So many clones

[PeterX]

Many people try to clone proprietary AAA games. I generally don't.

Do they do it because they lack imagination? Or maybe they think "This proprietary game is so cool. I wanna code it open source"?

I strongly recommend to develop unique ideas.

Greetings
Peter

[ffaf]

• to preserve it for future generations (yes there are emus but with Free Software you can really target a platform)
• to learn a programming language without getting distracted by design
• to enhance it with new levels and mechanics (see chip world's challenge)

[Julius]

Making a libre replacement game engine seems fine, but I kind of agree that making a close copy of a commercial game is pointless. However I don't see that happening very often. Most of the time it is a game in the same genre that for people deep into that genre is totally different, but for an outside perspective it looks superficially like a clone. For example FreeOrion could be called a clone, but it isn't really.

[dulsi]

Cloning games is not an open source thing. It is a game development thing. Wikipedia says "There were more than a hundred Space Invaders clones released for various platforms." Galaxian was a successful clone with variations. That led Taito to make a clone of Galaxian. I can't remember the game's name. Do commercial developers produce more unimaginative clones or open source developers? I don't know.

[drummyfish]

Let me defend cloning please.

Firstly, great things don't just come into existence, they're always created by improving existing things, in many steps and over many iterations. Imagine after a car was invented we said alright, this has been done, now abandon this and move on to something new and original, maybe something with five wheels and shaped like a donut.

Now a great gameplay idea is like a great invention. Once it's been discovered through great effort, we should make full use of it, iterate on it so that it can be improved even more. A great game that is proprietary can always be improved by being liberated so that people can actually freely play it, but of course there are many more areas of improvement such as better implementation, greater moddability and slight tweaks of the core idea itself etc.

Secondly, the "unoriginality is bad" idea is, as I often mention, a part of the highly commercial/competitive/proprietary game development culture. It is an idea created and promoted by the same people that invented the idea that you can own information as "intellectual property", the anti share/remix people. They say that clonning their idea (creating something very similar) is "stealing" their idea and you shouldn't do it so that they can keep a monopoly. In its essence it is directly opposing the ideas of free culture -- our culture. Libre game development is a different culture with different moral values, copying and improving existing things is seen as good here.

Also realize that libre games are mostly made by "poor" people -- poor in the sense that unlike companies they don't have nearly infinite amount of money/time/energy to endlessly experiment and create completely original games from the ground up to keep constant hype and feed the consumer needs constantly. Coming up with an original idea that actually works, testing it, fine tuning it AND ALSO implementing this idea as a programming and artistic project is extremely, extremely difficult and expensive. And it is risky (spending a decade implementing a game and then seeing its premise doesn't really work is a wasted life). Finding a great gameplay ideas is basically a lottery, even for the richest corporations. The libre community therefore works on an incremental, step-by-step basis. I.e. firstly take some already finished and tested gameplay idea and create a free engine for it, then later maybe try to create something original with this engine -- but a clone of something existing is mostly the first step, and rightfully so.

Xonotic is one of the best examples I can think of. It is a shameless clone of Quake, but iterated and incrementally improved so that it has become the best AFPS ever. At least in my subjective view

Being original for its own sake is also just a bad goal in general -- rather try to make your game fun. If your game is fun to play and brings joy to people, does it matter if it's original or a clone? I don't think so. There's nothing wrong about being a clone.

I personally see cloning as an art completely equal to the art of creating original things. It requires just as much skill and dedication, just applied elsewhere than on the surface, it is usually hidden underneath as an art of engineering, but I don't see why I should think less of such art. I completely encourage cloning more and more games.

And at last I would like to thank all the cloners that have given me the opportunity to enjoy my favorite games again after I've decided to never play proprietary games.

[Technopeasant]

I think the clone thing is generally an older trend in the libre world, with engine replacements and reverse engineering now more common for commercial titles. Partly because games became more complex and harder to recreate outright, but also because there is a greater interest in game preservation than there used to be.

Back in the day I started work on an attempted clone of Age of Empires, but it eventually became clear that it was A: not that viable given the resources I had and B: largely pointless now that the games run well through Wine and projects like OpenAge are attempting to reverse engineer the engine.

The current plan is developing a new RTS game inspired by Age of Empires, but with its own art-style and essential gameplay design down the road.

[Wuzzy]

Our problem is NOT that we have clones, out problem is that we have (relatively) few games to begin with. In the free software world, we have a SMALL amount of games that are quite good and fun, but those are rare exceptions. I'm talking of free software games that we all have heard of. Those titles.

Finally, clones are not really exclusive to free software, to be honest. For developers, clones are a great way to get started, because you can skip the game design phase and get right into developing. That CAN be quite fun for a while, to some people. I think that's the simplest explanation why this is happening.
I tried to clone Minecraft for a couple of years, it is called "MineClone 2", it's a game for Minetest. It is quite popular in the community, but I have long given up and let other people take over.
The reason why I did start this project in the first place was just … well just because. There wasn't really a reason, it was a very spontanous decision and I have been very active in the community back then already and I wanted to start something bigger. The fact that there was a MineClone ready (from which I forked ...), that there is a rich wiki that describes almost everything, even the game algorithms in great detail and there are readily available libre graphics (texture packs) was a huge booster as well. But … well, Minecraft is just too freaking big. There are just too many features. xD

I learned some things while developing: It is probably not a good idea to religiously try to clone a game 1:1. That's a very painful and long process that can take forever because there's always a tiny detail that you overlook. And if the original game is flawed to begin with, it is really frustrating if you force yourselves to clone the flaws as well, especially when those are obvious design flaws. My advice is to make some plan as to how religiously you are going to clone, and which areas you allow yourselves some leeway in. I also strongly advice to always have focus on the actual game you are producing. The game itself must be still fun to play at the end. It must be fun in its own right. That should always be the top priority, not how perfect the clone is. Just because it's a clone doesn't mean you should completely ignore some amount of game design.
In MineClone 2, I have seen myself increasingly ignore the original and apply my own ideas, simply because I felt it made sense for the "final" game. It wasn't much but I felt it was neccessary. Also because Minetest is far from perfect itself, so there were technical limitations as well.

Another thing that should be obvious: If you don't care at all about compability, this makes your life infinitely easier, obviously.

Eventually this made me feel dull and unchallenged which was why I gave up on MineClone 2. What I learned the hard way is that it's probably better if you have flexible goal, that you allow yourselves some leeway.

I hope my insight into my past MineClone 2 development helped you a little.

[PeterX]

Our problem is NOT that we have clones, out problem is that we have (relatively) few games to begin with. In the free software world, we have a SMALL amount of games that are quite good and fun, but those are rare exceptions. I'm talking of free software games that we all have heard of. Those titles.

That is actually more a point for writing unique games.

I guess you mean games like 0 A.D. (which started proprietary afaik), Battle of Wesnoth etc.

On the other hand we have games which are better than commercial ones. Like Patience/Solitaire (KDE Patience and Aisleriot), Me and My Shadow and others.

I must admit that some libre clones of proprietary games are a big success. Like STK, Minetest etc.

EDIT: And thx for sharing your experiences about writing MineClone 2. Yes, making it fun is important. And keeping the goals flexible can be important.

Greetings
Peter

[DrAltaica]

Clones of games are so common in FLOSS. for that same reason Forks are so common. Someone want it to run on their OS or add a feature and the original project refuses to accept the path.

[zzo38]

Do they do it because they lack imagination? Or maybe they think "This proprietary game is so cool. I wanna code it open source"?

What I think is that if you make it as open source then it is possible to make improvements, run on other computers, avoid spyware, possibly writing a more efficient code, etc. If you emulate the original game rules and you can check that the behaviour matches, then you will also have a better reference of its working; many games they do not tell you all of the rules.

I strongly recommend to develop unique ideas.

You can develop unique ideas too; you do not have to be only one or other one.