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A comment on Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The Pokemon Of Social Games.

Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by robotkad on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:18PM (#2338764)
Sorry to rain on the parade, but isn't this simply a clone of Pokemon?

You start by selecting one of three monsters (they even resemble the starting three from the orignal game). The battle screen and fight dynamic looks almost identical.

Am I missing something?

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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by Tiktaalik on Thursday March 17, 2011 @09:49PM (#2338963)
Nintendo has been continuously iterating the Pokemon franchise based around the situation on the ground in Japan, not North America, and as a result there's probably a lot of room for folks to create a Pokemonlike that is more designed for the North American play style. For example, Pokemon Black/White, the most recent version, has a huge amount of innovative local play features, but in NA, commuting to work, you're very unlikely to randomly happen across any folks that will have the game and so these features are for many quite useless.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by 9999 on Thursday March 17, 2011 @10:20PM (#2339045)
The primary market for Pokemon remains children. Children tend to congregate in large numbers at schools and playgrounds. Nintendo's lack of focus on the "commuting to work" crowd is not particularly surprising.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by Fjslfj on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:21PM (#2338772)
I have to agree with this. It's obvious these guys are smart and savvy. Couldn't they have come up with a new, brilliant idea instead of a Pokemon clone? I hope this gets acquired so they can spend their 20s doing something more meaningful.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by jazzychad on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:32PM (#2338800)
New and brilliant ideas are much more difficult to gain traction. Great execution on a "cloned" idea is much easier. How many Groupon clones are there? How many of them are making a lot of money? (Hint, a lot). How much money is spent on Pokemon and related collectible card games? (Hint, also a lot).

Meaningful is in the eye of the beholder.

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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by brackin on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:35PM (#2338811)
The point is Groupon Clones did something Groupon wasn't doing (targeting countries Groupon wasn't targeting) meaning Groupon isn't entitled to be the market leader and the other startups are free to create one for their country.

Pokemon is not making a social web game, this is a big difference to the Groupon situation in my opinion as they are different things. I wouldn't say it's a copy just the story/theme is inspired by Pokemon.

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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by jamespickens on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:30PM (#2338791)
Can you come up with something? No, alright then.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by codexon on Thursday March 17, 2011 @09:00PM (#2338872)
It's obvious these guys are smart and savvy. Couldn't they have come up with a new, brilliant idea instead of a Pokemon clone?

His first and only other "company" was a Gaia online type website.

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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by pgbovine on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:52PM (#2338854)
time to cue the cliched "isn't google just a clone of altavista" or "isn't facebook just a clone of myspace" rebuttals.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by Raphael on Thursday March 17, 2011 @09:56PM (#2338981)
A few things I noticed:

The interface is very confusing. I was only able to navigate it since I was familiar with Pokemon.

It's dumbed down. There is no walking around towns, just battles.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by pclark on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:46PM (#2338842)
Does apologising before criticising someone's creation make you feel less guilty about doing it?
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by zackattack on Thursday March 17, 2011 @09:54PM (#2338975)
Yes that's exactly what's going on. He's attempting to externalize his guilt/shame to create a socially acceptable situation for criticism-- to validate his internal negativity and hate.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by Stormbringer on Friday March 18, 2011 @01:56AM (#2339552)
He could just be telegraphing his intention so as to minimise confusion. Humour not clearly marked as such is often down-voted. As such, this would be a defensive move in ego-space, rather than an attempt for validation. Hence a self-protective mode of thought rather than an energy stealing vampiric dependency mode. Thus I feel that it is a positive, yang based maneuver, rather than a negative ying based energy flow.

You suggest hate as a primary motivator. Hate is based on repressed anger, and anger is the archetypal emotive of rules that have been broken. What rules do you suggest that he feels have been broken? Perhaps some kind of rule that the things that are valuable are those that are unique and not derivative? What would you suggest is the causative agency of such a feedback based rules paradigm?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by zackattack on Friday March 18, 2011 @04:11PM (#2341766)
Your rhetoric is hilarious and I really wish we could duo this routine in bars.

I suggest the "causative agency" is the voice that says "I am supposed to be getting all the attention. Why is he? He didn't even do anything amazing!"

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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by Stormbringer on Saturday March 19, 2011 @12:39AM (#2342981)
Good to see someone gets it :D
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by citricsquid on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:30PM (#2338792)
Arguably their unique take is the Facebook side of it, does Pokemon exist on Facebook like this does?
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by teej on Thursday March 17, 2011 @08:55PM (#2338859)
There's at least two. One is called Monster Galaxy by Gaia Online which launched in December (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=129748227041...). There's another, the name of which I don't remember, that did a ton of Facebook advertising in the last 12 months.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by noahth on Friday March 18, 2011 @03:37AM (#2339707)
Miscrits.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by robotkad on Thursday March 17, 2011 @09:00PM (#2338870)
Does it matter? Hasbro didn't think so when Scrabulous became one of the top games on Facebook.

Nintendo protects the Pokemon brand very aggressively.

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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by noahth on Friday March 18, 2011 @03:39AM (#2339712)
That was a pretty specific issue, with 2 complaints. One was the name, and the other was that the board layout was identical (location of bonus squares, etc). It relaunched very quickly as Lexulous with a different board. Damage done, but it wasn't an instant kill or anything.
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Re:Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The P... by chrischen on Friday March 18, 2011 @01:06AM (#2339439)
By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize other's work and belittle their motivations?
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