2048 is why we can’t have nice things

http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2014/03/30/2048-why-we-can%E2%80%99t-have-nice-things

by joelbro • 12 years ago

36 83 12 years ago

PaulHoule• 12 years ago

Casual gaming is a fad, like the coin-op games were in the 1980's. You just can't tell great stories or get good user engagement when you are nickel-and-diming people.

If you've "had enough" you should (i) get a PlayStation Vita, (ii) get Killzone Mercenary, (iii) play it through, (iv) get a dev kit.

It's time to "think different"

mikeash9• 12 years ago

Mobile game is a massive parade of shit with a very occasional gem. It's been this way at least since shortly after the iPhone App Store happened. It got vastly worse with the introduction of in-app purchases.

2048 is one of those gems. I have no idea how it compares to Threes, because I never played the latter. I did hear of it when it was first making the rounds, but couldn't be bothered to try it out. I certainly enjoyed 2048 though.

You're going to have to try a lot harder than this if you want to convince me that one of the gems in the sea of shit that is mobile gaming is actually somehow at fault for that sea.

DangerousPie• 12 years ago

But that's the whole point, isn't it? The reason there are so many shitty games out there is because it doesn't pay to create a good game.

2048 wasn't a unique new game mechanic, it was a just free clone of the game that invented the mechanic.

mikeash9• 12 years ago

As far as I've seen, the reason it doesn't pay to create a good game is because not enough people are willing to pay for them, not because they get shut out by clones.

The world would be vastly poorer if we limited every game mechanic to a single game that was allowed to express it. Can you imagine shutting down FPS clones after Wolfenstein 3D, or RTS clones after Dune? Despite not doing so, these categories are immensely profitable for game creators.

If Threes is so simple and so easily cloned then I would like to know two things:

1. Why do they deserve to profit from it and nobody else is?

2. How does giving the creators of Threes more money help produce more fun games with simple mechanics that are simple to make and easily cloned?

hapless8• 12 years ago

It took Threes' developers over a year to hone the gameplay concept, but once it was finished, it took only a day to clone it.

This creates deeply perverse incentives for mobile development.

mikeash9• 12 years ago

2048 is fairly different, so either the specifics were not that important, or the creator of 2048 just got incredibly lucky to hit on a variation that was also great.

Edit: OK downvoters, you need to reply and explain what you think is wrong here. It seems pretty straightforward to me. You can't have it both ways. If the details matter so much that Threes required a year to develop to get everything right, then how did 2048 become so successful when it changes so many details?

gaius• 12 years ago

It's the same old story of RMS and Symbolics, played out again as farce.

renata• 12 years ago

And 2048 was free while Threes charged $2. If you create something that is very easily cloned for nothing less than ad revenue... this is why the term "competitive advantage" exists.

masswerk7• 12 years ago

So, if I get this right, you're saying, you don't care for 2048, because you do not care for the game's original idea being developed in the first place?

mikeash9• 12 years ago

I don't understand where you get the idea that I "don't care for 2048" when I explicitly called it a "gem".

m12k• 12 years ago

I'm an avid player of Threes, so when 2048 popped up here on HN I gave it a try. I beat the game on my first try, and like the Sirvo guys in a recent blog post, I'd argue that any moderately experienced Threes player would. 2048 is basically Threes minus the infinite replayability, hamstrung in a way to make a single strategy dominate wildly though not quite 100% (alternate up and right, go left if stuck, repeat) and with a $0 price tag.

fennecfoxen• 12 years ago

Meh. Threes has almost certainly gotten more publicity and sales through 2048 than it's lost. (I was one of those sales.) Cry me a river.

shimfish• 12 years ago

Historical ranking data seems to show this isn't true. Sales started to drop at the end of February and did not recover when 2048 came out. It's still doing pretty darn good though.

hapless8• 12 years ago

A "Nintendo Seal of Quality" would be really great for games. You can't copyright a game design, only the art, so the markets always fill with clones

What scares me about this sort of program is the possibility of a similar barrier on applications. An app market with only one word processor would be terrible, but a market with only one flappy bird is probably better than a market with two.

batmansbelt3• 12 years ago

a market with only one flappy bird is probably better than a market with two.

Care to back up that assertion? It may be better for the original author, but it's hard to see how it would benefit the community.

hapless8• 12 years ago

Games do not compete on features, they compete on concept and gameplay. I don't see how the obvious clones offer anything to market participants.

Does anyone actually want to browse 200 variants on flappy bird, or "threes," or candy crush?

eli• 12 years ago

Didn't developers hate the Nintendo seal?

bigdubs• 12 years ago

Mostly because of the hoops you had to jump through to get it (some of the rules seemed arbitrary).

Not sure what a good equivalent for the App Store would be today. This is, honestly, what the "Editor's Choice" sections are for.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

> A "Nintendo Seal of Quality" would be really great for games.

Every (legally sold) Nintendo game had the seal. That didn't stop developers from flooding the market with really, really bad games like X-Men and Heroes of the Lance.

Granted, this didn't stop publishers from releasing really terrible NES games like Action52 (of Cheetahmen fame), but of course those were not licensed by Nintendo and did not have the seal of quality. Most of those games were QBASIC-level bad.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

> Apple and Google need to get a whole lot tougher in their approval process. They need to be picky about what they let in and they need to be willing to shut out anything that’s a blatant copy of somebody else’s work.

Bad idea. How do they decide who stays and who goes when it comes to clones? The 'best' game? The first game?

ndomin• 12 years ago

Ones that aren't exact copies that offer little to no difference than a game that is #1 on the charts. Look at all the clones for 2048 now, they have the exact same colors / name with nothing different about them. At least flappy bird clones used different artwork for the most part.

slantyyz2• 12 years ago

> Bad idea. How do they decide who stays and who goes when it comes to clones? The 'best' game? The first game?

All the console makers have been deciding what can be made for their systems for a long time. I'm sure the process can be quite arbitrary and unfair, but at the very least, it reflects some effort to have a curated library of games.

Personally, I'd prefer to see App Stores that had a much more curated experience (for all categories, not just games) than a "swap meet" type of experience, but that's just me. These days I find the App Stores incredibly painful to use due to the amount of duplicate junk in their inventories.

I find most of my mobile downloads and purchases these days come from recommendations by sites I trust.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

> All the console makers have been deciding what can be made for their systems for a long time. I'm sure the process can be quite arbitrary and unfair, but at the very least, it reflects some effort to have a curated library of games.

Consoles have traditionally had a large barrier to entry. You couldn't just buy a MacBook and a $99 developer account and make NES or PlayStation games. Having an SDK that costs $25,000 in combination with an approval process to even consider you eligible to buy it is a big filter.

batmansbelt3• 12 years ago

Culture is collaborative. Every idea is built on something, and you can't lay claim to a whole class of ideas, or expect someone else not to do a better job and charge less. That's just how society works.

crusso• 12 years ago

"that's just how it works" is not necessarily "what's best in the long term" or "what promotes the healthiest games market".

izzydata4• 12 years ago

There is something to be said about games that are so easily reproduced. I'm not really sure what exactly, but it seems silly that I could make a simple game and then when someone else reproduced it in a day to call them out on it. Kind of like not being able to patent things that are too simple and obvious.

hapless8• 12 years ago

The word "patent" means open or obvious. Technology innovators are offered an exclusive license in exchange for opening up their manufactured devices, making their designs patent to the reader.

Game designs are open by default. They have to be, in order for players to understand them well enough to enjoy them. A quality game design will always look obvious. If it's not simple and obvious, you won't enjoy the game!

izzydata4• 12 years ago

I don't agree with anything you just said. Seems like you took things literally that I explicitly used as a metaphor. I don't really know what you are doing.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

There is something to be said about books that are so easily reproduced. I'm not really sure what exactly, but it seems silly that I could make a simple book and then when someone else reproduced it in a day to call them out on it. Kind of like not being able to patent things that are too simple and obvious.

izzydata4• 12 years ago

The code would be entirely different so that isn't really the same thing.

smileysteve• 12 years ago

This is a great example of 'why your idea doesn't matter'

2048 managed to execute its marketing better, spreading through HackerNews and Reddit.

_delirium2• 12 years ago

I don't think it was really marketing so much as price & platform: Threes is a paid iPhone game, while 2048 is a free web/iPhone clone. Generally free $x finds it easier to build traction for most x (though not all), and being free and in-browser makes it a lot easier to pass links around.

lukesandberg2• 12 years ago

...which just proves that 2048 had a better strategy.... price and platform are a major component of marketing

nghst• 12 years ago

"[Free, open-source software] is why we can't have nice things" ...?

2048 exploded because anyone could modify it, create a doge version, create an AI version, a multiplayer version, an inverted version ...

And they did. The formula was ridiculously simple, so it was easy to do.

You can't do that with Threes. It's proprietary. You can't take it apart. You can't mess around with it. The only thing you can do with it is play Threes.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

The very first post of 2048 made the #1 spot on HN, before people started modding it.

My son has 2048 on his Ipod without me mentioning it to him, and he never ever gave one hoot about being able to modify it.

izzydata4• 12 years ago

What exactly is your circumstantial evidence supporting here?

ebrenes3• 12 years ago

And it exploded just for those reasons. I sent the link around my company to all the gamers and pretty quickly I saw it crop up on everyone's screen.

The same can't be said for Three's, because there is greater resistance in spreading it and people trying it out. First, I probably wouldn't have tried Threes. Second, I wouldn't have been able to link it easily to people who might have been partially interested in it. Third, the variants and mods were what kept people coming back.

Consultant32452• 12 years ago

I have mixed feelings. I mean the entire game could be copied in 2 days? Sounds like a serious lack of content in your game. I do feel bad for them though, they might miss their chance to have the game of the month and sell for a billion bucks.

rblstr• 12 years ago

I bought threes because of 2048...

This is a lot of bullshit. They're obviously different games, credit was given where credit was due. 2048 helped, not hindered Threes. I've even passed Threes around my friends, they love it.

I like it less now.

kevando• 12 years ago

While 2048 certainly cloned threes, I agree with others that threes benefited more with the proliferation of 2048. On that note, I also think it's more interesting to discuss WHY 2048 spread so far and so quickly. Yeah, it's super addicting, but does anyone else think it's related to the fact it was released open source?

If you were to look at the top 50 posts on HN in the last month, I bet 10 are variations of that game. Which is pretty remarkable and no one is talking about.

ergest• 12 years ago

You should have titled this post "2048: The Game of Clones"

bhaak• 12 years ago

"We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it."

Bold statement that "invested more time" automatically equals "better".

I haven't played Threes yet but from the screen shot in that article, I think 2048 is at least a better-looking game.

I also have a hard time believing that there hasn't been a similar game before Threes. It's not like the gaming industry started yesterday. Such a simple game mechanic is likely to have been implemented before.

That's the problem with simple things. They can get invented more easily by anybody and often independently.

thezoid• 12 years ago

Threes is indeed a better game. There's subtle changes in the mechanics that make your decisions much more important than in 2048 which is effectively broken.

Maybe they spent too much time on it, but this is a thing many game developers do. They place a lot of emphasis on releasing finished products, or at least products that present really well.

masswerk7• 12 years ago

If you would have read their blog-post, you've also encountered their argument, why Threes! would be the better game in their eyes:

"But why is Threes better? It’s better for us, for our goals. 2048 is a broken game. Something we noticed about this kind of system early on (...). We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years. We both beat 2048 on our first tries. (...) When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken. Is Threes a better game? We think so. To this day, only about 6 people in the world have ever seen a 6144 and nobody in the world has yet to “beat” Threes. But that’s what’s better to us as game designers. We worked really hard to create a simple game system with interesting complexity that you can play forever. You know, “simple to learn, impossible to master”. That old chess-nut…"

neotek• 12 years ago

None of which necessarily makes Threes a better game. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) 2048 far more than I ever enjoyed Threes, simple though it may be.

ebrenes3• 12 years ago

To expand on what neotek said, none of this makes Three's a better game. All they are advocating is that it's a harder game that's so far been impossible to beat, and that they've tailored it to fit their tastes as game designers.

That's fine and all, but why do they expect the market to reward them for that? Do they assume the market will like what they like, and are bitter that the market didn't react how they expected? It doesn't always follow that an expert's opinion matches the marketplace or even the average user's desires.

2048 had easier and faster-paced gameplay, a lower barrier of entry, provided a better distribution model (just pass around the link) and it fostered a vibrant modding community. It seems to me like they are really missing the big picture behind what makes a game successful, if all they can come up with is: "2048 is too easy".

javaguy_98• 12 years ago

I call BS.

First, I purchased Threes only after becoming aware of it because of 2048. I bet there are hundreds of people who can claim the same thing.

Second, if you've spent any time playing both, the term 'clone' does both games a dis-service... its like calling Checkers a 'clone' of Chess because they are both played on the ame type of gameboard. The gameplay between the two games is completely different, and I find I think about each one differently. 2048 (and my favorite variant the hexagon-based 16384) are 'fast twitch' games. Threes is a slow thinker with more strategy. let run down some differences:

- in 2048, the numbers slide all the way in the direction you move. in Threes they only move one space.

- in 2048, a number '2' (or occasionally a number '4') appears in a random position on the board. With Threes, the piece always appears in one of the positions that opens up with your 'slide'.

- in Threes, you get to know (roughly) what piece is coming next, and have an active choice in where it appears... in 2048, you don't.

All of these might seem like subtle changes, but they make a dramatic difference in the mental exercise of the gameplay.

To call these clones makes as much sense to me as calling them all clones of the classic '15-puzzle'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_puzzle

GotNothing• 12 years ago

I agree, I also bought/gained knowledge of "Threes" after first playing 2048...

To add to the differences in game play you listed, I find myself managing the pairing of RED and BLUE tiles in "Threes" more of an objective than matching the numbers because if you don't the game quickly ends.

mcphage• 12 years ago

All of these might seem like subtle changes, but they make a dramatic difference in the mental exercise of the gameplay. To call these clones makes as much sense to me as calling them all clones of the classic '15-puzzle'.

There's a continuum of changes. If Threes is '1', and 2048 is '2', then 15 puzzle is 9 or 10. There the only commonality is the 4x4 grid and the idea of moving a tile into an empty space.

rickr• 12 years ago

Others rifled off that they thought 2048 was a better game than Threes. That all stung pretty bad. We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it. And obviously, Threes is the reason 2048 exists.”

Isn't this a bad road to travel down? People are saying 2048 is better, but the authors are rejecting them only because they spent a year and a half on the project?

Maybe that's an indicator why 2048 was more popular.

kapnobatairza• 12 years ago

The idea that video game clones has gone from "being the exception to being the rule" is cute. The author clearly didn't grow up in the 80s/early 90s when cloning video games WAS the norm. How many pong, breakout, asteroids, space invaders, zaniac etc. etc. clones did we see?

Even when it comes to the world of AAA FPS titles everything is essentially a high budget clone of previously established paradigms.

The fact of the matter is: Almost everything in gaming is a clone. Yes, once in a while a developer will be able to establish a new genre and that is great. What is even better is other developers following in his footsteps and trying to improve upon the original in terms of mechanics, cost, design, accessibility, etc. in a free competing marketplace of ideas.

The only reason gaming has advanced as far as it has is because developers were never stifled by fearing imitation. Instead, game developers have embraced imitation.

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

Threes and 2048 are different games. The differences are pretty substantial. Yes, Threes is almost certainly a better game. 2048 is a game that takes hundreds of turns and the "meta-game" is about knowing when to play fast (spamming into a corner) and when not. Threes gets around the tedious aspect by allowing larger numbers to spawn, and having more strategic depth in general.

What made 2048 go viral was that it was open-source, so people could modify it or write AI or analyze it, and that it's really simple. The interface is spartan, to its benefit. At each turn, there are only 4 options. The rich, 40-hour J-RPGs of the '90s and new German-style board games just aren't going to come about in the mobile space.

The Gresham's Law factors in game virality used to piss me off (ask a Googler who was there in 2011) but I'm sort of resigned on that issue, at least at this point. You occasionally get a casual gem like Angry Birds or Threes or 2048. That's about the best that space can do. And that's OK. To its credit, 2048 probably brought exposure and more users to Threes, once people got bored with the simpler, free game.

diydsp• 12 years ago

If the medium itself lends itself so easily to cloning and there is no protection for the mechanics of a game, the game should be combined with protectable assets, e.g. graphics.

Look at Chutes and Ladders. Stunning dumb game mechanic, but the graphics are an asset that makes the game into an asset.

The video game medium doesn't allow one to compete on game mechanics alone.

hapless8• 12 years ago

This is much easier for console titles, played in your living room on a 46" screen. AAA FPS titles offer virtually identical gameplay, but their art assets and thematic direction differentiate them for players.

Selling mobile games based on compelling assets is a touch more difficult. (And that goes double for puzzles)

micfok2• 12 years ago

Absolutely agree. My impression is that Threes tried to do just that with the cute names and faces on tiles as well as the music but it simply isn't in a game like this where the player simply isn't engaged in that way.

nakedrobot2• 12 years ago

And on the same page of HN we have a post asking to abolish software patents....

dkrich• 12 years ago

I don't know who the author is chastising- the maker of three's or the maker or 2048, or the clones of 2048.

I don't really sympathize with the maker of three's. In the business world, one of the key metrics for determining the lasting value of a business are the barriers to entry in that market. If you make a video game for a smartphone, you must realize that you are entering a wildly-competitive marketplace with few-to-zero barriers to entry, at least monetarily.

I guess I can understand the frustration of the makers of threes when seeing clones being played instead of theirs but if it is so easy for other programmers to make successful clones, the game that they produced couldn't have been that special. Otherwise people would still be playing it.

masswerk7• 12 years ago

Hum, if I got the initial post right, that was the very point made here. If we would want to have developers to invest in original ideas in a market that has so little barriers, it's probably up to the customers (and their long term strategy) to care for this. Otherwise, it wouldn't be wise for anyone to invest in this market place at all, which would probably effect in a total lack of originality in the goods traded there.

Edit: Please note that it is in the very nature of a game (being it a mobile game or a board game) to have quite simple mechanics and a limited set of rules, in a sense of "simple to learn, impossible to master" (as mentioned by the authors of Threes!). So it's in the very essence of a good game to allow copies with an effort that is in no relation with the effort that has to be invested to come up with the rules and mechanics in the first place.

nilkn• 12 years ago

While I can understand their pain, I hadn't heard of Threes before this happened. So I'm not fully convinced that this has been strictly bad for them.

That said, I couldn't buy Threes even if I wanted to, because I don't have an iPhone.

ivanca• 12 years ago

I have news pal; everything is a copy of a copy, the tires on cars are a copy of the tires on carriages; your blog design use buttons of the platform in one line and subcategories on the next line, something I sow more than a decade ago before your website even existed, just as the idea of having a ranking-list-with-availability on the right side of the template.

This is a universal truth, including cult movies who are indeed a copy of older (sometimes not so famous) movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaA8DMVOYhg

lukesandberg2• 12 years ago

I seriously doubt that threes was born in a vacuum.

Threes was surely itself modeled after other games (mahjong comes to mind, though i'm sure there are better examples). To claim that 2048 is merely a 'clone' ignores the ways in which 2048 is different (some would say better) and it also propagates a damaging myth of creation/innovation.

mariusz79• 12 years ago

When I saw the title of the post I was hoping for an article complaining about thousands of people wasting time on stupid things like games, when we have not enough people working on more important and more exciting project.. unfortunately I was wrong.

devnonymous• 12 years ago

Oh come on ! Any creative+commercial industry is full of clones. From movies, to music, to books, to ...whathaveyou. In any of these, once a 'formula' is proved to work, you'd get clones by the bucket-loads. In almost all of these the capital invested in really doing something different and creative is much higher than in the software industry. One just has to accept that

   a. You might get imitated if you are successful

   b. The imitation might get more successful than you

Why is the software industry so full of whiners !?!

2048 is why we can’t have nice things

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