Casual Game Clones – Not Good Money Makers
- Scribbled on June 26th, 2007 by Derrick Schommer
- Filed in Casual Gaming, Puzzle, RPG
How many Bejeweled clones have you seen? There seems to be an endless supply. This goes for many games in the casual game space. It’s hard to clone a game like Gears of War while its much easier to make another Zuma or Hexic style game with a few unique features.
For instance, you may add an RPG element to Bejeweled and come up with a new game title like PuzzleQuest. In that case, you can still create a new feel and emotion to the title and thus, a successful and addictive hit. But, changing the shapes or colors and calling it something new isn’t exactly the same concept.
Jason Kapalka, co-founder of PopCap Games, explains the situation very clearly staying:
The worry is that it encourages a lot of independent developers to churn out these cheap clones instead of original projects. They think they can do a quick knock-off to help pay the bills and then they can work on their big magnum opus but that rarely happens. Once they start down that road of making rip-off games you never make a huge fortune off it and you end up working hand to mouth. They don’t have time to work on larger projects that take a risk.
So true. Once you go to the “dark side” of cloning successful games the best you can do is come in second best and that’s still a long shot. Unique ideas require time, money and a lot of effort. The risk of creating a unique game is much higher because you have to obtain a new audience of addicted casual gamers. However, if you hit onto something great than the money will come in. Otherwise, you’re just a clone in a long line of sameness.
(Thanks, casualgamerchick)
June 26th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Puzzle Quest sure is selling boatloads. So is Luxor 2.
June 26th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
[...] not really, but they sure are moving it in a unique direction that one could be concerned about. Gamers are continually buying rehashes of Bejeweled left right and center across every platform and it’s interesting that these games are selling a ton of “copies” while [...]