2048 is why we can’t have nice things

Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by hapless on Monday March 31, 2014 @10:58AM (#7501826)

A "Nintendo Seal of Quality" would be really great for games. You can't copyright a game design, only the art, so the markets always fill with clones

What scares me about this sort of program is the possibility of a similar barrier on applications. An app market with only one word processor would be terrible, but a market with only one flappy bird is probably better than a market with two.

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by bluedino on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:04AM (#7501871)

>> A "Nintendo Seal of Quality" would be really great for games.

Every (legally sold) Nintendo game had the seal. That didn't stop developers from flooding the market with really, really bad games like X-Men and Heroes of the Lance.

Granted, this didn't stop publishers from releasing really terrible NES games like Action52 (of Cheetahmen fame), but of course those were not licensed by Nintendo and did not have the seal of quality. Most of those games were QBASIC-level bad.

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by batmansbelt on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:00AM (#7501844)

> a market with only one flappy bird is probably better than a market with two.

Care to back up that assertion? It may be better for the original author, but it's hard to see how it would benefit the community.

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by hapless on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:03AM (#7501868)

Games do not compete on features, they compete on concept and gameplay. I don't see how the obvious clones offer anything to market participants.

Does anyone actually want to browse 200 variants on flappy bird, or "threes," or candy crush?

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by micfok on Monday March 31, 2014 @12:38PM (#7502498)

Games don't compete on concept, otherwise there would only be one RTS, or one FPS. Games compete on art, story, level design, and game mechanics, among other non-game specific components like marketing, distribution, and pricing.

Realistically, a concept alone is not sufficient.

I bought Threes, then moved to 2048 because while Threes had components like cute tiles, fun voices, and features like showing the next tile, it was still simply easier/quicker to open a new tab and play from there.

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by thenomad on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:18AM (#7501968)

Does the existence of Diablo mean that we don't want Torchlight?

Does the existence of Modern Warfare 2 mean we don't want Spec Ops: The Line?

Games can be very similar to previous ones but still offer a new experience.

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by batmansbelt on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:49AM (#7502189)

Flappy Bird is the same concept as "helicopter game", and others, but the gameplay is novel to the extent that it's maddeningly difficult. And the pipe design is a blatant Mario ripoff. A rule banning derivative games could have easily caught Flappy Bird in its filter.

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by eli on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:00AM (#7501847)

Didn't developers hate the Nintendo seal?

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Re:2048 is why we can’t have nice things by bigdubs on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:05AM (#7501879)

Mostly because of the hoops you had to jump through to get it (some of the rules seemed arbitrary).

Not sure what a good equivalent for the App Store would be today. This is, honestly, what the "Editor's Choice" sections are for.

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