Don't be surprised if you've heard this before, but copying games is once again in the news. Today's installment comes courtesy of Venturebeat, which in an interview with Mark Pincus learned more about his view of copying in game design.
Pincus denied that Zynga copied Buffalo Studio's Bingo Blitz with their new game Zynga Bingo, which has just gone into closed beta. In fact, he said that on the contrary, Bingo Blitz copied one of Zynga's Poker Blitz, which launched in March of 2010 while Bingo Blitz launched in late 2010. Zynga’s Poker Blitz (and also Bingo Blitz) offered themed rooms, team leaderboards, power-ups, countdown timer with another casino game, art style and color scheme, and mystery crates with special items.
“I think people in the industry are defining innovation different from the way we are,” Pincus said. “When you define innovation, you have to define what problem are you innovating against. The problem we are innovating against is how do we get a billion people to play together. That’s what we want to solve for. We need to innovate as an industry to make that happen. That’s a worthy goal. I think we are innovating as an industry and Zynga is contributing massively to it on many, many fronts.”
The issue has come to the forefront in the mobile and social industries for several reasons. One is the relative ease of developing a mobile or social title compared to a console title. If it takes you a year or more to copy a game, and millions of dollars invested, you are much less likely to copy something unless you can be convinced you have a clear advantage. After all, the competition will have been in the marketplace for at least a year, and if customers are happy with it they aren't likely to spend $60 on your title unless there's a good reason. Second, the mobile and social markets offer titles that are generally free (or very low cost) on a “store shelf” that's effectively infinite. This means there's no capital invested in bringing your product to market, unlike the the huge costs of inventory, sales and distribution for packaged goods. Finally, if you can bring your product to market swiftly enough you may be able to capitalize on the PR and customer base of the original, particularly if you offer some advantage. This is called “fast-following”, and it's a common business strategy in the high-tech industry and other businesses. Pincus notes this, saying that “Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network.”
One of the tough parts of being in an industry where new products can be created in months or even weeks is that it forces you to a faster pace of innovation. Myspace, for instance, let Facebook catch up and blow past it by not innovating fast enough (or correctly enough). Developers small and large in the mobile and social game spaces are under the same pressures.
Of course, Zynga has an enormous advantage in its 230 million + monthly user base; any new game they bring out can be readily marketed to those users at very little cost. Many of those users may never have become aware of similar games, because they don't go looking. Zynga has a great marketing boost for any new title they produce. It's not a sure thing, though, as some of their recent launches indicate. Zynga still has to produce a good game and support it well. If they don't they can easily be left behind by more nimble competitors despite their marketing advantage.
The copying lawsuit filed by Spry Fox against 6Waves Lolapps, where 6Waves is alleged to have copied a Spry Fox game while in confidential negotiations with Spry Fox is a different situation, according to attorney Mark Methenitis. “There are really two issues here. The first is the copying, which (by itself) still may not really be an infringement. Look how many games operate on a basically identical puzzle mechanic, and you'll see that's another idea not expression (Bejeweled clones are a good example).” This echoes Pincus' statements, that games are built on ideas from other games. Methenitis continued “Where a claim could arise, though, is on unfair competition or breach of the NDA. Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 will be the key parts here. As written, LOLApps would need to be taking code, backend, or some other non-public game elements. I'm not clear how much of the game was 'public' during the beta, but the NDA has a clear carve out for public information. This whole thing will be pretty fact dependent if it gets to trial.”
When you get to specific copies of text or artwork, that's where the issue crosses over the legal line. “As for copying actual game text, that would certainly make a copyright claim stronger to the extent it's unique,” Methenitis noted. “For example, if I tried to levy a claim based on someone copying things including the sentence 'match three in a row to clear the tiles,' the sentence is short enough and common enough that it's not very persuasive that it was stolen. That gets to be more complex and it's just a factor that suggests something may or may not be infringement.”
Mark Pincus addressed the issue of copying and innovation in an email to Zynga staff, which we've reproduced below.
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Everyone,
There’s press today about one of our mobile games, Dream Heights, that just launched in Canada and worldwide soon. As we become the Zynga of Mobile and more broadly, as Zynga grows by further innovating on best of breed social mechanics, we should expect the industry to sit up and take notice of our growing portfolio.
I’m proud of the mobile team’s hard work and the industry has taken notice.
For the first time, according to App Data, Words with Friends is the #1 game on Facebook. Scramble with Friends, within 2 weeks of launching, has topped the App Store rankings in multiply categories including top free, top paid and top grossing. Last week, Apple recognized the team’s work by featuring Zynga’s games on the front of the App Store.
The mobile team is gearing up to launch more play across more genres and platforms. I want to congratulate them for working hard to bring great experiences to players around the world.
Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways. They are all internet treasures because they all have specific and broad missions to change the world.
We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market. There are genres that we’re going to enter because we know our players are interested in them and because we want and need to be where players are. We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality.
With regard to Dream Heights and the tower genre, it’s important to note that this category has existed since 1994 with games like Sim Tower and was more recently popularized in China with Tower of Babel in 2009 which achieved 15 million DAUs. On iOS there has been Yoot Tower, Tower Up, Tower Town, Tower Blocks and Tiny Tower. Just as our games, mechanics and social innovations have inspired and accelerated the game industry, its 30 year body of work has inspired us too.
And, this has always been the case for our company and the rest of the industry. Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends, none of these games were the first to market in their category but we made them the most fun and social, and the most popular. Our teams continue to build and improve these games every week which has been an important part of our success model. We run our games as a live service and we continue to iterate, innovate and improve on them to give our players the best possible experience.
As I’ve said, our strategy since the beginning has been to develop the best game – most fun and most social – for every category of play. We are rarely first since most categories in games go back decades, but we aim to be the best.
A few of you have asked how our approach to genres relates to the situation we faced with Vostu. There are rules of engagement in our industry. Companies have to respect each other’s legal and IP ownership rights in the form of copyrights and trademarks. In the case of Vostu, you can see for yourself that Vostu crossed the line and chose to use our copyrighted IP and artwork. That’s different than competing to build the best product or out-innovate us in the City category.
Play in the form of social and mobile gaming has become a mainstream activity, but it has the potential to be so much more. It can be one of the primary ways we connect with other people. It can surpass TV as the most popular and engaging medium of the 21st century. In order to make this vision real, we need to work as a company and an industry to continue innovating, improving and hopefully revolutionizing every major genre of games for social play. Every successful game from developers big and small has pioneered some important new facet of this experience. We are proud of the mechanics we have pioneered that are now industry standards.
Part of what makes our industry cool and dynamic is the idea that small teams can build successful games. But at Zynga we will continue to innovate and expand our possibility space in order to delight our player base too.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who emailed me on this topic. Part of what makes our company special is the open transparent dialog we can all have, and its your passion that is shaping our future.
Thanks,
Mark
