開發者談手遊巨頭公司一直在剽竊獨立遊戲的創意
開發者談手遊巨頭公司一直在剽竊獨立遊戲的創意
原作者：Jessica Conditt 譯者：Willow Wu
一直以來，“休閒（casual）”這個詞在各個遊戲論壇、社交媒體上都被看作是一個羞辱性的詞語。休閒興趣指的是有些人喜歡更加輕鬆的遊戲體驗，而不是刺激的射擊遊戲，或者需要考慮多方策略的線上遊戲又或者是相當耗時的RPG遊戲。不出所料，這個詞經常會用在喜歡手遊的人身上。
但是對於Voodoo來說，“休閒”並不是一個冒犯詞，它是搖錢樹。
Voodoo是一家法國發行公司，2013年由Alexandre Yazdi和Laurent Ritter創立，核心目標就是讓智慧手機使用者玩到更多的iOS/安卓遊戲。那時是App Store的繁榮期，有些優秀的開發者收穫了不錯的銷售成果。Ridiculous Fishing、Device 6、Year Walk、The Room Two、Impossible Road和Badland這些都是2013年發行的遊戲。從這以後，Voodoo就開始利用活躍的移動市場賺取豐厚利潤，先後發行了Snake Vs Block, Paper.io, Flappy Dunk和Rolly Vortex。
Voodoo很驕傲地自稱為“一家開發、發行超休閒手遊的公司”——而且不僅僅是休閒，是超休閒。如今，Voodoo在手遊界無人不知無人不曉。從下載量以及高達1.5億月活躍使用者來看，Voodoo是App Store的第一發行商。Voodoo遊戲2017的總下載量已經達到了3億，這個數字有望在今年達到10億。五月，高盛集團對這家發行公司投了2億美金。
The-floor-is-Jelly(from gameanalytics)
Voodoo的經濟狀況蒸蒸日上。但是在很多獨立開發者以及粉絲看來，Voodoo就是一家不斷竊取遊戲創意的卑鄙公司。
就拿他們最近發行的遊戲Hole.io.來說吧，玩家控制出現在地上的一個洞，吞併的東西越多，洞也會變得越大。這是一個非常簡單而巧妙的創意，但原創者並不是Voodoo。
Ben Esposito是一位來自洛杉磯的遊戲開發者，獨立遊戲《未完成的天鵝》（The Unfinished Swan）以及《伊迪·芬奇的祕密》（What Remains of Edith Finch）讓他名聲大噪。他近期的專案是Donut County，玩家在遊戲中控制地上的洞，吞噬的東西越多，洞就越大。
Esposito早在2012年就有了這個“地上洞”的想法，並開始了遊戲機制的設計，然後Donut County就逐漸演化成了一個劇情主導遊戲，用一種乾淨的色粉畫風格來展現洛杉磯的靚麗風景。經過六年的開發，Donut County預計在今年登陸iOS、PC以及Mac平臺，因此Esposito最近開始在營銷方面下功夫。但是Donut County應該會是一個付費遊戲而不是F2P。
與此同時，Hole.io這個免費遊戲在六月就上架了App Store、 Google+Play/">Google Play和PC。Hole.io成為了App Store最受歡迎的街機遊戲，Google Play平臺的下載量也已經超過了100萬次。
“顯然，這個遊戲點子是有市場的，Voodoo已經成功地找到了，”Esposito說。“他們逐漸佔據了主導地位，這就是人們投資Voodoo的原因。但我認為我以及我朋友手頭上正在做的專案並不屬於這個市場。因為我們開發的是非常具有針對性的非主流趣味遊戲，而且並不廉價。”
Hole.io的出現無疑是對Esposito造成了打擊。2012年他開始著手設計吞噬洞時，手遊市場還處於起步階段，獨立開發者開始意識到在他們可以通過App Store掙取收入，移動市場剛開始進入淘金熱。而如今，移動商店已經過於飽和了。根據Statista的統計，安卓使用者有380萬apps可以選擇，蘋果使用者有200萬。
Esposito說，從2012年開始，他就好像是一直生活在Donut County。他埋頭苦幹，不斷改進遊戲主題、完善遊戲機制，自始至終都在思考人們是否會喜歡這個以吞噬洞為主體的遊戲。這是個頗具創意的想法，市場上沒有這樣的先例。工作了六年之後，Esposito在潛意識裡還會掙扎——大家或許都會討厭這個遊戲……但也可能會喜歡，所以繼續吧。
2018年6月25日，他醒來後看到了Hole.io。Esposito隨後發推做了迴應——Donut County終於能夠在今年發行，但是核心機制已經被其他人克隆了，而且還做成了免費遊戲在他們的目標移動商店上架。
“我之前沒有意識到做一個電子遊戲能夠這麼情緒化，”Esposito 說。“幸運的是，現階段遊戲的主要決策都完成了，我只是在過程式、修復bug、保證一切正常運作。情緒問題現在並不是重點。但如果這件事發生在一年前，我一定會崩潰。”
Esposito親眼見過克隆遊戲所帶來的災難。在看似陰險的App Store發行世界中，Voodoo並不是唯一的剽竊者，比如Gamenauts和Ketchapp這樣的公司也是。Gamenauts是Ninja Fishing的開發公司，這個遊戲因為抄襲了獲得2013年度蘋果設計獎的Ridiculous Fishing而臭名昭著。2010年，Vlambeer發行了Flash版本的Ridiculous Fishing，並計劃將其推向移動平臺。在2011年，Gamenauts推出了一款名為Ninja Fishing的iOS遊戲，遊戲中的多個元素都和Ridiculous Fishing很像，當時的Vlambeer決定暫停該遊戲的製作。（今年6月Voodoo也發行了免費克隆版本的Ridiculous Fishing）
“對Vlambeer來說，市面上開始出現Ridiculous Fishing山寨遊戲是一件非常嚴重的事，”Esposito說。“Ridiculous Fishing還沒有發行。Vlambeer團隊的創意顯然是非常有意思、具有獨創性的，遊戲的製作水準也很好。他們真的在嘔心瀝血做出一個最佳版本的Ridiculous Fishing。然後山寨遊戲狠狠地打了他們一耳光——遊戲內容是無所謂的，重點是那個玩法，其它不值錢。”
Ketchapp在2014年發行了熱門遊戲2048，其實它就是山寨了Asher Vollmer創造的Threes，發行時定價2美元。除此之外還有Skyward和Run Bird Run，前者跟《紀念碑谷》非常相似，後者應該是抄襲了Flappy Bird的創意。Ketchapp的收購方是《刺客信條》的發行商育碧。
Voodoo和Ketchapp是App Store平臺最大的兩個發行商，高盛集團對Voodoo的2億美元投資也表示了他們的盈利潛力確實非常大。當然，這些公司不僅僅是發行克隆遊戲——Ketchapp旗下的遊戲超過了100款，他們仍在尋求更多的開發者。
Voodoo遊戲部門副總裁Gabriel Rivaud在2017年8月的App Masters播客節目上解釋了公司的商業模式。 來自世界各地的開發者們把beta版的遊戲或玩法視訊寄給Voodoo，由他們決定是否要幫助這些開發人員把創意做成一個免費遊戲(包含IAP、廣告和付費的無廣告版本)投入市場。Rivaud表示這個過程很快。
“我們會看這遊戲製作效果——質量好的遊戲是沒有bug的。如果玩家能理解遊戲，那我們就會繼續看使用者體驗方面，”Rivaud說。“還有就是遊戲是否是有創意的。是不是隻是山寨了某個知名遊戲？這樣的我們會直接淘汰。我們想要尋找的是技術水平優秀、對玩法有獨創性見解的團隊。
Rivaud在尋找創新點子，就像是Esposito的吞噬洞——對Voodoo來說，當然就是Hole.io的吞噬洞，他們在一大堆郵件中看中了它。
“我想最糟糕的部分就是Voodoo或許不知道這個遊戲是抄襲的，” Esposito說。“他們沒有必要知道，因為有人已經把遊戲做出來展示給他們看了。他們認為這是一個很酷，很有創意的想法，然後就打造出了一款成功的產品。他們可能會很驚訝市面上竟然存在著另外一個類似的遊戲。”Voodoo沒有迴應Engadget的置評要求。
對於被山寨的開發者們來說，他們並沒有什麼有效的應對方案。除了在社交媒體上轟炸發行商、擴大原創作品的知名度，能做的事情真的不多。蘋果和谷歌就像是守門員，但是從法律角度來說，他們也沒有什麼權利去移除那些疑似山寨的遊戲。遊戲機制和創意並不受版權法的保護，但是特殊資產可以——對整個遊戲行業來說，這實際上是有好處的。這意味著任天堂不能為他們的跳躍機制申請版權保護，id Software不能阻止其他開發者使用第一人稱射擊模式。
“尋求法律途徑對我來說並不值得，倒不如這樣坐下來談一談，” Esposito說。“這個遊戲是我一個人做的，所有的事情都是自己打理，我耗費了非常多的精力。無論我可以通過法律手段獲得什麼，這個過程應該也是很耗時耗力的，所以對我來說並不值得。”
電子遊戲行業就和其它創意產業一樣，開發人員從其它遊戲中汲取靈感，然後注入他們的想法，推動這類遊戲的發展，帶來前所未有的新式遊戲體驗。
但是克隆玷汙了這種分享和進化的想法。剽竊別人的創意、弄成免費模式，有時甚至趕在原創作品前發行，這是一種遭人唾棄的做法，但確實不違法。
“從另一個角度來看這件事，好的地方在於它讓我知道了一個創意就能夠有這麼大的市場，而且你可以利用同樣的創意去製作不同版本的產品，它們都能掙得可觀的利潤，這就是對我的一點點安慰。事實已經證明了大家覺得吞噬洞是一個很酷的設計。他們可能會認為我的遊戲是Hole.io的續作，對此我並不介意。隨便怎麼說，沒關係。”
本文由遊戲邦編譯，轉載請註明來源，或諮詢微信zhengjintiao
The word “casual” has long been flung out as an insult on video-game forums and social media. It’s deployed to belittle the interests of people who enjoy more relaxing experiences than gritty shooters, strategy-rich online games or time-sucking RPGs. Unsurprisingly, it’s most often hurled at anyone who says they like mobile games.
For Voodoo, “casual” isn’t an insult. It’s a cash cow.
Voodoo is a French publishing company founded by Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter in 2013 with a focus on bringing iOS and Android titles to as many smartphones as possible. This was a time when the App Store was booming, and a few high-profile developers were raking in the dough. Ridiculous Fishing, Device 6, Year Walk, The Room Two, Impossible Road and Badland all came out in 2013, for starters, and Voodoo has been capitalizing on the energized mobile market since with its own titles, including Snake Vs Block, Paper.io, Flappy Dunk and Rolly Vortex.
Voodoo proudly describes itself as a company that “develops and publishes highly casual mobile games” — not just casual, but highly so. Today, Voodoo is a ubiquitous name in mobile gaming; it’s the No. 1 publisher on the App Store in terms of downloads with more than 150 million monthly active users. Voodoo games generated 300 million downloads in 2017, and that figure is on track to hit 1 billion this year. In May, Goldman Sachs invested $200 million in the publisher.
Financially, Voodoo is crushing it. But in the eyes of many independent developers and their fans, Voodoo is a shady beast constantly hunting for scraps of game ideas that it can quickly transform into profit.
Take one of Voodoo’s latest titles for example: Hole.io. Players control holes in the ground that grow bigger as they consume objects on a city street. It’s a simple, clever idea, but it didn’t come from Voodoo.
Ben Esposito is a Los Angeles game developer who’s made a name for himself working on indie hits The Unfinished Swan and What Remains of Edith Finch. His latest project is Donut County, a game in which players control a hole in the ground that grows bigger as it eats the surrounding environment.
Esposito had this “hole in the ground” idea and began working with the mechanic in 2012, and since then Donut County has evolved into a story-driven game celebrating the sights of Los Angeles in a clean, pastel-art style. After six years of development, Esposito has recently been ramping up his marketing efforts — Donut County is due to hit iOS, PC and Mac this year, and it’ll be a reasonably priced premium title, meaning it won’t be free-to-play.
Meanwhile, Hole.io is free, and it hit the App Store, Google Play and desktops in June. It’s the No. 1 game on the App Store in the Arcade category, and it’s been downloaded more than 1 million times on Google Play.
“There’s clearly a market, and Voodoo has found it,” Esposito said. “They’re starting to dominate it, and that’s why people are investing in them. I think it’s a different market than the type of stuff I’m making and my friends are making. Because we’re making these very specific, interesting, weird, not-cheap games.”
Hole.io’s existence was a shock to Esposito. The mobile-gaming market was in its infancy when he began working with the hole mechanic in 2012, and indie developers were waking up to the possibility of making real money on the App Store; the mobile market was just beginning to flood. Today, the stores are oversaturated: Android users have 3.8 million apps to choose from, and Apple fans have 2 million, according to Statista.
As Esposito explained it, he felt as if he were living in a Donut County bubble since 2012. He was heads-down, evolving its theme and refining its mechanics, and wondering the entire time whether people would actually enjoy playing an entire game as a hungry hole. It was an innovative idea, and the market hadn’t yet been proved. Everybody might hate it, his subconscious whispered as he worked over six years, but they might also love it, so keep going.
And then, on June 25th, 2018, he woke up to Hole.io. He left a note on Twitter explaining the situation — Donut County was finally on track to go live this year, but its core mechanic had been cloned and made free on the same mobile store he was targeting.
“I didn’t realize how emotional making a video game would be,” Esposito said. “I think luckily I’m at a point now where all the major decisions were made; I’m just kind of going through the motions to fix the bugs and make everything work. The emotional aspect of it doesn’t matter as much at this point. But had this happened a year ago, I would have been pretty devastated.”
Esposito has seen the havoc of cloning first-hand. Voodoo isn’t alone in the world of seemingly shady App Store publishing; it shares the market with companies like Gamenauts and Ketchapp. Gamenauts is the company behind Ninja Fishing, a title that notoriously knocked off Apple Design Award winner Ridiculous Fishing a solid two years before the game’s release in 2013, devastating its two-man development team, Vlambeer. (Last month Voodoo launched its own free clone of Ridiculous Fishing).
“That was a much bigger deal for them when they first got cloned,” Esposito said. “It was before it was released. They obviously had a really interesting, really special idea and a really good execution of it. They were working extremely hard to make the best version of it. Then they got slapped with this. They got the same message I did, which is that the content doesn’t matter.”
Ketchapp made a name for itself in 2014 with the release of 2048, a free game that ripped off Asher Vollmer’s Threes, which cost $2 at launch. Ketchapp is also behind Skyward, a game that looks suspiciously like Monument Valley, and Run Bird Run, which riffs on the Flappy Bird idea. Ketchapp is owned by Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft.
Voodoo and Ketchapp are two of the biggest publishers on the App Store, and if Voodoo’s $200 million investment from Goldman Sachs is any indication, there’s a high cap on their potential for revenue. These companies don’t just publish clones, of course — Ketchapp has a library of more than 100 titles alone, while they’re both seeking out more developers every day.
Voodoo VP of Gaming Gabriel Rivaud explained his company’s business model on the App Masters podcast in August 2017. Essentially, developers from around the world send in beta builds or gameplay videos and the folks at Voodoo decide whether they want to help bring that idea to market as a free title (with in-app purchases, ads and a paid ad-free version). It’s a fairly quick process, Rivaud said.
“What we will look at is whether the game is well-executed — if it’s good quality, it’s not buggy, if the person understands, thinks about the user experience,” Rivaud said. “And whether it’s innovative. Is it just a copy of a very famous game? Then we won’t really consider it. We’re looking for teams who are good technically and then who also can twist gameplay.”
Rivaud is looking for Innovative ideas, a lot like Esposito’s hole mechanic. Scratch that — to Voodoo, it’s Hole.io’s mechanic, pitched to the publisher among dozens of other emails that day.
“I guess the part that feels the worst is that Voodoo might not even know that that game copied my game,” Esposito said. “They don’t have to know, because someone else did it and then pitched it to them. They probably thought it was a really cool, inventive idea, and then they made it. They might be surprised to hear there’s another game that’s like that.” Voodoo didn’t respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
There are few options for cloned developers. Aside from putting the publisher on blast on social media and spreading the word about the original game, there isn’t much to be done. Apple and Google are the gatekeepers, but legally they have little power to remove games that look or play like other titles. Game mechanics and ideas aren’t protected under copyright law, though unique assets can be — and this is actually a benefit to the industry. It means Nintendo can’t copyright the idea of “jumping” and id Software can’t prevent other developers from using “first-person shooting” as a core gameplay method.
“I don’t think it’s worth it for me to pursue it any more than just starting this conversation,” Esposito said. “I’m making this game by myself. I do everything on it. It takes extremely large amounts of my energy to just get it done. Whatever I might potentially gain from seeking legal action, it’s probably so costly to do, so it’s not worth it for me.”
The video game industry is like any other creative field, with developers taking ideas from other games and infusing them with their own perspectives, driving the medium forward and leading to ever-more-spectacular experiences.
Clones take this idea of sharing and evolution to an ugly place. Launching someone else’s idea, free, sometimes before the original comes to market, is an uncomfortable way to conduct creative business.
Uncomfortable, but legal.
“I guess the weird, flip-side, positive thing about it is that there’s a huge market for a single idea,” Esposito said. “You can resell the same idea, there can be five versions of it and they can all make money, which is weirdly nice to hear. That’s my silver lining of it. People have proven the hole-in-the-ground thing is cool. Maybe if they think my game is a sequel to that game, I’ll take it. Whatever. That’s fine.（source： ofollow,noindex" target="_blank">engadget ）