Hacker News Reader

Comment by MattRix | Hacker News Reader

Yes but surely you can see that this is copying much more than just the general idea of a game about gerrymandering.

I don't see it, but maybe you have examples where there are specific choices which were copied?

The hex grid (rather than, say, square, or random Voronoi regions). The fact that some hexes have 1 voter and some have zero (rather than, say, all hexes having 1 voter, or any having more than 1). The circular colored dot indicating the voter's party (rather than, say, a picture of a horse, or tinting the entire hex). The "Hint", "Reset", and "Submit"/"Call election" buttons below the grid, in that specific order; and (I assume) the nature of the hints. The "health bar" graphic depicting the number of horse voters and donkey voters.

Also the unrealistic mechanic where a tied vote removes that district from the total.

Now that I find a more compelling argument than "Hey you used hexes". It might still turn out to be a similar "obvious" choice but unlike the hexes it's not the first idea that comes to mind.

This is probably a better example of prior implementation with many similar design decisions

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639370584/mapmaker-the...

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/252997

Also who the hell cares if something is a “copy”, what matters is if it’s better or worse

Linux is a copy of UNIX. Who cares

For tools or utilities, maybe that's fine. For creative works like games, no way, I'm calling out rip offs every time I see them.

Every creative work is a copy of a copy; that’s just culture. The commons of ideas is a collective work, until someone pulls them out of the air, reworks them into something “original”, and plops them onto a page.

Ulysses is a copy of the Odyssey, Minecraft was a copy of Infiniminer, Stardew Valley copied Harvest Moon, Fortnite copied PUBG, film directors copy and spread each others’ techniques and storylines all the time. George Lucas even admits that Star Wars was heavily based on Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, while Kurosawa’s film was derived from historical plays and John Ford’s westerns.

I wasn't there for Stardew, but Fortnite definitely does not start out copying PUBG, the transformation is arguably more damning - Fortnite was a different and much less interesting game (now "Save The World" mode), and it got the "Battle Royale" mode everybody knows about today because PUBG popularized this idea of "battle royale" shooters and Epic could see how to do that with their existing IP very quickly and clean up.

True, it was more of a pivot that involved copying PUBG’s successful format.

Ok and what did Infiniminer copy? What about games like Papers Please or Obra Dinn, or Blue Prince. Yes, games can have different influences, but the idea that everything is a copy is totally incorrect. Some stuff is way more unique and original than others.

You seem to be taking "copy" much too literally.

"Blue Prince" is heavily inspired by earlier works, those works just aren't video games. You could say the same all the way back to ADVENT, the Colossal Cave Adventure of the 1970s being inspired by adventures in an actual cave.

Of course good games do something we haven't seen before or do it better, but they are also invariably products of a wider culture. A big part of why Animal Well doesn't need to explain itself is that a modern video game player knows how this sort of game works and so when they get Slink or B Wand or similar they realise they can explore places they couldn't reach before.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com