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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Mobile game is a massive parade of shit with a very occasional gem. It's been this way at least since shortly after the iPhone App Store happened. It got vastly worse with the introduction of in-app purchases.

2048 is one of those gems. I have no idea how it compares to Threes, because I never played the latter. I did hear of it when it was first making the rounds, but couldn't be bothered to try it out. I certainly enjoyed 2048 though.

You're going to have to try a lot harder than this if you want to convince me that one of the gems in the sea of shit that is mobile gaming is actually somehow at fault for that sea.

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It took Threes' developers over a year to hone the gameplay concept, but once it was finished, it took only a day to clone it.

This creates deeply perverse incentives for mobile development.

And 2048 was free while Threes charged $2. If you create something that is very easily cloned for nothing less than ad revenue... this is why the term "competitive advantage" exists.

It's the same old story of RMS and Symbolics, played out again as farce.

2048 is fairly different, so either the specifics were not that important, or the creator of 2048 just got incredibly lucky to hit on a variation that was also great.

Edit: OK downvoters, you need to reply and explain what you think is wrong here. It seems pretty straightforward to me. You can't have it both ways. If the details matter so much that Threes required a year to develop to get everything right, then how did 2048 become so successful when it changes so many details?

I've played both games. The only difference I see (in term of game mechanics) is that 2048 have no "3" tiles but only power-of-2.

Here's a different opinion from elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7501908

Those details seem like exactly the sort of thing you'd spend a long time sweating over if you're going to spend this much time on a game like that.

But that's the whole point, isn't it? The reason there are so many shitty games out there is because it doesn't pay to create a good game.

2048 wasn't a unique new game mechanic, it was a just free clone of the game that invented the mechanic.

As far as I've seen, the reason it doesn't pay to create a good game is because not enough people are willing to pay for them, not because they get shut out by clones.

The world would be vastly poorer if we limited every game mechanic to a single game that was allowed to express it. Can you imagine shutting down FPS clones after Wolfenstein 3D, or RTS clones after Dune? Despite not doing so, these categories are immensely profitable for game creators.

If Threes is so simple and so easily cloned then I would like to know two things:

1. Why do they deserve to profit from it and nobody else is?

2. How does giving the creators of Threes more money help produce more fun games with simple mechanics that are simple to make and easily cloned?

Funny you should mention Dune and Wolfenstein: both of those games had console releases, and neither was the only example of the genre on their consoles.

It is possible to limit boring clones while retaining a vibrant software market.

This is not a question of who deserves what. This is a matter of building a great software market for games, so that we can all play great mobile games at reasonable prices.

That's why I asked my second question. That's directly related to building a great market.

I'd also like to know how any restrictions are supposed to work, since 2048 was implemented as an HTML5 game that plays great on mobile.

Allowing game creators to profit from their creations incentivizes game creation. I took that as a "given." (One might as well ask why Apple doesn't take a 100% cut from game sales.)

As for the HTML 5 game, that's a different matter entirely. The Apple App Store is human-curated, so I can reasonably expect curation to promote useful behavior. I cannot demand that from the web.

I didn't ask why the creators of Threes should be allowed to profit. I asked how giving them more money would help. That's a wildly different thing. As far as I understand it, the creators of Threes have made a decent chunk of money. The question is, why is this not enough to incentivize game creation, and how would blocking a great game like 2048 make things better?

Regarding the HTML5 game, I don't see how it's a different matter at all. My point is that you can access things beyond the App Store, and when it comes to small, casual games like this, HTML5 is a great platform. In fact, I wasn't even aware that there was a native version of 2048 on the App Store until I read this article. If you can't demand curation from the web, and if the web is a viable competitor in this space, then how can you demand curation in this space?

I'm an avid player of Threes, so when 2048 popped up here on HN I gave it a try. I beat the game on my first try, and like the Sirvo guys in a recent blog post, I'd argue that any moderately experienced Threes player would. 2048 is basically Threes minus the infinite replayability, hamstrung in a way to make a single strategy dominate wildly though not quite 100% (alternate up and right, go left if stuck, repeat) and with a $0 price tag.

So, if I get this right, you're saying, you don't care for 2048, because you do not care for the game's original idea being developed in the first place?

I don't understand where you get the idea that I "don't care for 2048" when I explicitly called it a "gem".

The argument would be like, "if I don't care, if original ideas are being developed for games (and, if I don't care, if it's viable to do so), I don't care for the games, I enjoy."

Sorry, but I'm afraid I can't understand your comment at all. Could you rephrase?

I would propose that a substantial argument was made in this post: You're mentioning that most of the games in the stores would be BS, lacking creativity, just hunting for in-app-purchases, etc. Now, if you're enjoying a creative idea, it wouldn't be totally out of scope to care, if it would be viable for anyone to come up with it. "[B]ut couldn't be bothered" didn't sound like this to me at all. Free software is a nice thing, but it just doesn't pay, unless it's just a hobby. If you would want someone to invest in original ideas, I'm afraid, it's not the best long term strategy to go for free clones.

Threes doesn't look all that interesting to me. I didn't care to try it out when I first heard of it, and 2048 didn't change that opinion. I'm not going to go out and buy a different game just to support the concept when I'm enjoying something else that by all accounts is not really the same game.

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