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Comment by bhaak | Hacker News Reader

"We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it."

Bold statement that "invested more time" automatically equals "better".

I haven't played Threes yet but from the screen shot in that article, I think 2048 is at least a better-looking game.

I also have a hard time believing that there hasn't been a similar game before Threes. It's not like the gaming industry started yesterday. Such a simple game mechanic is likely to have been implemented before.

That's the problem with simple things. They can get invented more easily by anybody and often independently.

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If you would have read their blog-post, you've also encountered their argument, why Threes! would be the better game in their eyes:

"But why is Threes better? It’s better for us, for our goals. 2048 is a broken game. Something we noticed about this kind of system early on (...). We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years. We both beat 2048 on our first tries. (...) When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken. Is Threes a better game? We think so. To this day, only about 6 people in the world have ever seen a 6144 and nobody in the world has yet to “beat” Threes. But that’s what’s better to us as game designers. We worked really hard to create a simple game system with interesting complexity that you can play forever. You know, “simple to learn, impossible to master”. That old chess-nut…"

None of which necessarily makes Threes a better game. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) 2048 far more than I ever enjoyed Threes, simple though it may be.

Whatever may be the case. (I'm neither playing Threes!, nor 2048, but I'm caring for development and original ideas.) I was just mentioning that their argument wouldn't have been just "'invested more time' automatically equals 'better'".

To expand on what neotek said, none of this makes Three's a better game. All they are advocating is that it's a harder game that's so far been impossible to beat, and that they've tailored it to fit their tastes as game designers.

That's fine and all, but why do they expect the market to reward them for that? Do they assume the market will like what they like, and are bitter that the market didn't react how they expected? It doesn't always follow that an expert's opinion matches the marketplace or even the average user's desires.

2048 had easier and faster-paced gameplay, a lower barrier of entry, provided a better distribution model (just pass around the link) and it fostered a vibrant modding community. It seems to me like they are really missing the big picture behind what makes a game successful, if all they can come up with is: "2048 is too easy".

What you are missing, if we're following the arguments of the initial article, is, why there's 1024, 2048, etc, at all. If "free" is the better distribution model, and that's it, will there be any more 1024, 2048, etc?

(Also, I was just pointing out that the apparent quote didn't match with the intentions of the authors' blog-post.)

I don't mean to be flippant, but so what, if 1024, 2048, etc... were inspired on Threes?

None of those games are exact copies, and even the Three's designers admit these others are "inferior" versions. Are they arguing that you can't make derivative works? If they are, then like I said, I don't support that argument because I do believe that derivative works provide value and should be protected.

But to be honest, I don't think that's the main gist. When reading the article the main point that came across was one of annoyance that the original work was not receiving as much attention as the derivative works. As if the world cared who came first, or that coming first actually provided some intrinsic benefit (as opposed to a situational or contextual benefit).

Threes is indeed a better game. There's subtle changes in the mechanics that make your decisions much more important than in 2048 which is effectively broken.

Maybe they spent too much time on it, but this is a thing many game developers do. They place a lot of emphasis on releasing finished products, or at least products that present really well.

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