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Zynga rips off iPhone GOTY Tiny Tower

C

crazygambit

Member
Castor Krieg said:
Ummmmmm, no, they don't. That's why IP-protection laws and copyright laws are in place in, I don't know, every civilized country on this planet? So that other companies cannot go out and STEAL your stuff?
Click to expand...

Apparently they don't work nearly as well as you think since there's nothing this guys can realisticaly do to stop this.
 
L

LiK

Member
Gameloft rips off console games so they had to come up with touch controls at least. Zynga rips off other iOS games = worse.
 
T

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
LastWindow said:
Wasn't it the Zynga CEO who said something along the lines of, "You're not better than your competitors, just copy what they do?"
Click to expand...

"I don't fucking want innovation, you're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers"
 
Minsc

Minsc

Gold Member
Princess Skittles said:
Same.

My friend is doing the Tiny Tower thing and his phone actually texts him to pay attention to the game.

That's some creepy fucking disturbing shit right there.
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Tiny Tower is a time management / farming game. It's a standard feature in those types of mobile games, you can turn it off if you don't like it.
 
M

Mzo

Member
The only thing Tiny Tower has going for it is that it's super cute. This other game looks like garbage.
 
T

TommyT

Member
Of course this isn't surprising, and in fact it's quite a good business model (although it's harder for a larger company like Zynga). I had someone at my previous job approach me and this was their exact business strategy (if Zynga is over-pricing or charging the same then well... that's different). Find applications on the App Store that are more than $.99 and make them ourselves to be priced at $.99.

As far as money making on something like this goes that has it setup to where it almost encourages this... it's not a bad strategy.
 
M

More Fun To Compute

Member
But all that most of the traditional game industry publishers do is copy other games and then go of on bitter rants about how ideas are worthless and the only thing that has value is implementation and well known IP.
 
D

dallow_bg

nods at old men
bluemax said:
In what universe was Tiny Tower remotely close to iPhone GOTY? It barely even qualifies as a game.
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Per Apple and their marketing so it was featured everywhere in the App Store.

Unlike other GOTY rankings by the media. This one is like winning the lottery.
 
M

Mrbob

Member
Gameloft has built an empire off of copying popular games. If they can get away with it time and time again, why even worry about this?
 
K

Ken Masters

Banned
Tiny Towers was a complete bore to me, I have not idea how the hell it iOS GOTY, it wouldn't have even been in my top 20


with that sad, once you become popular you have to expect rip offs
 
P

Princess Skittles

Prince's's 'Skittle's
Mrbob said:
Gameloft has built an empire off of copying popular games. If they can get away with it time and time again, why even worry about this?
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Gameloft does get a lot of flak but they also get a lot of passes as well (with the reasoning "WELL MICROSOFT WON'T PUT HALO ON IPHONE SO..").

I would also suspect some of it has to do with Zynga being a giant and evil corporation and Nimblebit being glorious and indie.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Forbes online picked up the story.


Everything Wrong with Zynga in One Image

I’ve spent thousands of words attempting to describe why Zynga is a horrible gaming company, and subsequently, a horrible investment with their recent IPO, but it seems the old adage is true, and a picture is worth more than anything I could ever say.

The image below comes from Ian Marsh of Nimblebit, a small, three person company who developed a mobile game called Tiny Tower. Despite rudimentary graphics, the game was fantastic and went on to become Apple‘s iPhone Game of the Year. A huge honor for a tiny company.

Enter Zynga, corporate raider of creativity and devourer of dreams. They’ve announced that they’re releasing a game called “Dream Heights,” which looks and plays EXACTLY like Tiny Tower, but with upgraded graphics that a billion dollar IPO can buy.

Marsh took to Twitter and posted this image @Zynga, which expressed *sincere* congratulations to them for the launch of their new game, complete with side by side screenshots that showcase just how much of a rip-off Dream Heights really is. Zynga has done this with almost every popular title they’ve produced, including their flagship hit Farmville. This does however, mark the first time a rival company has called them out in such a public and pointed way.

I’ve said it before, and it’s a mantra that can be proven with ease by looking below – Zynga is a creatively, and I would argue morally, bankrupt company, and the sooner investors realize this, the faster they can fade from prominence.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/25/everything-wrong-with-zynga-in-one-image/

Ouch
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
From Ian Marsh's twitter:
"If you peek inside the app binary the project is named Towerville and inhabitants are named zitizens."

Tiny Tower citizens are called Bitizens, just for anyone who is curious.
 
B

bluemax

Banned
dallow_bg said:
Per Apple and their marketing so it was featured everywhere in the App Store.

Unlike other GOTY rankings by the media. This one is like winning the lottery.
Click to expand...

Ah okay. That makes sense then.

If anything these guys should be flattered. Their money/time sink was recognized for its insidious brilliance by the biggest makers of money/time sinks and summarily ripped off.
 
I

Iadien

Guarantee I'm going to screw up this post? Yeah.
This is no different than what Zynga has been doing with every single one of their games.
 
I

IndieJones

Member
I posted this in the community thread by accident, sorry for the repost:

Has anyone installed Tiny Tower on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1? If I do a search of the Android Market from the tablet itself, Tiny Tower doesn't show up at all.

If I do a search on a PC that the tablet is synced with, it DOES show up in the market place but it tells me it's incompatible with my device, so I can't download it.

Any idea what this could be? Could it possible have to do with the specific carrier I'm on, because it shows up in the compatibility list as a Rogers device.
 
F

Fox_Mulder

Rockefellers. Skull and Bones. Microsoft. Al Qaeda. A Cabal of Bankers. The melting point of steel. What do these things have in common? Wake up sheeple, the landfill wasn't even REAL!
I wanted to buy drop 7. **** Zynga! I'll buy another Nimblebit game.
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
Akuun said:
Why is anyone surprised? Cashing in with cheap ripoffs is Zynga's M.O.
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No one is surprised (at least I hope so), but we can still point at this and try to make more people aware of what kind of company Zynga is. Hopefully, people avoid anything to do with them.

I do not support Chinese knockoffs, I do not support Zynga, I do not support Gameloft. It's a matter of principle.
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Wario64 said:
So guy makes a rebuttal who has no involvement with either company/game just to get his name out there? Okay.
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He sounds like a slightly disgruntled flash developer who wants to highlight the 'copying' situation between flash and appstore games.
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
Wario64 said:
So guy makes a rebuttal who has no involvement with either company/game just to get his name out there? Okay.

I'm loving people saying that Tiny Tower is similar to Sim Tower though. Been seeing that a lot on Twitter this morning...pretty easy to tell who hasn't played these games
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but they have superficial visual simularities! never mind that Tiny Tower has more in common with the Sims, gameplay wise. THEY BOTH HAVE LIKE, 2D CROSS SECTION BUILDING THINGAMIES.
 
C

Combine

Banned
The reason that so many game developers have gone to work at Zynga is because, for all the creatively bankrupt ideas they have, they are great in one thing. That despite how much they work their employees, they pay them every penny for their time (along with perks like free food and such) and don't try to screw them over on overtime. Also, Zynga has been the only company hiring constantly while the traditional game companies have been firing or closing down shops (hello THQ). That's why they have thousands of employees now.

I doubt a significant percentage of their workforce works for them because of the games they create though.
 
J

JWong

Banned
gofreak said:
Posted? Apparently, we have to go deeper:

http://i.imgur.com/ajaYt.jpg
Click to expand...

While it's true that current game design is pretty much an evolution (copy) of older design, Zynga has blatantly copied the UI and a lot of the game concepts (elevator gameplay, 3 workers per floor).

There's nothing wrong with what Nimblebit did, and there's nothing wrong with this either. A lot of casual smartphone games came from Flash games.
 
M

More Fun To Compute

Member
So it's ok to copy flash games without credit because you are tarting them up with prettier graphics and a touch interface but not ok to copy other handheld games? Flash developers are just disgruntled while ios developers are victims of a strange and unusual new wave of game design theft?
 
Z

Zero-Crescent

Member
Wario64 said:
So guy makes a rebuttal who has no involvement with either company/game just to get his name out there? Okay.

I'm loving people saying that Tiny Tower is similar to Sim Tower though. Been seeing that a lot on Twitter this morning...pretty easy to tell who hasn't played these games
Click to expand...

I played a bit of that Corporation Inc., and it's obvious at the outset that Corporation Inc. much closer to SimTower, where you're managing the building more than the people. There's a day/night cycle, the ability to build rooms in any location, and Specialized jobs basically replace the maid's quarters and service rooms from SimTower. Ergo, since Tiny Tower has very little in common with SimTower, it's a pretty big stretch for them to say that it cribbed from Corporation Inc.

As you said, it's hilarious seeing people who have clearly never played Tiny Tower before try to say that it's similar to SimTower. I'm a huge SimTower fan, I started playing Tiny Tower recently, and I can already safely say that Tiny Tower and SimTower are about as different as Railworks and Railroad Tycoon.
 
W

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
Zynga responds back....and Nimbebit does too. ohh popcorn.gif

http://toucharcade.com/2012/01/31/more-tinytower-drama/

Zynga:

What's more interesting than Glu mashing the green button on their copy machines is that Zynga actually has responded to the recent controversy. VentureBeat not only scored a interview with Mark Pincus, Zynga's chief executive of social games, they also managed to snag a copy of a confidential memo he sent around. The takeaway from the interview is this:

In essence, Pincus is not saying that it’s OK to copy someone else’s game. Rather, he is saying that a company can make a contribution to the canon of gaming if it takes an existing game and improves it. That company can reimagine the game and remove all the barriers that stand between the game reaching a billion people.
…

“You should be careful not to throw stones when you live in glass towers,” Pincus said. “When you pull the lens back, you saw that their tower game looked similar to five other tower games going all the way back to SimTower in the early 1990s.”
Click to expand...


Nimblebit:

It is a smart idea for Mark Pincus and Zynga to try and lump all games with the name Tower together as an actual genre whose games borrow from each other. Unfortunately sharing a name or setting does not a genre make. The games Pincus mentions couldn't be more different. Sim Tower is a true "sim" with macroscopic management and fine tuning of a buildings facilities. Tower Bloxx is a timing based high score game.

If you take a quick look before "pulling the lens back" as Pincus suggests, you'll find an innumerable number of details in the game that were painstakingly crafted to be identical to Tiny Tower. These are core gameplay mechanics and rules, not similar settings or themes that games in the same genre might share.

Why are there 5 different business types like Tiny Tower? Why do 5 people fit in an apartment instead of 4 or 6? Why are there VIP elevator riders that perform the same functions as Tiny Tower? Why do businesses employ exactly 3 workers and produce exactly 3 products that are stocked in exactly the same way as Tiny Tower. Even the tutorials at the beginning of the game follow the exact same steps.

All of these things are poorly hidden underneath an uninspired veneer which has become Zynga's trademark.
Click to expand...


lol Zynga.
 
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