These arguments appear when there is no clear answer and we are all fishing in the murky waters. I have a clear answer now. It’s not about scalars, graphics feature equality, rule implementation time or whatnot. It’s about the most fundamental property of a game: its players.
My clone rule is: Game A is a clone of Game B if serious amount of its players abandoned B to play A and/or would play B if A would shut down. It is an extension of Raph’s “every genre is just one game” rule: A and B are fighting over being that one game of the genre. If the games are different, there is no such fight. If EVE would shut down, its players wouldn’t turn into WoW or LOTRO subscribers overnight. However if WoW would shut down, LOTRO, RIFT, BDO, ESO, TSW, EQ2, DDO would likely get a large player bump, showing that these games cater to the same audience.
With this, we can clearly answer the question “is PUBG a CSGO clone?”
Nope, since CS:GO didn’t lose players when PUBG risen (it’s been stagnating around 360K for 2 years), they are very different games, despite the similar content. Hell, the content is so similar that one game could be completely written using only graphics assets taken from the other game.
PUBG is a perfect example of a new genre: the battle royal game. I’m sure there will be many clones, many very different in content. For example a turn-based trading card game. But it’ll still be a PUBG clone if it keeps the game rules of PUBG:
- Short matches with no other persistence than matchmaking ranking
- Lots of players, everyone vs everyone (small teams vs lots of small teams)
- Just one can remain
- You are not rewarded for killing others, just for surviving
- Hiding from others is possible
Of course – and this is the very point – the above rules are my beliefs and can be wrong. The real test is that the imagined trading card game is taking players from PUBG or not. It can be a bizarre idea to think that a turn-based trading card game can be a competitor of an FPS, but it implies that people are attracted to mechanics and content instead of rulesets. If one believes that, he must ask: where were these PUBG players a year ago? Because sure as hell not in CS:GO. If they like FPS mechanics, they must have played some FPS game but no FPS game lost 2M concurrent players over the last year. My guess: they came from all walks of life, most of them didn’t play FPS. I didn’t play FPS in the last decade. My success on PUBG also shows that FPS practice isn’t needed for someone to be a good PUBG player. I would dare to say that a random EVE player would fare better in PUBG than a random Halo or CS:GO player due to the “everyone vs everyone” and mindset.
Ergo, if a dev is set out to make a new game, he must answer the question: “do my players come from a specific game”? It’s OK to compete with other games, but one has to be aware of it. He must verify this answer by data. He should ask the alpha/beta testers, kickstarter backers, early access buyers the question: “what were the 3 games you spent the most time last year”. If a big group gives the same answer, he is making a clone, even if he doesn’t want to. Then he must ask if it’s reasonable goal to beat that game. If not, he should probably think about a redesign by dropping the features used by the Game A players and focusing on features used by players from not one specific game. Or, maybe its high time to refund the backers rather than going bankrupt a year later when the game doesn’t get wider audience.
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PS: my PUG duo project is going much better than I’ve expected:
Im very curious about your interactions with your duo “partner” heh. Turn off chat and use him as distraction?
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Hi Gevlon,
I don’t have near the level of knowledge that you or Raph have for this topic but here are some thoughts I had while reading the article.
I feel that your assessment of players choosing their experience based almost entirely on rule sets may be too strict. I feel that the experience can depend on much broader, more simple aspects such as competition, progression, or story/immersion. A lot of game can cover multiple very different “itches” such as WoW covering all three through various aspects (PvP, character development, questing). I also feel games with very different rule sets can cover the exact same “itches” such as League of Legends, Halo, Hearthstone, Forza, and even WoW offering a competitive experience.
In regards to any following games in the same genre as originals being “clones”, do you mean to say that there is no difference between halo vs cod black ops 1 and cod black ops 1 vs black ops 2? I would disagree entirely due to various other elements even if the core rule set is the same. I also feel that the different player bases existing at the same time between games like halo, cod, and gears of war would prove that point to some extent.
And finally as far as massive studios innovating and creating entirely new rule sets. I will wholeheartedly agree with you that AAA titles have significantly less variety than indie titles when we’re seeing new games such as roguelikes, Rimworld, and even the battle royale genre. However, I think there’s a much larger expectation for AAA titles to deliver polish, expansiveness, and graphics which all drive costs up exponentially. To develop a new rule set you must complete a significant portion of a project to find out if the rule set could be successful, with a huge risk of it not doing well. I don’t think it’s fair to expect multi-million dollar investments into the extremely low success rates that the indie game development industry sees.
Curious to hear your thoughts on the subject.
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