作者：Kris Graft

在创意领域，若有人将他人创意构思据为已有，高度重视创造性的人士将冷眼相向。在由创新推动的行业情况也是如此。

电子游戏领域既重视创造性，也注重创新。所以若有人剽窃创意或创新构思，玷污行业的价值标准，将更是遭受唾弃。

虽然这不是什么新话题，但游戏领域的“山寨”现象近来备受关注，日前圣地亚哥的3人独立工作室NimbleBit发布一份颇具嘲讽意味的信息图表，称工作室热作《Tiny Tower》和加拿大App Store的Zynga游戏《Dream Heights》存在惊人的相似之处。

过去Zynga就收到许多关于“复制”他人作品的批评，而现在Zynga的这款作品与《Tiny Tower》堪称高度相似，批评者不再使用“效仿”之类的词汇，转而采用更尖锐的词语，如“抄袭”或“剽窃”。

日前Zynga首席设计师Brian Reynolds接受我们的独家采访。Reynolds可谓是真正的行业元老，已投身游戏设计20多年。他过去的代表作包括备受推崇的PC策略游戏《文明II》、《阿尔发人马座》和《国家的崛起》。他的最新作品？2010年的Zynga热作《FrontierVille》。

Zynga嘱咐其首席设计师不要谈论过多有关《Tiny Tower》事件的具体情况，但Reynolds（游戏邦注：他未参与《Dream Heights》的制作）表示，Zynga有其创新文化，当前行业的山寨情况和《毁灭战士》诞生的90年代没有什么两样。

你怎么看待目前的这些“抄袭”报道？你的整体立场是什么？

我一直都在制作游戏，已投身其中21年（笑）。所以认真来说，以我入行这么多年的角度来看，我很惊讶大家竟然如此小题大做，或者认为这很不可思议。

当然，在Zynga，我们总是坚持创新原则，所以我非常愿意讨论此话题。90年代《毁灭战士》诞生时，开发者们都纷纷转而制作射击游戏，1997年《魔兽争霸》和《命令与征服》问世后，陆续就有50多款各式各样的即时策略游戏出现，可以说这是RTS游戏风靡的一年。

关于这些游戏，我们能记住的寥寥无几。当新题材或新内容诞生时，开发者们总是会争相效仿。所以对我们而言最重要的是，确保制作出高质量的内容。显然这竞争性很大，我们无法保证在各个领域都制作出最优质的作品，但这显然是我们努力的方向。

社交游戏领域的一个微妙之处在于你需要时常更新和调整内容，所以最初发行的作品通常都不是最终成品。起初你只需要呈现能够运作的内容，然后再持续创新。这更像是网页模式，而非传统游戏模式，但传统领域也存在若干元素能为我们所用。

你的意思是说，就你从业多年的角度来看，这并不是什么新趋势。

众所周知，几款玩家公认的经典游戏其实都是先前作品的“完美结合”。我有购买首款《文明》游戏，我觉得这是行业最终经典的作品之一，游戏给人的感觉有点像PC“帝国”游戏和“文明”棋盘游戏的完美融合，是吧？所以游戏这里取一点，那里取一点，然后再融入些许全新内容。

这是重点，这款游戏“这里取一点，那里取一点，然后再融入些许全新内容”。但这里我们所谈到的作品，在批评者看来，借鉴过多，新元素过少。

就像《Dream Heights》，批评者称游戏没有借鉴其他作品，并不是这里取一点，那里取一点，然后再融入些许全新内容。很多人都觉得这是翻版“Tiny Tower”，我觉得这就是你所举之例和当前情况的差异所在。

（游戏邦注：此时Reynolds将话题从《Dream Heights》转开）

大家都知道，《FarmVille》刚问世时也遭遇许多批评声音。关于此题材我们显然不是先驱。这是款农场游戏，但市面上还有许多其他的农场游戏，有《My Farm》，有《Farm Town》，我对自己推出的农场游戏非常满意，因为我觉得它更胜一筹，我们胜在内容更丰富。我们的作品画面效果更杰出，它的界面最简单、最通俗易懂，这就是我们的游戏。这是款迎合大众市场的农场游戏，它的画面优质而简单。

你是否觉得众开发者正联合对抗Zynga，因为它是此领域的佼佼者？

这显然不足为奇，当你变强大后，其他人都会紧随其后。我的意思是说，这完全是意料之中，如今Zynga已越来越具知名度。近来公司进行IPO后，我们频繁出现于报刊杂志中，引起广泛关注。

我想目前Zynga的市值应该算是游戏领域比较靠前的，所以我们颇受关注。和EA不同，我们在此备受关注，所以我丝毫未感到惊讶。

我只是想让大家知道Zynga也是富有创新精神的公司，在很多情况下，我们推出的作品都很优秀，包括市场上所没有的内容。在我看来，Zynga是行业的创新者，所以我希望我们能在此获得肯定。

能否细谈公司的创新精神？你所指的创新和设计体现在何处？

当然可以。我在Zynga负责的首款作品是《FrontierVille》，在这款游戏中，我们积极进行创新。我们在游戏中添加许多社交游戏先前所没有的元素。

通过这款游戏，关卡任务理念首次出现于社交游戏中。MMO和RPG游戏有关卡任务，但没有人将此元素广泛地植入社交游戏，我们首先这么做。我将它们称作“goober”，这就像腾空飞来的小小战利品，其非常诱人，清楚显示：“你刚在这里获得奇妙物品。”游戏清楚呈现战利品（游戏邦注：而不是在窗口中显示滚动内容）。

我们还添加一堆其他元素。有些是社交创新，如《FrontierVille》融入“邻居访问重演”概念，这里玩家可以拜访他人的空间——他们的农场或边界，这有点像点击，然后开始，你好友不会知道你在那里，自然也不会在屏幕上看到你。

假设我能够拜访你，我会点击你的树木、农作物或花朵之类的东西，以及我从中得到的回馈，这里我会觉得我是在自己的农场点击这些内容。我目睹这些内容在浏览器中消失，当你返回游戏时，这些元素依然还在那里。但你会看见我的头像，你点击我的头像，这有点像重演我刚才完成的操作。这使得游戏更具社交性，更有亲身体验感觉。根本来说，游戏清楚两位玩家是在不同时间操作游戏内容，但其在异步情境中制造同步幻觉。

我们还创造“声誉”概念：玩家每次点击好友的物件都会获得一颗心。此理念促使玩家进行社交体验。类似理念随后陆续被我们的其他团队成员所借鉴。

我和《CastleVille》团队（这主要是驻足达拉斯的若干人员，他们很多之前是《 帝国时代 》的成员）合作竞争了10年。他们通常都是这样：“我们打算借鉴《FrontierVille》中的元素”，然后将其中的许多元素提升至新层次。所以他们将声誉机制转变成货币，玩家可以通过所获的心购买商品。

但《FrontierVille》和《CastleVille》这两款游戏不在评论范围之内。

但这些是我们的重要作品，是吧？这些是大型作品，再来就是《CityVille》，游戏刚问世时，大家一致认为这是款颇具创新性的作品，游戏后来也持续更新内容。所以关键点是，就我们制作的核心内容来看，我们是行业的创新佼佼者。

但就像你之前说的，你是否觉得随着这些平台的涌现，你们可以快速制作和发行作品，你是否觉得今天的“山寨”现象和90年代的《毁灭战士》式FPS游戏及《命令与征服》式RTS作品风靡情况类似？你觉得这是否具有可比性？

我觉得有可比性。在行业的任何时期里，当开发时间缩短时，就会出现更短的迭代和竞争周期。过去，PC游戏的制作时间很短，成本很低，因此迭代时间也很快。如今制作RPG游戏的成本高出许多，所以鲜有人会匆匆赶制自己的Skyrim游戏。

是的，这很有难度。

行业的起步成本是3亿美元。所以当新题材出现时，开发者们都会纷纷效仿。我们的理念是投身这些题材，力争成为此题材的佼佼者。我们当然希望能够涉足所有题材。我们现在已是成熟的平台游戏公司，我们当然也想要变成成熟的发行公司。

所以Zynga或业内其他公司复制他人作品颇有益处？此种情况是否应该延续？那么创新的价值呢？

我觉得创新非常重要。但不排除这样的情况：在行业的发展过程中，各开发者互相借鉴，你从他人的作品中获得灵感，然后进行创新。所以我觉得二者情况都存在，都行得通。若你能够顺利把握二者，那将是最佳情况。

就你的“山寨”定义来看，这种情况时常发生，是吧？姑且不针对Zynga，从整个行业来看，你觉得借鉴是否是好事？如今很多开发者都开始效仿他人作品？

这显然有违“山寨”的定义（笑），因为这里已涉及知识产权，我们当然不认同侵犯他人的知识产权。这里存在一定的界限，开发者不应逾越此界限。

这里我分享下自己的“山寨”定义，供大家参考。在我看来，这是指游戏完全由原版作品改造（变脸），毫无新鲜元素。这从根本来说就是抄袭。

所以就理论来看，你认为游戏应该添加新内容，是吧？你认为需要在同类题材中添加新元素。你所说的“变脸”非常有趣，仔细回想行业诞生的系列作品，确实存在某些“变脸”作品，但其内容非常有趣，不知你知不知道？你是否能够进行巧妙改造，然后赢得用户芳心？《星球大战》可以说是翻版的《帝国时代》。我的意思是，游戏得到原版作品的引擎授权，“这非常棒”。

我清楚这点，但这里存在的是添加内容的问题。我觉得未添加足够内容的开发者很难获得成功。在我看来，想要成功，开发者既要从先前作品中获得灵感，又得确保在作品中添加新元素。但这里我不想要明确陈述应该要添加什么元素。

我想要知道你的真实想法。你是否觉得这是个问题，手机和社交领域的山寨现象？

最重要的是，我觉得在行业发展进程中，这并未成为一个问题，从根本来说，开发者只要添加新内容，进行创新，努力制作出最优质的作品，他们通常就能够获得成功。在我印象中，没有任何糟糕作品能够打败更胜一筹的同类作品？你是否遇到这类情况？

我相信只要我在文章中转述你的话，马上就会得到很多回复（笑）。

你也许会获得些许例子，但其中某些是因为它们同更大型的作品绑定，获得更好的营销推广，我觉得这是部分原因。所以若你想要以预期方式发行自己的作品，你就需要确保所有内容都顺利运作。热门作品的诞生绝不是因为你正确把握某元素，而是因为你正确把握众多元素。所以你可以制作更吸引眼球的图像，更优质、更诱人、更富沉浸性的作品，你可以设计更杰出的故事，你可以进行更好的营销，你可以更好地运作后端，你可以呈现更突出的表现，避免崩溃现象。在他人技术的基础上，你可以把握更优质的参数，更好地回应用户反馈等。

各开发者采取的策略是，尽量确保所有元素都能够顺利运作，从而创造出热门作品，是吧？因为若游戏设计杰出，但技术糟糕，你就无法获得成功，或者也许你就无法确保所有内容都尽善尽美。但你也许主要着眼于避免呈现糟糕内容，而不是创造出众多优质元素。通过融合这些元素，我们得以创造出杰出作品，这通常不一定要有极佳的营销策略。

那么作为Zynga的首席设计师，你有没有什么话相对这些指控Zynga作品的游戏设计师说，有关社交游戏设计领域？我的意思是，我知道你们开始着眼于其他游戏。

首先，需弄清楚的是，首席游戏设计师处于主导地位（笑）。我不会告诉他们该怎么做，除非他们加入我的部门。我负责有些作品的运营工作，还有一些作品同我联系密切，有些则风马牛不相及。

但作为领导者，我的建议是：“要保持创新”，把作品变成更优秀，更具社交性，更通俗易懂，质量更上一层楼。这是我们应该做的。若你想要变成优秀设计师，这些是你应该要做到的方面。

若社交游戏开发者推出富有创新性的杰出作品，他们是否应该做好被模仿的准备？

我不清楚他们是否应该做此准备，但他们显然要做好接受竞争的心理准备（笑）。

是的，对有些人来说，二者就是一回事，或者至少他们会携手并进。

这些开发商多半无法获得成功。我不知道你是否还记得《国家的崛起》这款游戏。

是的，当然。

这是我想要涉猎的题材，我想要进军RTS领域。我决定制作“文明”风格的“阿尔发人马座”游戏，这是回合模式的游戏，但我很擅长历史游戏。所以我总结世界游戏的历史合乎逻辑。

但当时已有《帝国时代》，要如何同这款游戏进行竞争？《国家的崛起》构思就是我的竞争筹码，有人称，“游戏看起来很像《帝国时代》”，有人则表示，“胡扯，这款游戏更胜一筹。我非常喜欢这款游戏，它比《帝国时代》有趣很多。”存在此观点上的差异完全可以理解，完全在我的意料之中，这主要取决于个人观点。

我们引入众多截然不同的元素，但这依然是款RTS游戏，是吧？想要成为RTS游戏，作品首先要是款历史游戏。你定希望通过某种方式将历史形象化，这就是我们所采取的策略，很多玩家购买我们的作品。但《帝国时代》也取得突出成绩，这多半受益于我们创造的竞争性。他们既面临竞争压力，又获得我们构想的新题材想法。

就《国家的崛起》而言，客观地说，我曾听到支持Zynga的用户这么说道：“就拿《战地风云》、《使命的召唤》和今天的FPS游戏来说，它们都互相效仿”，有点像你所举的《帝国时代》和《国家的崛起》例子。但游戏设计师或了解电子游戏的人士都知道，这些游戏存在根本差异。

在我看来，这些例子都不合适，我不会建议你参考《使命的召唤》或《战地风云》（游戏邦注：作为山寨典范）。我会建议你查看《毁灭战士》或其他后来出现的射击游戏。

或是《命令与征服》，或者是后来涌现的作品。在此新题材刚刚确立的初期年代，市场涌现众多游戏作品，它们很多都大同小异。

但当发展趋势最终稳定下来，题材最终确立，大家深入剖析题材后，只有那些能够在题材中添加独特元素的开发者能够最终脱颖而出。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Talking Copycats with Zynga’s Design Chief

by Kris Graft

In creative industries, the one who appropriates another’s creation and calls it his own quickly earns the ire of those who place value in creativity. The same goes for innovation-driven industries.

The video game industry — in an ideal sense — values both creativity as well as innovation. So when an entity sullies those values by plagiarizing or even outright stealing from those who are regarded as creative and innovative, perhaps the wrath against the violator is two-fold.

While not a new debate, the subject of “copycatting” in the games industry gained some traction in recent days when three-person San Diego indie developer NimbleBit released a mocking infographic that pointed out striking similiarities between the studio’s hit iPhone game Tiny Tower and a new Zynga Canadian App Store title, Dream Heights.

For all the criticism Zynga had received in the past about “ripping off” others’ games, there was finally a game connected to Zynga that was undeniably similar enough to another, and instead of using the term “rip-off,” people were using more pointed words like “theft” and “plagiarism.”

Amid the heated discussion, Zynga gave Gamasutra an exclusive chance to talk to Zynga’s game design chief Brian Reynolds. A true industry veteran, Reynolds has been a game designer for over two decades. His past credits include revered PC strategy games Civilization II, Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations. His most recent credit? 2010′s successful FrontierVille for Zynga.

Zynga would not allow its game design chief to talk specifics about the Tiny Tower situation, but Reynolds, who was not involved in the development of Dream Heights, argues that Zynga does have a culture of innovation, and claims today’s environment of copycatting isn’t really much different than when Doom launched in the ’90s.

From your perspective, what are you seeing lately in these “copycat” reports and what’s your take on that overall?

Brian Reynolds: Well, I’ve been making games, I’m actually coming up on 21 years [laughs]. So when I put it in perspective, with having been around the game industry a long time, I’m not exactly sure why it’s considered such a big deal right now, or why someone thinks there’s anything really surprising going on.

At Zynga, of course, I feel like we’ve got lots of innovation going on, so I certainly want to talk about that. But I was there in the ’90s when Doom came out and then everybody made a shooter, and I was there when Warcraft and Command & Conquer came out in 1997, and then like 50 different [real-time strategy] games launched, and it was the year of the RTS.

And we don’t remember very many of them any more. So when there’s a new genre or a new thing, then everybody gets their game in. And the main thing for us, our goal is to have the highest-quality thing. Obviously it’s competitive, and we may not always end up being the one to have the best thing in every space, but we certainly try to.

One of the subtleties about the social games space is you’re kind of updating and changing a lot, so what you ship when you first launch isn’t always where the game ultimately goes. And there’s certainly something to be said for just kind of getting something up and running in the space, and then you then you keep on innovating it. That’s a little bit more of a web model then a traditional game industry model, but it’s certainly also something that kind of applies.

The vibe that I’m getting is that … you’ve been making games for a long time and you don’t see this as a new trend.

BR: Actually you know, some of the best games ever made, I’ve felt like were actually, the best way to put it — the most favorable way to put it — might be a “glorious synthesis” of stuff in previous games. I bought the very first Civilization, I think one of the greatest games really of all time. I felt like, “Hey wow, what a great synthesis between the Empire game from the PC and the Civilization board game, you know? So it was like some of this and some of that, and then some completely new stuff thrown in.

Well, that’s the thing, though. With that example in particular, you’ve got “some of this” and you’ve got “some of that” and it’s got some new stuff thrown in. The games in question are games that are being accused of taking too much, and not adding enough.

Like Dream Heights — it’s being accused of not taking anything from anywhere else, that it’s not taking a little bit from there or a little bit from here or adding new stuff. A lot of people are seeing, “Hey, this is a reskinned Tiny Tower,” and I think that’s the difference, though, between the example you gave and what’s happening now.

[PR steered the conversation away from Dream Heights at this point.]

BR: You know, when FarmVille came out there was a lot of [criticism]. We certainly weren’t the first to market and all that. It was a farm game, but there had been several other farm games, and there was My Farm and there was Farm Town, and I felt pretty good about the farm game we came up with, because I just felt like it was the one that was better, that we won because our game was better. It had better art. It had the simplest, most accessible interface, and that’s what it was. It was farm games-meet-mass-market-accessibility, and it had really good simple art.

Do you think Zynga is being ganged up on because it is the big kid on the block?

BR: Well it’s certainly never a surprise when you’re big and people come after you. I mean, I think that’s to be expected, the more well-known Zynga has become. We’ve certainly been in the news a lot lately having IPOed and all that stuff — it catches a lot of attention.

I guess now Zynga’s market cap turns out to be one of the bigger ones in games, and so yeah, we get a lot of attention, and there will always be that. It’s not like EA’s never gotten attention like that either, and so nothing about that surprises me.

I just want to make sure that people realize how much innovation goes on at Zynga, and how many times we’ve delivered games that really are just fantastic and bring new things to the market. I feel like Zynga is substantially a driver of innovation in the space, and so I just want to make sure we get credit for that.

Can you speak specifically to that innovation? What kind of innovations and designs are you referring to?

BR: Sure, sure absolutely. So my first game that I personally lead at Zynga was FrontierVille, and that was certainly an example of something where we really tried to innovate a lot. So we added a bunch of things that hadn’t been seen before in social games.

It was the first time the concept of quests had been done in social games. There have been quests in MMOs and RPGs, but nobody had really done them on any significant scale in social games, and we added the idea. I call them “goobers,” it’s like the little pieces of loot that fly out of things, look pretty and make it clear that “Oh, you just got a bunch of neat stuff here.” It makes it clearer what your loot has been, rather than just having something scroll by in a window.

And then we added a bunch of other things. Some of them were social innovations. Like FrontierVille created the idea of what I call the “neighbor visit replay,” where when you go visit somebody’s space — their farm or frontier or whatever — and sort of just kind of click and go. And your friend never even barely knows you were there, and certainly doesn’t see you on their screen.

Say I can visit you, I click on maybe your trees and your crops and your flowers or something, and what I get when I click on them, I get rewarded as if I had clicked on those kinds of things on my own farm. I’ll see them vanish and go away [in my browser], and you come back and those things are still there. But you see my guy there and you click on my guy and it kind of replays the things that I did. So what that ends up doing is it makes it a more social, personal experience. Essentially it recognizes that we’re both playing at different times but it kind of puts the illusion of synchronous play into an asynchronous situation.

We also invented the concept of what we call “reputation,” which is where you get a heart every time you click on one of your friend’s things. It’s the idea of giving you credit for playing socially. Then those kinds of things have then been taken by some of our other teams.

So the CastleVille team — which are some guys in Dallas but I know a lot of them were Age of Empires guys — so I’ve been working with them and competing with them for a decade. They were like, “Man, we’re going to take the stuff we did in FrontierVille,” and then they took a bunch of it to a whole new level. So they took the reputation and turned it into a currency, to spend the hearts and actually buy things with them.

But FrontierVille and CastleVille, those games aren’t the ones that are under scrutiny.

BR: Well, but I mean those are our big games, right? Those are our biggest games, and CityVille is another game that was both widely-acclaimed as innovative when it came out, and then it has continued to innovate as it goes along. So you know one of the points is, if you look at the main stuff we’re doing, we’re a substantial driver of innovation in the industry.

But like you said early on, and I want to make sure to make this clear, do you think that with the rise of these platforms, where you can rapidly make a game and release it, do you think that today the [occurence of "rip-offs"] is about the same as it was, say, back in the ’90s, when you’ve got a lot of Doom-like FPSes coming out and Command & Conquer-like RTSes coming out? Do you think it’s comparable?

BR: I think there’s something. I think it’s comparable. You do see, in any time in industry history, when the development time is really short, then you certainly see a  shorter cycle of iteration and competition. When it used to be really, really quick and cheap to make PC games, well then you know, the iteration time was faster. It’s gotten more expensive now to make an RPG, so nobody’s going to be rushing out with their Skyrim game [laughs].

Right, yeah. That would be difficult.

BR: Thirty million dollars to get in the door or whatever. Yeah, so when the genres come out, everybody wants to get in the genre. Our idea is to get into genres and try to be the best game in the genre. Certainly, there’s no question we want to be in all the genres. Now that we’re an established platform game company, then that’s definitely you know the kind of publisher we want to be.

So it’s advantageous for companies like Zynga, or any other company in this space, to copy heavily from one another? Is that something that should continue? What about the value of innovation?

BR: Well I think innovation is really valuable. I think that there’s also the question that in the course of the industry, games build off of each other, and you see what others are doing and you get inspired and you build and innovate in the space. So I think you kind of have both, and it works. You’re the most successful when both are working really well.

And as far as your definition of “copycatting,” as someone who works in this space, you have to see this stuff going on, right? Let’s not even talk about Zynga specifically, but the space in general, you do see that right? That a lot of developers are really just ripping off of one another?

BR: Well you know, negating the definition of “ripping off” [laughs], because certainly there’s intellectual property and we definitely don’t believe in taking other people’s intellectual property and all that kind of stuff. There are lines, and you don’t want to cross those.

I can give you my idea [of "ripping off"], just to give you a point of reference. I think it’s basically when a game is pretty much reskinned from the original, and nothing new is added. It’s basically plagiarized.

BR: Well so in theory you want to add something, right? You want to, if you’re working in the genre, add something to the genre. You know it’s funny you were talking about “reskinned,” but I just think back in the industry, I’ve actually seen some things that kind of felt like reskins, but were pretty cool, you know? You can do a really good “reskin” and people like it? You take the Star Wars game [LucasArts and Ensemble's Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds], that was kind of a reskin of Age of Empires. I mean in fact, they licensed the engine and used the engine, I felt, “Oh that was kind of cool.”

I recognize this, but it’s a question of adding something, that’s the thing. I think that the teams that don’t add enough aren’t going to be the successful ones. I think that the people who are going to have the most success as game developers are going to be ones who are both inspired and aware of what has gone before, but are actually adding something to the ecology. I don’t want to be the one that formulates the rules on what it is you have to add, though.

So I just just want you to level with me. Do you see this as a problem, the level of copycatting that’s going on in the mobile and social space?

BR: So the thing is, in the course of the industry, it doesn’t feel like to me that it’s usually been a problem, that basically the people that add stuff and innovate and make the best games are usually the ones that succeed. I can’t think of an obvious example where somebody made a worse game, and profoundly beat out somebody who made a better game. Can you think of an example?

I’m sure once I quote you on that in the article, I’ll get a whole bunch of comments answering that question [laughs].

BR: You’ll get some ideas, you’ll have some ideas. But some of those are always tinged with, perhaps, they were bigger franchises and had better marketing, I think that’s part of the thing. So when you launch a game you want, you need everything to go right. A hit comes not because you did this one thing, but you did a whole bunch of stuff right. So you can have better art, you can have a better, more compelling game, more addictive game, you can have a better story, you can have better marketing, you can do better at running the backend, you can have better performance so it doesn’t crash. It’s their technology. You can have better metrics, better response to what your players are asking for, and so on and so forth.

And what everybody does is you try to get as many of those going right, and that’ s what creates a hit, right? Because if you have a glorious game design and crappy technology, you wouldn’t succeed, and maybe you can’t have everything be perfect. But you probably try to have nothing be terrible, and instead try to have as many things as possible be really good. Those things, they kind of multiply together into something that’s cool. It’s not always the people that have the best marketing.

So as the chief game designer for Zynga, is there anything that you are telling your game designers amid these reports and accusations, relating to the environment of social game design right now? I mean, I know that you guys look at other games.

BR: Yeah. First of all just to be clear, the chief game designer is kind of a first among equals title [laughs]. I don’t get to tell them much what to do unless they’re in my division. There are some games where I actually run the games, and there are others that I’m kind of really close to. And then there are others that are further away.

But in terms of a first among equals, I think I say, “Keep innovating.” You know, make your games better. Make them more social. Make them more accessible. Make them higher quality. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, and if you want to give credit to the game designer for being a great game designer, those are the things you do that you do to succeed.

Should social game makers, if they make a successful, innovative game, should they just expect to get copied?

BR: I don’t know if they should expect to get copied. They should certainly expect to get competed with [laughs].

Right. Well for some people that’s one and the same, Brian. Or at least they go hand in hand.

BR: Well those developers will probably not be the people who are successful, to be clear. I don’t know if you remember Rise of Nations.

Yeah, of course.

BR: But it was where I wanted to get in. I decided I wanted to get into the RTS space. I’d been doing the Civilization-y Alpha Centauri games, which were turn-based, but I was kind of more an expert in history games than anything else. So it was logical I’d do a history of the world game.

But of course there was already an Age of Empires, and so how do you compete with Age of Empires? And so Rise of Nations was my idea of competing with Age of Empires and some people said, “Oh, it looks just like Age of Empires,” and other people said, “Holy crap, this is so much better. I love this and it’s better than Age of Empires.” And I think that’s a reasonable difference of opinion. It didn’t surprise me that people said both of those things. It just kind of depended on your perspective.

We brought a whole bunch of things that were different, and yet we were an RTS, right? And to be an RTS you had to get to a certain place to be a history game. You wanted to visualize history in a certain way, and so we did it, and a whole bunch of people bought our game. And yet, Age of Empires was completely successful, and also probably benefited from the competition we gave them. They had both competitive pressure, and some of the ideas we contributed to the genre.

To be fair to Rise of Nations… you know, I’ve heard from people that have defended Zynga say, “Well look at Battlefield and look at Call of Duty and today’s FPSes. They copy off of each other,” much like how you use the example of Age of Empires and Rise of Nations. But game designers and people that know about video games, and aren’t casual observers, know that those games have real differences.

BR: Well, I would say those wouldn’t be the examples. I wouldn’t be telling you to look to Call of Duty and Battlefield [as examples of plagiarism]. I would be telling you to look at, like, Doom, and all the other shooters that came out right after it, you know?

Or Command & Conquer and all the other ones that came out in ’97, right after it. It’s that early era when a new genre is being established where you can get a lot more entries, and because you get a lot more entries, a lot more of them are more of the same.

But in the end, what you get when the thing consolidates, when the genre consolidates and the genre’s been kicked around, at that point you can give the genre those unique twists that are going to end up being successful.（Source：gamasutra）