作者：Zoya Street

问题：

EA与Zynga最近在美国陷入游戏侵权之争，EA指责Zynga“持续抄袭”的传统，而Zynga则回应称EA的举措“有违市场竞争”原则。从广泛层面来看，我们可能都会认同游戏市场中的模仿现象已经上升到了一个新高度，这一现象在社交和手机游戏等新兴领域中尤为盛行。这是积极还是消极现象？我们该如何划清借鉴灵感与剽窃创意的界线？

copycat(from speckyberrystation.blogspot.com)

回答：

Andrew Smith（Spilt Milk Studios主管）

我对模仿，从他人作品汲取灵感的行为并没有什么异议，这是一种能够让我们游戏开发者免于白费力气、重复劳作的有益做法。

我认为这两者的界线在于，一家公司模仿他人作品时是否明显暴露出一种意图，即让用户觉得他们游戏与另一款游戏相同或者相关。我们很难准确区分这一界线，但我认为多数敏感而理性的人都会知道“模仿”手段纯粹是为了从原有IP的商业成功中分得一杯羹，或者将该类游戏题材推向新方向或进行新变体。

Tadhg Kelly（What Games Are顾问）

这个问题很棘手。例如，有许多独立开发者认为《愤怒的小鸟》抄袭了《Crush the Castle》，但我坚持认为前者更为出色地落实了该游戏的基本理念。另外，它的外观也更加出众，许多第一人称射击游戏或即时战略游戏也存在这种现象。尽管我一直鼓励开发者尝试制作新游戏，但这种试验的可行空间总是比我们想象的还要小。行业甚少出现全新的游戏机制，所以大量游戏总会在定制基础上趋同于现存游戏。游戏一般以ludemes（游戏邦注：这是David Parlett所发明的词汇，意为被许多游戏普遍采用的规则，例如经验值和关卡等）为基础，但会在其中一个或一些元素上进行某些创新。总而言之，我认为这个界线就在于，如果某个东西看起来像鸭子，叫起来也像鸭子，那么它就是鸭子。如果它是一个在某游戏基础上换了新外观的版本，那么它就很廉价了，但这也并不算剽窃。如果它看起来像另一款游戏，但玩法并不相同，那它也不算剽窃。但如果你都不愿意在机制或美术设计上进行创新，那当初为何要进入游戏行业？

Ella Romanos（Remode Studios创始人）

我并不认为手机/社交游戏的剽窃之风甚于其他领域，在我看来，AAA游戏的模仿现象更为盛行，并且比其他多数领域更不具有创新性（尤其是第一人称射击游戏）。

我认为AAA游戏的不同之处在于，其游戏机制并不是主要卖点，视觉效果和营销方式才是关键，这也是为何这一领域的产品具有多种变体的原因。

而在手机/社交游戏领域，这些游戏是靠机制取胜，所以人们更容易察觉出哪些属于模仿行为，因为这种现象更显而易见并且也更受人重视。

游戏机制的大量复制模仿仍将成为长期现象。这里的道德争议在于开发者的意图，他们是否有意模仿另一款游戏，有意挖走后者的用户。但我无法从法律角度判断如何证实这一点，所以虽然多数开发者可能都有一种道德感或自豪感，但这并不能阻止类似Zynga的这种行为。除非游戏同另一个产品完全一样，否则我们就不能轻易宣判它的模仿行为是非法的，因为这是一条很模糊的界线，可能会轻易被人用来对付那些无辜的公司，打击创新和创造力，导致人们不敢轻易推出新产品。

Mark Sorrel（Hide & Seek开发者）

我深为赞同Ella的观点。我认为立法打击那些在旧机制基础上进行发明性、有趣创新的行为所带来的危害，远甚于模仿现象对游戏运营的威胁。在某些情况下，过于明显的剽窃现象确实应当禁止，例如《Teti Town》（但在有些人看来，这还算是一种尚可接受的现象），以及在应用商店中充斥的大量《Temple Run》山寨游戏。

我只希望能够制作自己想做的游戏，而非获得游戏免遭山寨命运的安全感。

而从Ustwo的“J.S. Joust”游戏克隆风波（游戏邦注：手机游戏开发商Ustwo曾被指责其作品《Papa Quash》与PlayStation Move游戏《J.S. Joust》功能相似，但Ustwo回应称这是公司受人之托而开发的游戏，Ustwo无需对此负责，并从美国App Store撤下该游戏）可以看出，开发社区对此可以采用行业自律做法。

目前我唯一不能认同的是Tadhg所说的一个观点，即我们已经创造出了多数游戏类型。对我来说，我们还有多种游戏类型有待挖掘，新游戏类型、新控制机制、新玩法的涌现就是一个明证。如果我不确定其中可行性，我不会加入一个标榜“发明新玩法”的公司。

Martin Darby（Remode Studios创始人）

我不认为有一个全面的法律/准则能够划清借鉴灵感与抄袭之间的界线，因为这要取决于开发者的不同意图。这也是我们要慎用立法手段的原因。例如16位版本的《Sonic 2》从技术上讲是一个克隆版本，但它是游戏粉丝的产物，这种模仿动机真的损害了世嘉吗？

由此可得一个结论，钱才是关键因素。如果你模仿的目的就是盈利，那么这种行为就很可疑了。

这一切让我觉得，我们应该转变法律观念。例如在音乐领域，一名艺术家采用其他艺术家的歌曲那是再普遍不过的事情了。而从中盈利也并非他们无法容忍的事情：没有人会为此对簿公堂，因为这一领域已经默认有些东西是可以被他人所“克隆”，并且也有一套处理这种事情的流程。目前游戏行业中的IP法律似乎要求开发者与其他IP划清界限，否则就得支付昂贵的授权费用。

有没有一个折衷的办法，还是说我们太小题大作了？

Oscar Clark（木瓜移动倡导者）

我认为《Arkanoid》与《BrickBreaker》撇清剽窃风波的关系之后，行业中的模仿之争就应该告一段落了。但不要误解我的意思，我认为懒惰而简单地复制他人游戏是一种可怕而愚蠢的行为……但多数情况下这更是一种缺乏创意的表现。

对我来说，这不是模仿，而是偷窃！偷窃意味着制作你认为是自己的东西。要在基本设计理念上添加一些你自己的想法。我并不清楚具体是什么情况，但如果你认为《FarmVille》是《Harvest Moon》的克隆版本，那么你就忽视了它创造了通过Facebook添加异步玩法的这种新做法。

这些诉讼风波让我觉得，它们很可能是大公司试图打击竞争者，以及压制他人创意的手段，此举可能将创新行为彻底驱逐出市场。

我的言论可能有点愤世嫉俗了。

Charles Chapman（First Touch Games主管）

我的观点是，执行才是关键。

Martin所举的音乐行业做法是一个很好的观点，但套用一个音乐内容却比模仿一款游戏要容易得多，并且原创作者也会得到相应的好处。我们都非常清楚调整、调试、平衡以及优化游戏开发需要多少精力和资源。当然也有些游戏类型所需的调整成较少，总体上如果真有人想模仿，并在此基本上推出好游戏，他们也还是需要一批杰出的人才来完成任务。正如Oscar所言，多数“克隆”游戏都很廉价——做出好游戏不只是添加一些列表中的功能。

我们一直都有游戏题材，并且也将有许多由大量发行商\开发商在优化的基础上推出的新题材。我们目前所处的时代是，市场上有许多游戏并不属于原有题材（例如《Tiny Tower》）的产品，但它们形成气候时有可能自成体系或者衍生出大量良莠不齐仿制品。

在我看来，阻止开发者汲取他人的基本理念并在此基础进行创新，无异于扼制创新和发展。我们无疑需要划清一条界线，但这必须是针对公然剽窃的行为。毕竟没有开发者愿意被打上模仿他人作品的标签，但与此同时，我们也不能阻止游戏题材的自然进化和优化，无论这些题材目前的影响力有多小。

Stuart Dredge（Guardian记者）

《屋顶狂奔》开发者将其游戏设置为开源项目时，有人换了个名称，原封不动地向App Store上传了该游戏代码，这种情况让我觉得很有趣——有人开放了自己的项目，并表示“来，用我的代码，用我的作品”，然后他人的第一反应居然就只是“我会使用这些代码的，谢谢”。

App Store已经充斥上千甚至上万款低劣的克隆应用，其中多数产品最终陷入沉寂。而能够引起大众争议的产品一般是以下几种情况：1）一家大公司克隆了一家小公司的游戏（例如Zynga与NimbleBit之间的事情）；2）有人以低劣手段克隆了一款著名的主机游戏，并且该游戏攀升至应用榜单前列位置；3）有人因为讨厌某公司而恶意诽谤对方剽窃游戏。

Harry Holmwood（Heldhand顾问）

听起来大家都有些普遍共识。

我认为虽然模仿游戏对我们来说是错误做法，但通过立法程序来禁止这种行为也并不妥当。现在已经有不少声音批评专利体系压制了创新现象，如果再施加更多控制只会事与愿违。

我们确实难以划定这个界线，但你遇到具体情况的时候就会知道这个界线在哪。但即便是这个时候，正如Will所言如果你没有复制代码或资产，那就不算什么过错，至于这是否属于可接受的行为则取决于市场和开发者的良知。如果开发者在原作基础上改进，至少是针对其目标市场进行了改良，那么这个市场自然会决定这种改良到底算不算是出现了一种新游戏。如果用户认为这只是相同的游戏，那么开发者的做法就等于越界了，你实际上就是在抄袭他人的游戏。

当然，Zynga的确模仿了他人游戏，但《Dream Heights》也确实在《Tiny Tower》基础上进行改良，尤其是在瞄准目标用户这一点上——它看起来更为大众化，更易上手，运行也很出色。但我可能也没有更喜欢这款游戏，我并非Zynga用户。另外，曾被Zynga“模仿”的许多开发商，可能也曾试图复制Zynga的数据分析、IAP定价/计时等其他盈利技巧，并据此创新和改进。

Ian Marsh（Nimblebit开发者）

《Dream Heights》根本谈不上对《Tiny Tower》进行了什么改良。他们复制了每个游戏机制，并将其运用于自己的游戏。他们不诚实且令人失望的行为让我觉得，再多法律保护也难以阻止克隆现象。最重要的是，作为一家小型且更具想象力的工作室，我们总是能够比Zynga这类规模的大公司更有创新性。如果他们想继续复制我们的游戏，那就随它去吧，但你最终会知道《Dream Heights》的成就并不如《Tiny Tower》，尽管他们有大量营销预算和精密的数据分析技术。（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）

What’s the difference between inspiration and plagiarism? – The Gamesbriefers

Question:

Electronic Arts and Zynga are locked in a court battle in the USA, with EA accusing Zynga of “persistent plagiarism” while Zynga counters that EA’s actions are “anticompetitive”. In the broader picture, we can probably all agree that there’s a high degree of copying – fair or otherwise – in the games market, and it may be especially prevalent in new areas like social and mobile games, which have yet to be fully explored. Is this a positive or a negative? Where should we draw the line between inspiration and plagiarism, if a line can indeed be drawn?

Answers:

Andrew Smith Director at Spilt Milk Studios

I genuinely have no problem with copying, being inspired by or even riffing and homage. This is all healthy, fun and helps prevent the problem whereby we games developers tend to reinvent the wheel far too often.

Where I’d draw the line is where a company has made a clone of something else, with the explicit intent to make consumers of the inspirational product think that theirs is the same or related in some way. It’s a tough line to draw accurately, but I think most sensible and level headed people can tell when the reason for the ‘cloning’ is purely to dupe fans of an existing IP commercially, or to riff on a basic idea out of passion for it and a desire to push the genre in a new direction or with a new twist.

Tadhg Kelly Consultant at What Games Are

It can be tricky to judge exactly. There are many indie developers who are convinced that Angry Birds is a rip-off of Crush the Castle, for example, but I’ve always maintained that it’s a better execution on the same general idea. Plus it has a vastly better look. You could say the same about many first person shooters, or real time strategy games.

While I’d always encourage anyone who makes games to experiment, the available space for experimentation is often smaller than we think. The invention of a brand new dynamic is very rare (increasingly so) and so the vast majority of games tend to be customisations of pre-existing ones. Games are also often built on ludemes (a term coined by David Parlett meaning rules commonly adopted from one game to another, such as experience points and levels), but do something new with one or more of them.
So all in all I think the line for me is if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. If it’s a re-visualised version of the same basic game it might be poor, but it’s not plagiarism. If it looks like another game (within reason) but plays differently, it’s not plagiarism either. But if you really can’t be bothered to innovate either mechanically or aesthetically, why are you in the games business in the first place?

Ella Romanos Founder at Remode Studios

I don’t think it’s more prevalent in mobile/social than in other areas – in my mind, triple-A games are more guilty of copying and being less innovative than most other areas, particularly with FPS’s.

I guess the difference in triple A is that the mechanic is not really what’s selling it, it’s the visuals and marketing story around it, and thats where (sometimes, arguably) you get more variation between the products.

Whereas in mobile/social space the games are sold on the mechanics themselves, so people are more sensitive about copying because it’s more noticeable or is considered more important.

There is always going to be a lot of replication in mechanics between games, it’s impossible to have it any other way. The moral argument is about the intent of the creator, whether they meant to copy rather than be inspired, and whether they set out to steal a user base. Legally though I can’t see how that can be proved, so whilst most developers probably have a sense of a)morals and b) pride, it won’t stop the Zynga’s of this world. Unless it is identical to another game, I think we’re treading down a more dangerous path by trying to legislate against copying like this, because it is such an unclear line, and that could be used against companies who are innocent too easily, stifling innovation and creativity by people being too scared to release things.

Mark Sorrell Developer at Hide & Seek

I’d largely echo Ella’s views. I think the threat to creativity that legislating away genuinely inventive and interesting twists on old mechanics represents is far greater than the commercial threat of cloning. In some cases it’s obvious and should be stopped – Yeti Town for example – in others lazy and uninspiring but acceptable – see the flooding of the app store with Temple Run type games – and in some cynical and unethical but dangerous to try and legislate against – see Zynga et al.

I’d rather be free to make the game I want to make than safe from having a game I’d made cloned.

And a quick look at the reaction to UsTwo’s J.S. Joust clone is enough to show that, in some cases, the community can police itself.

The only thing said so far I’d actually disagree with is Tadhg’s assertion that we’ve invented most game types already. Probably in part a definitional issue, but to me we’re at the other end of the road. I’d say we have more game types to discover than have been discovered. The burst of new game types that every new control mechanism or new context for play brings about is surely proof of that. I wouldn’t have joined a company whose tag line is ‘Inventing New Kinds of Play’ if I didn’t believe it was possible!

Martin Darby Founder at Remode Studios

Quite simply I don’t think we can have one over riding rule/law to divide replication from inspiration because it is driven by intent which can vary. This is why we must be careful not to impose law that could be abused. Take for example the on-going HD fan remake of the 16-bit version of Sonic 2: technically this is about as cloned as one can get, however is the motivation really to undermine Sega?

This leads me to the conclusion that money has to be a key factor. If you are trying to profit from it then that is immediately dubious.

All this does make me think if we need to change our thinking in regards to the legals. For example in the music industry it is completely normal for one artist to cover another artists song. Not the most creative thing to do but certainly no elephant in the room. Its often seen as homage and fine to profit from it: no one goes to war because it acknowledges that something can be ‘cloned’ by someone else and there is a process to deal with it. Currently IP law in games seems to be that you either stay well clear of others IP or you buy an expensive license that heavily controls how you must use the brand.

Is there a middle ground or are we too far gone?

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Papaya

I thought the argument of what was copying or not was over when Arkanoid was cleared of plagiarism of BrickBreaker because it used rounded corners for the bricks. Don’t get me wrong; I think lazy, simple copies of other people’s games are awful and stupid… but mostly because it shows no creativity. Thankfully most of these are ignored by users as the waste of pixels they are.

For my mind you don’t want to copy… you want to steal! Stealing means making what you have taken your own.  Adding something of your own vision of what a game could be to the basic design concept you started with. I don’t know enough about the specifics of this case but to illustrate my point, if you consider FarmVille to be a clone of Harvest Moon you would be missing the whole genre potential created by adding asynchronous play through Facebook.

These court cases strike me as the last recourse of large companies who don’t know how to compete anymore and who simply want to restrict the creativity of others and scare the innovation out of the market.

But perhaps I’m just a cynic.

Charles Chapman Director at First Touch Games

My view is that beyond basic infringement, execution is everything.

Martin makes a good point about music, but execution to a decent level in covering a music track is obviously a damn sight easier than copying a game, and the original writer benefits accordingly. We’re all probably only too aware how much tuning, tweaking, balancing and polishing games development takes. There are of course genres that require less tuning than others but generally if someone wants to clone, and improve on, a good game, then generally they’re going to need a good deal of talent to do so. As Oscar points out, most ‘clones’ are very poor – it takes more than ticking the features off a list to make a good game.

We’ve always had genres and always will, and pretty much every genre is driven forward by multiple developers & publishers each trying to improve on the current standard. We’re in an era now where there are more visible games which don’t fit nicely into existing genres (e.g. Tiny Tower), but either they’re big enough that they’ll become their own genre or if not they may spawn a handful of imitators good and bad.

In my view, taking away the ability for developers to take each other’s basic concepts and improve on them would actually stifle creativity and advancement more than it helps it. There obviously does need to be a line though, but as for where we draw it, it has to be blatant plagiarism. Ultimately no developer worth their salt will want to be associated with copying someone else ideas, but at the same time, let’s not block the natural evolution and improvement of genres, however small those genres may be today.

Stuart Dredge Journalist at the Guardian

I thought it was interesting (if dispiriting) when the developers of Canabalt open-sourced it, and someone went right ahead and uploaded the code unchanged to the App Store under a different name. The fact that someone was being very open and saying ‘here, use my code, build on my work’ and someone’s first reaction was just ‘I’ll use the code, cheers’

There are thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of shitty clones on the App Store, and the vast majority sink without trace or controversy. The key drivers for public hoo-haas seem to be 1.) when a big company clones a small company (Zynga v NimbleBit etc) and 2.) when someone clones a famous console game in a shitty way and it shoots to the top of the charts.

Oh, and 3.) when people don’t like ustwo because they saw Mills at a conference or on Twitter once and thought he was arrogant. That still stood out as a witch-hunt to me, where people dived in with abuse before either they or the cloned developer had given a response.

It’s an emotive issue, admittedly, but one with lots of grey areas. I remember when some people muttered about Harbor Master being just ‘Flight Control with boats’ yet they pushed on from there to make Temple Run, which itself led to Activision reviving Pitfall as basically ‘Temple Run with, er, pits’

Harry Holmwood Consultant at Heldhand

Sounds like there’s broad agreement here.

I think, despite the fact that copying a game feels wrong to us, the downsides of trying to legislate against it are just too big to justify.  With so much justified criticism of the way the patent system stifles the innovation it was designed to protect, any more control would be counterproductive.

In terms of where the line is, it’s hard to pin down but you know it when you see it.  But even then, as Will said if you’re not copying code or assets it should be fine and the decision on whether it’s acceptable or not should be down to the market/developer conscience.  If the developer improves somehow on the original, at least for the market segment its targeting, then the market will determine whether that improvement justifies the new game’s existence. If customers think it is the same game, then the line is crossed and you’re basically passing your product off as someone else’s.

Sure, Zynga have blatantly copied games – but Dream Heights does improve on Tiny Tower, particularly for their audience – it’s more mainstream to look at, easier to follow what you’re supposed to do and works extremely well.  Do I prefer it?  Probably not, but I’m not Zynga’s customer.  And, for every developer whose design Zynga has ‘reinterpreted’, there are probably hundreds that have tried to copy Zynga’s analytics, IAP pricing/timing and other monetization techniques where they really did innovate themselves.

Ian Marsh Developer at Nimblebit

Dream Heights did very very little if anything to “improve” upon our game Tiny Tower. They copied every game mechanic wholesale and applied their generic and un-inspired varnish to the game. As dishonest and disappointing I think their actions were I don’t think there should be any additional protections put into place to prevent cloning. The fact of the matter is that as a smaller and more imaginative studio we will always be able to out-innovate companies the size of Zynga. If they want to play copycat to ride our tiny coattails so be it, but you’ll notice Dream Heights didn’t enjoy near the success Tiny Tower did, even with their enormous marketing muscle and careful analytics.（source:gamesbrief）