an extremely short time (days to weeks at most) there are clones on the market. 3. These games often outperform the original.
It's absolutely not something that's gone on for ages.
It might be a novel gameplay idea / twist on a genre, and mere days after launch instead of being able to stand on its own and gather attention it's drowning in a pool of lookalikes. It's no longer distinct.
The speed of being able to slop together something like this is less than 1% of what it used to be.
Clones are not going to be the problem. The slopalanch will be the problem. Take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/playmygame/. There's a new game every few minutes and pretty much zero of them are getting any attention. And this is only the beginning.
So it's easier than ever to make a game, but it's more difficult than ever to get anyone to try what you've made. I'd say that's just as bad, and in some ways worse, than having your game cloned.
For someone looking to play a new game it will be difficult to sort through all the bad games to find the good ones. And for anyone pouring their soul into a game they will more likely than not have an audience of one.
Our eventual destination is probably going to be a) pick up a device, b) ask your bot to make up a game on the spot, c) play. It sounds so lonely and depressing.
HN went crazy over 2048, which was a slop clone of Threes, something like 15 years ago.
So yes maybe it happens more often now, but it’s still not new.
> So yes maybe it happens more often now
Yes, that's literally the point of the people you're responding to. Has HN lost reading comprehension, or are you arguing in bad faith?
It used to happen occasionally. Now it happens instantly. That delta is the problem.