It's crazy how big Angry Birds is sometimes.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

http://www.ingame.msnbc.msn.com/technology/ingame/angry-birds-land-open-business-746793



So apparntly Finland now has an entire theme park dedicated to Angry Birds.


Angry Birds Land, the theme park that is entirely based upon Rovio's hit mobile game has officially opened its doors, according to Eurogamer.

ABL is part of Finland's Särkänniemi Adventure Park. The park's designers have managed to create 12 different rides in total, plus an adventure course, all built around "Angry Birds."

You also have food outlets, restrooms, and pretty much everything else you'd find in any amusement park. Which, again, is based entirely upon the hottest thing going on smartphones.


I'll say it again, it's crazy how big this game has gotten over the years since it's release on the Andriod(Google Play)/iTunes App Stores.

[Bells]

easy to play, hard to master. Cute graphics, coherent visuals, good sound, fitting music.

Seems like a simple formula, but i can hardly recall a single game that has meet all these criteria and have not become a legendary success story... that's how often this does not happen.

[POS Industries]

The fact that this game has become the cultural sensation it has is a testament to the degradation of modern society.

All they did was steal somebody else's flash game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_the_Castle), slap some cartoon birds and pigs on it, and then sell it for a gorillion dollars. If someone has actually paid money for anything related to Angry Birds, they need to stop where they are and take a long, hard look at the series of mistakes they've made to reach that point in their life.

[Bells]

really?

If that's the main gripe of your point, then i'm sorry i just don't see it... yeah the games are similar, but not in the "100% copy paste" style, they do have different mechanics, even if only slightly.

And i honestly thought the Castle version a bit more complicated to handle...

Afterall, in gaming, is not really who does it first... but who does it better, or at least... who market it better to sell it first... if the argument is just from the copy and monetization of another game, you could also argue that a LOT of games are slightly changed copies of one another...

But business sense also comes into play, and the Angry Birds guys just thought they could have a better bsiness model on Mobiles instead of just Newgrounds.com ...

[POS Industries]

Well, let's say some indie artist writes a song and they have it up on their website. It's found by an executive at Interscope Records who takes the song and has the Black Eyed Peas record a poppier version of it and then puts that on iTunes for 99 cents, giving no credit to the original artist. Then it becomes a big hit and they make a ton of cash.

Is that also perfectly acceptable? And, if you don't believe so, how exactly is it different from what Rovio did when they made Angry Birds?

[rpgdemon]

Angry Birds is pretty much the terribleness. It's not even well built, and the levels are poorly designed.

Yet I still will use it to kill ten minutes, sometimes. And rant about how terrible it is when I do. It's like, a lesson in what NOT to do.

[Bells]

that's... not really the same thing.

I mean, i know what you are going at it here, but "Fling Things at Structures with Physics" is not a lock down concept. Sure, both games -are- similar... but they have different inner mechanics at work here that do make them different... then it's just a case of who did it better to monetize their idea.

as a matter of fact... the Castle guys have their game on Android or Ios? Did they TRIED to monetize their idea in the same grounds as Rovio? Cause i've see clones of Angry Birds... it's the exact same game with just different art assets... that's cloning. Having similar games with slightly different mechanics... well, might not be the Brightest of minds at work... but stealing it ain't.

From what you're telling me i really, honestly, don't see any shoddy tactics or actions from Rovio, unless there is something else i don't know about...

Can i mention Bloom Box?

TpMkCF3AdMY

Cause that's pretty much Angry Birds in 3D, and it came out first...

[POS Industries]

I mean, i know what you are going at it here, but "Fling Things at Structures with Physics" is not a lock down concept. Sure, both games -are- similar... but they have different inner mechanics at work here that do make them different... then it's just a case of who did it better to monetize their idea.

as a matter of fact... the Castle guys have their game on Android or Ios? Did they TRIED to monetize their idea in the same grounds as Rovio? Cause i've see clones of Angry Birds... it's the exact same game with just different art assets... that's cloning. Having similar games with slightly different mechanics... well, might not be the Brightest of minds at work... but stealing it ain't.
1s0hEi8zhmg

[Doc ock rokc]

The fact that this game has become the cultural sensation it has is a testament to the degradation of modern society.

All they did was steal somebody else's flash game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_the_Castle), slap some cartoon birds and pigs on it, and then sell it for a gorillion dollars. If someone has actually paid money for anything related to Angry Birds, they need to stop where they are and take a long, hard look at the series of mistakes they've made to reach that point in their life.

while crush the castle didn't come first there was a ton of other games CtC copyed off of. (COUGH*Castle clout*COUGH) When you say that its like saying Canabalt ripped off Robot unicorn attack (despite the fact that Canabalt came first). they are in the same genres.

Angry birds took a similar idea and added onto it various things. First off does CTC have the something like Triangle bird? nope. Does CTC have a ability to fire from a slingshot. Nope. what about the boomerang balls CTC had...wait They never had those ether.

[POS Industries]

while crush the castle didn't come first there was a ton of other games CtC copyed off of. (COUGH*Castle clout*COUGH)
The difference is that CtC gives credit to Castle Clout on the title screen, and the makers of Castle Clout gave their permission to the devs of CtC to borrow from them. Rovio did not do that. At all.

When you say that its like saying Canabalt ripped off Robot unicorn attack (despite the fact that Canabalt came first). they are in the same genres.
Actually, it's like saying Robot Unicorn Attack ripped off Canabalt, which it did. The difference is that RUA was free.

Angry birds took a similar idea and added onto it various things. First off does CTC have the something like Triangle bird? nope. Does CTC have a ability to fire from a slingshot. Nope. what about the boomerang balls CTC had...wait They never had those ether.
Those aren't major differences, though. They're surface changes on top of identical base gameplay mechanics. It's like saying if I took Tetris, changed the graphics to be logs added a couple differently shaped blocks into the mix and called it "Perturbed Lumberjacks," that it's no longer a ripoff of Tetris.

[akaSM]

1s0hEi8zhmg

Oh god, what's wrong with his head D:

At least it's not a theme park based on Farmville where everyone is put on a Skinner's box nags their friends for stupid reasons has fun with farms.

[Marc v4.0]

If the new tetris block shapes did different things other than just stack up, like remove certain colored blocks they touch or give you a temp slowdown or remove a chunk of the block stack like an explosion, and instead of falling idly down from the sky you actually flung them at your play area with a slingshot to try and fit them in the right spot....no, that wouldn't be a rip off. It would actually have enough changes to the core mechanics of HOW the game works to stand alone.

All in all, there is nothing new under the sun. If video games had to all give props to everything that inspired them, or portions of them, the intro-loading slides would be the game.

And you'd still have to have a slide reel to credit all the other games that inspired your slide reel.

[Amake]

The simplest games are the most addictive. Corollary: The simplest games are the hardest to spin variations from which are more than mere repetitions.

[POS Industries]

If the new tetris block shapes did different things other than just stack up, like remove certain colored blocks they touch or give you a temp slowdown or remove a chunk of the block stack like an explosion, and instead of falling idly down from the sky you actually flung them at your play area with a slingshot to try and fit them in the right spot....no, that wouldn't be a rip off. It would actually have enough changes to the core mechanics of HOW the game works to stand alone.
Which sounds like more differences than there are between the core mechanics of Angry Birds and CtC.

[Osterbaum]

OOurrhvnB9U

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Huh? Angry Birds? Never heard of it. Seriously, why's this suddenly a thing?

[Inbred Chocobo]

Hey POS, I made a Meme for you.

Here you go (http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3p30a3/)

[Osterbaum]

While I somewhat disagree with POS, I don't think his arguments are born out of a hipster-like origin.

[POS Industries]

While I somewhat disagree with POS, I don't think his arguments are born out of a hipster-like origin.
No no, we apparently live in an age where words no longer have meaning (http://qkme.me/3p34zk), so it's perfectly acceptable to dismiss anyone with a dissenting opinion as a hipster with no regard to the accuracy of such a statement.

After all, I was defending myself against the dumbest counterarguments I've heard all week before it was cool.

[Lumenskir]

easy to play, hard to master. Cute graphics, coherent visuals, good sound, fitting music.

Seems like a simple formula, but i can hardly recall a single game that has meet all these criteria and have not become a legendary success story... that's how often this does not happen.
Well, I mean, Ziggurat could stand to be played more.
The fact that this game has become the cultural sensation it has is a testament to the degradation of modern society.
Since I have an Android I didn't have to pay for the game, but I don't really see how this one company making a more accessible game in this genre is such a nerd cause celebre.

How many different versions of the "Pick an angle and power, let the guy fly right as long as possible" games are there? Or tower defense games? Do we expect every Sonic game to begin with a lengthy thank you to Mario?

Rovio found a way to package this genre for people on the go and made money. Unless their level design is the same and they used the exact same projectiles and controls with a different gloss of paint, I fail to see where the outrage is supposed to spring from.

[rpgdemon]

I just hate it because it's terribly designed. Horrible levels, unfun gameplay, kind of buggy engine.

[Lumenskir]

I just hate it because it's terribly designed. Horrible levels, unfun gameplay, kind of buggy engine.
Yeah, I think it's meant to be played in increments so small you don't really get a chance to notice the downsides. I eventually just deleted it when I found a free Tetris game for Android.

Just for funsies, I looked up "angry birds crush the castle similarities" on youtube (hoping to find the smoking gun of cloning evidence) and just found this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0XGYsTI5uk), where the Crush the Castle guys say they agree with my genre observation. Huzzah to me, I'm going to take a celebratory nap.

[POS Industries]

Do we expect every Sonic game to begin with a lengthy thank you to Mario?
I love this argument because it operates under the resignation that the physics engine game genre is so finitely narrow that a slingshot and a triangle bird equates to the wildly different gameplay of SMB and Sonic.

Which could totally be the case! I mean, they are both pretty uninvolved games, so maybe the height of original game design really has been reached here. And there's no sense in faulting a business model of marketing entirely to your middle-aged aunt if it somehow brings in millions of dollars in merchandise sales.

Just for funsies, I looked up "angry birds crush the castle similarities" on youtube (hoping to find the smoking gun of cloning evidence) and just found this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0XGYsTI5uk), where the Crush the Castle guys say they agree with my genre observation. Huzzah to me, I'm going to take a celebratory nap.
And they seemed so thrilled about it, didn't they? Not an ounce of snark in their tone at all!

They had a shitty thing happen to them in the shitty business of making shitty games. I can't help but sympathize.

[Marc v4.0]

You seem pretty angry over all this, I must say. To a degree I'm having a hard time understanding. Ok, yes, they took the same concept and gave it a coat of paint and a few minor gameplay tweaks and releaed it. It took off like wild fire. Why didn't CtC take off like that? What was wrong with their version of the concept, which THEY borrowed from another game to begin with, that made it not do as well? At the end of the day, they didn't have whatever it was that Angry Birds did that made it a sensation. I can really understand why the CtC guys would be miffed about that, since that's what they wanted theirs to do. Sucks for them, but that is how shit happens sometimes.

Including the inevitable devolution into a spiraling argument about who copied what and why and how much of a cock they are, etc etc etc.

[POS Industries]

You seem pretty angry over all this, I must say. To a degree I'm having a hard time understanding.
I'm not angry at all about Angry Birds. I'm angry about my experience in this thread, because...

Ok, yes, they took the same concept and gave it a coat of paint and a few minor gameplay tweaks and releaed it.
...this is what I said in the first place, and I'm being repeatedly told that, no, this is not what happened and that these games are not particularly alike at all, and that I'm a nerdraging hipster for saying otherwise.

[Marc v4.0]

The thing is, making gameplay tweaks and changing the looks of it and adding extra features makes it not a ripoff. Your argument that it's a blatent and shameless ripoff except for all the things that they changed to make it its own game makes no sense.

[Fifthfiend]

Hey POS, I made a Meme for you.

Here you go (http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3p30a3/)

http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt148/fifthfiend/reactions/2s0o6t2.gif

[POS Industries]

The thing is, making gameplay tweaks and changing the looks of it and adding extra features makes it not a ripoff. Your argument that it's a blatent and shameless ripoff except for all the things that they changed to make it its own game makes no sense.
Because I don't believe that the tweaks they've made are substantial enough to define it as a completely different game. They made a couple improvements and marketed it better, but looking at both games being played side by side I fail to see any major difference between them beyond the minimum extent they needed to avoid a lawsuit.

Either it means that they stole heavily from CtC ("borrowed" implies permission or intent to give back in the future, none of which was the case here) or there really is so little a developer can do with this genre that a simplified launching mechanic and a couple slightly different powerups are the only ways to build upon it, which I find incredibly hard to believe.

[Marc v4.0]

I think the second one is more likely, there is only so much you can build on top of a "Throw things at units to topple them during 5 minute stretches of gameplay in a phone" game.

The CTC guys are the ones that said they borrowed from another game, so I guess they actually Stole from whoever that was as well. Stolen doesn't really work, cause it's a very basic concept that's been used before CtC. Borrowed doesn't work either, for the reasons you stated.

The problem with Borrowed and Stolen, at the core, is they imply possesion on the part of one party. Armor doesn't own the concept of toppling structures with launched projectiles in a game setting, though they own the particular coat of paint they applied to the concept. The people who made the game Armor borrowed from didn't own the concept, either.

I go back to something that was touched on very lightly, Tower Defense games. Now, a lot of TD games are so heavily expanded and built upon that they barely resemble a TD game. A majority of TD games play exactly like each other across the board, just with a picture swap. No one owns the concept of Tower Defense, and no TD game is ostresized for not providing props to whoever came before them.

If a TD game became super popular and had cutsie units that could be made into plushies and fruit snacks, people would still be trying to say they stole the concept from the next best one though.

[Doc ock rokc]

Because I don't believe that the tweaks they've made are substantial enough to define it as a completely different game. They made a couple improvements and marketed it better, but looking at both games being played side by side I fail to see any major difference between them beyond the minimum extent they needed to avoid a lawsuit.

Either it means that they stole heavily from CtC ("borrowed" implies permission or intent to give back in the future, none of which was the case here) or there really is so little a developer can do with this genre that a simplified launching mechanic and a couple slightly different powerups are the only ways to build upon it, which I find incredibly hard to believe.

Sorry have you been looking at games lately? Games borrow heavily from each other. Gears of War created the Cover system that now has a thousand different spins on a thousand different games (most of which are dead on copies) does it mean that Uncharted is the exact same as Gears? Fuck no. They have a different mechanics and a different coat of paint... yet both are in the third person cover-based shooter genre. There game play while slightly different plays out the same. Run around, duck behind cover, shoot and repeat.

All Sonic ever did differently from Mario in his first run was add a timer adjustable speed and a jump that was practically invincible. Rayman added punches. all same genre, all the same game play.

[Magus]

How this game gets a theme park but Worms doesn't, I will never know.

It had CUTE TALKING WORMS and they shot at each other WITH BAZOOKAS. How did that not become a cultural touchstone? The fact that it wasn't on the iPhone?

That said, this game does have a simplicity going for it. Not sure if it's as exciting as playing say, Pacman or Mario, though, which were the last games that seemed to have this much clout, and they were just a simplistic in their gameplay, and yet...no theme parks (though movies, yeah, they got those much like Angry Birds is getting a cartoon).

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I forgot that Angry Birds is getting a cartoon.

Next it'll probably get several CG movies.

[akaSM]

Next it'll probably get several live action movies.

FTFY ::V:

[Marc v4.0]

Well, Mario and Pacman had those, too

[Bells]

Nic Cage is Angry...

http://geekonfilm.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nicolas-cage-hair-is-a-bird.jpg?w=510

Angry... bird.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

The nightmares will never go away.:ohdear:

[Inbred Chocobo]

I'm not angry at all about Angry Birds. I'm angry about my experience in this thread, because...


...this is what I said in the first place, and I'm being repeatedly told that, no, this is not what happened and that these games are not particularly alike at all, and that I'm a nerdraging hipster for saying otherwise.

The biggest difference between Angry Birds and Crush the Castle is the aesthetic quality. Playing both games in limited amount, Angry Birds clear shows a higher quality of execution. A lot more details were chosen, even if they are not readily apparent. Whereas Crush the Castle has a much flatter feel, nothing exciting and nothing that popped like Angry Birds has. (There is also the execution, where Angry Birds was designed with phone in mind, which you can tell, and Crush the Castle with flash game mode in mind, which you can tell as well).

(the Creators even acknowledge this by their new game, Kingdom Rush, which they have given quite a pleasing coat of paint, which makes the game infinitely more enjoyable).

Heck, the only reason this is brought up is because of the timing of the release date of Crush the Castle and Angry birds, being 9 months apart, about the time it takes to develop a game for the phone in the first place. Let's be honest here, if the dates were swapped, and Angry Birds came out first, Crush the Castle would be considered the knockoff, and I am willing to bet that people would be clamoring that it stole from Castle Clout instead.

I guess the best comparison is that this is like bringing up the fact that The Lion King stole its plot from that Japanese lion movie (I don't even remember the name of it at time of writing).

Did they have a lot of points of similarity, yeah sure, they did. Does that mean that The Lion King stole the movie from those Japanese film makers? No, it doesn't. Such a thing was inspired, not stolen. Does it suck that the Japanese film makers get no credit? It would be nice for Disney to at least own up that it was an inspiration. In the same vein, does it suck that Rovio hasn't owned up that the game was inspired by Crush the Castle, yeah it does, but thats all that I see there, inspiration.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

The biggest difference between Angry Birds and Crush the Castle is the aesthetic quality. Playing both games in limited amount, Angry Birds clear shows a higher quality of execution. A lot more details were chosen, even if they are not readily apparent. Whereas Crush the Castle has a much flatter feel, nothing exciting and nothing that popped like Angry Birds has. (There is also the execution, where Angry Birds was designed with phone in mind, which you can tell, and Crush the Castle with flash game mode in mind, which you can tell as well).

(the Creators even acknowledge this by their new game, Kingdom Rush, which they have given quite a pleasing coat of paint, which makes the game infinitely more enjoyable).

Heck, the only reason this is brought up is because of the timing of the release date of Crush the Castle and Angry birds, being 9 months apart, about the time it takes to develop a game for the phone in the first place. Let's be honest here, if the dates were swapped, and Angry Birds came out first, Crush the Castle would be considered the knockoff, and I am willing to bet that people would be clamoring that it stole from Castle Clout instead.

I guess the best comparison is that this is like bringing up the fact that The Lion King stole its plot from that Japanese lion movie (I don't even remember the name of it at time of writing).

Did they have a lot of points of similarity, yeah sure, they did. Does that mean that The Lion King stole the movie from those Japanese film makers? No, it doesn't. Such a thing was inspired, not stolen. Does it suck that the Japanese film makers get no credit? It would be nice for Disney to at least own up that it was an inspiration. In the same vein, does it suck that Rovio hasn't owned up that the game was inspired by Crush the Castle, yeah it does, but thats all that I see there, inspiration.

Kimba The White Lion is the name of the movie your talking about.

[synkr0nized]

Huh? Angry Birds? Never heard of it. Seriously, why's this suddenly a thing?

lol

[rpgdemon]

I guess the best comparison is that this is like bringing up the fact that The Lion King stole its plot from that Japanese lion movie (I don't even remember the name of it at time of writing).

Did they have a lot of points of similarity, yeah sure, they did. Does that mean that The Lion King stole the movie from those Japanese film makers? No, it doesn't. Such a thing was inspired, not stolen. Does it suck that the Japanese film makers get no credit? It would be nice for Disney to at least own up that it was an inspiration. In the same vein, does it suck that Rovio hasn't owned up that the game was inspired by Crush the Castle, yeah it does, but thats all that I see there, inspiration.

Really, Shakespeare is the one who ought to be mad about that whole shebang, not the Japanese dudes.

[Jagos]

Well, let's say some indie artist writes a song and they have it up on their website. It's found by an executive at Interscope Records who takes the song and has the Black Eyed Peas record a poppier version of it and then puts that on iTunes for 99 cents, giving no credit to the original artist. Then it becomes a big hit and they make a ton of cash.

Is that also perfectly acceptable? And, if you don't believe so, how exactly is it different from what Rovio did when they made Angry Birds?

Case in point (https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120405/11221818390/perspective-complexities-copyright-creativity-victim-infringement.shtml)

BTW, this is the same as saying that two games can't be made by different people. That's a little misleading since you can't pirate ideas anyway.