2048, success and me | Hacker News Reader

2048, success and me

gabrielecirulli.com

925 pointsterabytest222 comments

A couple of OT thoughts...

1) It was very odd seeing something go from the HN "new" page, to the front page, to seeing people talk about it on twitter, to hearing about it from friends who have no idea what a "github" is, to my mom asking me to help her download this new game all her friends are playing. I still don't know how I feel about it. And yes, for some reason I feel like I have some sort of ownership simply because I found it early. An interesting case study of the human psyche all around.

2) At the very least I think it's a great example that while we very often find ourselves lost within the HN bubble, we need to remember that (hubris aside) what we do everyday, even if it's just a side project we did for fun one evening, has the potential to change the world in an instant. Exciting and scary at the same time (and depressing when you realize you haven't tapped into this potential yet).

3) It definitely pissed me off to hear of friends paying for the game when I could have just sent them the link to Gabriele's github. (Note that I haven't found any versions where you have to pay to download, I'm assuming these people made some kind of in-app purchase)

4) While definitely in the extreme minority, I now have a couple curious friends who upon inspecting the original github link found the repository, and now are very interested in learning to code. I think we underestimate the power of showing people the "behind the curtain" stuff so to speak.

5) My absolute favorite observation is the amount of people who "hate math" or "just aren't good at math" who love this game. I think there's great potential to use 2048 or a derivative as an educational tool.

I feel that your second point is vitally important for creators (particularly new developers) to spend time thinking about.

For a long while I was caught in the trap of believing that I wasn't any good because none of my work had "taken off" as much as the work I would hear about on HN or TechCrunch, etc. It's a dangerous place to be, particularly because it can lead to a lack of motivation and ultimately debilitating depression. But it's also a myth, to believe you're not producing the same caliber of work as others (though you may not be, that's a discussion for a whole new thread).

I think it's important for us to acknowledge just how much _luck_ plays into the success of creations like 2048. Granted, the game is stellar and beautifully crafted, but there was a lot of luck involved in the wave it got to ride, from the timing of release, to the time it was posted to HN, to the people who tweeted about it, and so on.

Hype (marketing) plays a role, but I think a game's popularity is generally a function of its addictiveness multiplied by its quality. There are exceptions, such as Goat Simulator (which was almost entirely a fad) but it seems like the inherent nature of 2048 would let it succeed in any era. It's viscerally addictive for many people, so as long as you can get some number of people playing it, it'll do fine.

It seems like another reason 2048 was successful is because it was open source from the start. There were about a dozen remixed versions of 2048, and few of those would have happened without the source code being available from the beginning. People would have made their own versions, but it would have taken a lot more time than "let's just use this code that already exists."

As a developer submitting to Show HN, there are some projects that I expected to take off and some that were mere novelties. Two of my biggest projects were things I didn't expect to make a bleep, yet the project that I considered most useful [0] never went anywhere

[0] https://github.com/kolodny/nip

For "nip", I suspect that is because it quite literally is "plumbing" of a sort that people have their favourite tools for from before, whether it's awk, sed, perl, or any other language interpreter that can easily take an expression on the command line (e.g. ruby can pretend to be both awk and sed of sorts with the right command line options).

It looks neat, but it'd appeal to people who spend most of their time doing stuff with node anyway, and doesn't have other scripting alternatives they prefer for one-liners.

There's a ton of inertia for those kind of tools. E.g. even though I prefer Ruby, I tend to use awk for one-liners because I can expect it to be available "everywhere", and because I have "muscle memory" for dozens of common patterns because I started using it so long ago.

That's not a criticism of your tool - just some thoughts on reasons why it might be harder to get attention for that kind of tool.

Re: #5 - the game is incredibly popular at the local high schools in my area. I was pretty surprised how ubiquitous the game was and that all, and I mean all, of the students knew what it was and had most likely played it.

The most interesting thing was how many different algorithms the students developed to try and solve getting 2048. Unfortunately they didn't know about the web version on Github which made trying them out much faster and fun than swiping a phone for hours.

I think #5 is wrong. 2048 is based on numbers but has very little to do with math--you can play the game just as easily using only colors. At best students are learning the powers of two, and at worst they're wasting time they should've spent on chess or checkers, or basketball.

>implying math is about numbers

(but yes, learning the powers of two is only a tiny fraction of math)

It's more than that if you take moment to think about strategy and how many tiles and turns you need to make progress. It can be a very nice case-study in exponentiation/logarithm, big-O, etc

The numbers make it easier to play, it's obvious that 2 4s will combine into an 8. Not so obvious what 2 colours or doges will combine into.

Why is time better spent on chess? Because it's somewhat social?

Didn't mean to make that claim, but I'd guess that chess is better for cognitive development because its demands on working memory are limitless. This is speculative, but it's also speculative to claim that 2048 is any better for learning than Candy Crush.

Try solving it algorithmically and you'll find plenty of ways to apply mathematical theorem.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22342854/what-is-the-opti...

> [...]we need to remember that (hubris aside) what we do everyday, even if it's just a side project we did for fun one evening, has the potential to change the world in an instant[...]

Really? So '2048' changed the world. I have this feeling that developers change the world more often than Cartoon/TV-heros save thew world these days. How many apps away from world peace?!

ps. Developers are the only group of people who are so disillusioned to collectively think that their products change the world. That Steve Jobs destroyed 3 generations with 1 phrase.

NOTE: nothing wrong with the app-creator. I'm really happy for him, it's just that every time I read about a developer who changed the world (writing an application) I wanna burn my eyes on a brazier.

This is slightly unfair.

Not everything that qualifies for the phrase "changed the world" needs to solve a significant problem like poverty, health or hunger.

Sometimes just being present in the minds of a lot of people is sufficient to qualify. 2048 first took over HN for a entire month. I'd open HN every day anticipating a different port. Then it went mainstream and has since been played potentially many thousands even millions of minutes. I think that qualifies as changing the world in a tiny way.

Don't you?

What exactly is the changed thing? World before and world after seem exactly the same to me. Instead of talking and cloning flappy bird, people talk about and clone 2048.

Even before, people played angry birds and before other game, but I admit they did not cloned them that much - but that change came with flappy jam.

I can't speak for others, but for me, this is how 20148 changed my world

I realized, when I played 2048, that I could have built it too. This was enlightening because I realized we were confined by the limitations we place on ourselves. It changed my view of the world, at least, and hopefully of some more developers like me.

Touché. But don't worry, I've been watching Silicon Valley as well (great show).

Please note I'm not saying this was some sort of amazing act of altruism, or that Gabriele has "redefined a paradigm". But the fact remains that millions (probably?) have dedicated a portion of their daily lives to this game, and that, by definition changes things within the world we live in. I don't mean to cause offense, but I happen to think that your reaction is more of a protest that our world is now at a point where change does happen through seemingly small, insignificant, passing fancies. And while I might tend to agree with you that maybe we shouldn't be so obsessed with such things, the reality is that we are. To ignore this fact would be worse than elevating it to saying that "2048 changed the world forever, for the good of all mankind". (Which is what I believe you think I'm saying)

Sorry but changing the world is a phrase open to interpretation. To me sounds extremely pretentious as I don't have any software developer in that list.

When you mention people who change the world I picture Mandela, King, Ghandi and other political leaders who made their lives and the lives of their societies better. A piece of software can not achieve something of similar scale and importance because... There's nothing like an idea that becomes a movement.

I don't want to start a flame and I feel that this conversation is taking the wrong turn so I won't post other replies.

Anyway, nothing personal against you or the dev.

Best of luck with everything

Humanitarians change the world but so do inventors.

I would argue that Edison, Bell, Ford and the like all changed the world significantly. Did they change it for the better? Who is to say?

Mandela, King and Ghandi certainly were overt in their motives to change the world for the better, so in many ways they may be more visible targets, but Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, and the whole current raft of inventors of Twitter, Facebook, etc. have certainly changed the world.

Only technology changes the world.

Without technology we would still live in the stone age. Politicians don't matter. Nothing grand in a hunter-gatherer band leader ordering a fight with another band.

> Only technology changes the world.

Democracy is not "technology", nor does it necessarily require technology. Your claim implies that democracy didn't change the world. Are you serious about this?

Development of a political (and economic) systems is dependent on technological development. Of course, the reverse is also true. Taken abstractly, we might say democracy doesn't require technology, but in the real world it doesn't happen. Democracy (I'm assuming we're speaking about the parliamentary, representative democracy) became necessary when means of production developed beyond Medieval artisanship.

> I don't have any software developer in that list.

RMS changed the world by an idea that became a movement — but it would go no where it he didn't attach them to some excellent software, practicing the idea throught [cue Ghandi "be the change..."].

Jimmy Wales changed the world, again by idea + software.

Diffie & Hellman changed the world, in a much more fundamental way. The possibility of end-to-end security didn't visibly touch people the way Wikipedia did, yet it put all our lives on a different track. OK, that was scientific discovery, not programming but it's way closer to programming than to political speeches.

Bitcoin changed the world, again idea + software. It's unclear at this moment if a cryptocurrency changes it much — or for better — but the very fact that it's here, without anybody's permission, is novel.

The very ideas that building stuff can change the world — and that giving it away maximizes your impact — are a major change in the world!

[gross simplifications and omissions in all of the above.]

I agree. In the realm of games, Starcraft and Counter Strike changed the world, largely contributing to the creation of a new industry, where e-sports professionals can make a living playing games. 2048, while a great creation, has not changed the world in any significant way.

> has not changed the world in any significant way

Adding the "in any significant way" qualifier essentially means you agree that 2048 changed the world.

I guess it has to be implicitly added as soon as we speak about changing the world. At some level everything change the world and then the expression loses its meaning.

If I pick up a stone and move it six inches I have changed the world. Some kind of qualifier is necessary for a phrase that vague.

Quick note: you mean deluded, not disillusioned.

(Disillusion is the disappointment/cynicism/&c. you experience when you find out that you used to be deluded.)

Yes, right.

When 23 million people are talking about your little weekend project, you have changed the world.

Maybe your definition of 'change the world' is too stringent.

Squeezable ketchup bottles changed the world too.

Instead of being so uptight about how people use the phrase why you don't you start trying to create your own impact?

Instead of being obsessed with entertainment and other forms of self gratification, it would be nice if people focused on important problems with actual historical consequence.

So playing and talking about a game means you never focus on important problems?

What if, 50 years from now, game design textbooks talk about 2048 and how it became a near instant hit in the early 2000s?

So, instead of engaging in some harmless recreation, you reckon it's morally superior to go on Hacker News and chastise people for engaging in harmless recreation?

I think instead of being obsessed with criticizing others, it would be nice if people focused on just about anything else in the world.

Games are not the loftiest goal in the world, but they do make people happy and engage their minds. Not everyone is going to cure cancer, and it is not reasonable to criticize them for not being that person. Yes, curing cancer would be grand, but we need plumbers too. Just because something isn't historically significant doesn't mean it isn't significant.

I'm not criticizing them for what they do, I'm criticizing them for the whole wooo I'm changing the world arrogance. Take it down a notch and get some perspective.

The one thing more frustrating than "woo i'm changing the world" arrogance is "woo, i'm making a difference by helping the 'woo i'm changing the world' people get some perspective."

If you don't like their arrogance, put them in their place by doing better.

I've already done better. I've contributed significantly to the first draft of one of the human chromosomes. I've helped prepare parts for the LHC by cleaning them to remove contaminants, and I've made several open and novel contributions to science.

I'm now working on changing a small area of society, but I don't make any arrogant claims of changing the world in doing so.

LOL, one of the best come backs I've seen on HN :)

I enjoyed 2048, but yeah it didn't change my life in the slightest.

And every other "world changing effect" they ascribe to it, could more easily explained with the "butterfly effect", than the significance of this game.

UPDATE: Downvoting with someone you disagree is fun, but try at least offering an argument.

Oh, so you'd be one of the guys telling Zuckenberg to stop fooling around with stupid site with students' pictures, and start doing serious things?

Or telling Jobs & Wozniak that their tiny computer for hobbyists is meaningless, and they should do some serious work with mainframes.

Or perhaps you'd walk up to Picasso and tell him to stop painting triangles and squares, and get into industrial design? And scientific illustrations?

See, the effect of a project can be estimated in hindsight. 2048 made some people interested in programming, and inspired a ton of other people. Who knows, perhaps some future Einstein in 20 years will say: "it all started when I played this stupid game, that had an open source, and I decided to play with it."

> When 23 million people are talking about your little weekend project, you have changed the world.

How has 2048 changed the world?

I hope you can come back to this comment years later with another perspective. If you read the comments on this thread, you will see how many people learned about github and FLOSS just from 2048. Its transparency and apparent simplicity have been huge draws for millions of people. It has changed the way lots of people think about software, and it has only been around for weeks.

The fact that anyone would question that a project like this would change the world indicates that there's still a kind of meta-narrative playing out in people's minds that tells them that only established players can have any real impact on things. It may seem chaotic, but any weekend project could become just as influential as any software out there.

We're still hopefully pretty early in the history of programming.

We still need large projects and always have. Your weekend project might win you the popularity contest and make you a millionaire, but will you still be in vogue the next year or the year after? We've already seen numerous of these changing the world entertainment products come and go, and yet the world is as it was, with the same basic problems continuing to get worse.

You'll never know. There could be some little girl who played it, loved it, picked it apart and ended up getting into programming herself, and she might be the cofounder of something that improves the lives of billions. You'll never know.

In that scenario, the little girl changed the world, not 2048.

To whoever downvoted me: would you care to elaborate as to why you disagree?

Ultimately, it was 2048 that downvoted you.

I didn't downvote you, but I think that's an exceedingly narrow view of causality. We've all been inspired by books, films, games, teachers, etc. If we go on to do great things, we owe a debt to everything that got us to where we go.

> If we go on to do great things, we owe a debt to everything that got us to where we go.

I agree, but the claim was essentially that "x changes y" is a transitive relation (I tried to express this notion in a less mathematical way, but it was the best I could come up with), which is an exceedingly broad view of causality.

If "changing the world" was as simple as spending a couple of days hacking up a simplistic browser game, a lot more people would do it. Similarly, if the criteria for "changed the world" were so low, the term would essentially be meaningless.

I'm definitely using a broad view of causality, yes. Whether that's excessive or not I think depends on what you're trying to achieve. I think of it from the perspective of- would I like to encourage or discourage whatever is happening?

> If "changing the world" was as simple as spending a couple of days hacking up a simplistic browser game, a lot more people would do it.

That sorta implies (to me) that a lot of people are doing things that genuinely change the world, in the high-criteria sense. Is that really true, though? I think the world would definitely be a richer place if we had a lot more "simplistic browser games"- elegant, engaging, entertaining. I can't say in advance what that would lead to, but I'm sure a world with 100 different versions of 2048 (and I don't mean direct copies, but different games altogether that were addictive, compelling and fun in different ways) would be a relatively more interesting world.

And it'll only take a couple of days per person, no? So why isn't this already the case? Why aren't we awash in this stuff? Is it because most people are busy working on more meaningful things? (Objectively I think we can say things like ending malaria, improving education, project: water, etc are all 'more meaningful' in an anthropocentric sense... but is that what most people are working on?)

sorry for wordiness

These days 8 million people talk about a monkey peeing in its mouth on youtube [1]. It doesn't mean the monkey changed the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DBuk91phkI

8 million people chuckled - and I bet you did.

Many of those 8 million had something unforgettable and bizarrely enlightening to share with their friends, or not, as the case may be (if they don't really have any friends). I would say that you underestimate that monkey, he has brought a lot of happiness to a lot of people and he fully deserves his own reality TV show. So, yep, he has changed the world.

I much prefer the world to be changed by things like 2048, which is like an online version of the Rubik's Cube for our times.

Contrast with the world-changing ways of the politicians. Bush, Blair and co worked very hard to take the world to war, yet, ultimately, they lost and it was all a complete waste of time.

"Changed the world" could have a variety of meanings. Taken literally, it could mean "altered or affected the world in any amount." Going with such a strict definition, nearly everything changes the world.

The other extreme, the one people frequently have in mind, is "to change or alter many parts of the world very directly", such as the invention of flight.

However, a better phrase for the feeling in developer circles I think would be "touched the world." Doing so, with the internet, is easy. Like building a public bench in a city park, many people may gain small enjoyment from it, and as the one who built it, all that small joy brings you lots of excitement.

If you want to get philosophical, the world is actually changing every second, with every interaction that happens.

Besides, this game might just be a stepping stone for something bigger.

Think about it like this: If the creator posted a link on the page for a worthy cause, he has the audience necessary to make a huge difference. Whereas if you were to start from nothing and try to create impact, it would be a major uphill battle.

The hard part is reaching enough people. He has already done that.

Another way to think about it: Richard Sherman is a cornerback for the Seahawks. Is he having an impact? Well, they just signed him to a $58 Million contract. And part of what he does with his money is fund the The Richard Sherman Family Foundation whose goal is to help as many kids as possible have adequate School supplies and clothes.

So does Richard Sherman change the world by intercepting passes and talking trash after playoff games? You bet he does.

People who have the platform to change the world are more likely to, in either a positive or a negative direction.

Personally, and of course you can define it however you want, I think something that "changes the world" needs to be both significant and lasting. Getting people to play one game instead of another for a few months isn't either. Squeezable ketchup bottles are much closer.

I have this feeling that developers change the world more often than Cartoon/TV-heros save thew world these days.

It's probably correct. How many fictional heroes are there, compared to how many real world developers?

ps. Developers are the only group of people who are so disillusioned to collectively think that their products change the world.

Lots of non-developers think their efforts can change the world:

http://right-brain-law.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-went-to-law-sc...

http://admissions.uoregon.edu/majors/political%20science "Get Ready to Change the World"

http://sydney.edu.au/arts/donors/change_world.shtml "10 ways an arts degree can change the world"

Do you have a real point to go with the bitter cynicism?

No. Not at the same %: Just take a look at how many startups are deliberately stating to change the world.

The claim is pretentious and false: it gives a sense of virtue which is absolutely not there. I'm not referring to the author of minor projects, I'm referring to Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, as well.

People that changed the world range from M. L. King, to Ghandi and N. Mandela with numerous others in between. To me is disrespectful to those who gave their lives in order to change the world to make such a claim while becoming a millionaire in the process, sitting on a cosy sofa behind a computer screen. Developers are creating technologies (from Bitcoin to OpenGPG). These are tools which can be used for good or bad (surveillance). Software doesn't take the streets, nor will pass legislations through parliaments. So it might change some aspects of every day life, but meaningful changes do not happen using iPhones: Syndications in China are illegal. And there's no technology (Tor, Bitcoin, OTR, GPG, Twitter, etc) that will make syndications legal. Only people can do that and it's not an easy and peaceful process.

The world changes when ideas turn into social/political movements and then legislation are passed. Usually many people die in between.

So if for you Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and StartupXYZ chasing VPs are the same thing, then we have different values, views and not much to discuss.

He isn't being cynical, he is reacting to pretentiousness and pomposity, and quite rightly too. And of course developers do not have a monopoly of such self aggrandisment.

Developers are most certainly not the only group of people who suffer from this.

I also think that there's actually some truth in feeling like you can change the world through code. There have been a huge number of code projects that have impacted out culture a whole lot over the last 20 years and in many ways they've been by far the most visible cultural lampposts.

Regarding point 1, to add to that weirdness, all of this closely followed the massive App Store success of Threes, which 2048 is nearly a clone of (and I understand that Threes is nearly a clone of another earlier game).

Threes! was the original, not "nearly a clone".

2048 is most definitely a clone.

I wasn't sure, but I thought that there was an even older game that was extremely similar to 2048 and Threes. I remember people got upset when the Threes developers accused 2048 of cloning them [0], because they thought Threes was itself a clone of something earlier.

[0] http://asherv.com/threes/threemails/#letter

You thought? Just not very hard, clearly.

Please don't be rude in Hacker News comments.

Regarding #3: I'm actually annoyed seeing my friends who all play 2048 on their phones. Not even the one Gabriele made, some clone by 'Ketchapp'. I often tell people about Threes but they've never heard of it. I show them Threes and then say that "it only costs $1.99" and straight away they basically tell me to get lost because it costs money.

5) I hate math because I am not good at it. But It's not so much math in this game as it is logic. Also having gone through Cisco Networking in highschool the pattern 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048 was drilled into my head.

The proliferation of 2048 culminated for me when I was sitting on an airplane and the kid next to me was playing it.

5: While there may not be that much use for memorising and recognising powers of 2, it's still something that, oddly enough, a lot of CS students seem to struggle with. 2048 could be perfect for that purpose.

Now if there was only a game, similarly simple and addictive, that implicitly taught how logic gates work, maybe we wouldn't be so far from having everyone have a basic idea of how computers work... I believe that the best type of learning is implicit, so there's certainly a lot of potential here. Your observation also shows this characteristic that some people just hate being explicitly taught and can't seem to learn that way, but get them to do something they enjoy and is also designed to teach, and they learn surprisingly quickly without realising it.

Thanks to the help of my parents and my friends, I realized that the only way to get over this without feeling like I had missed an opportunity would be to embrace it and produce an app. I wouldn’t be doing it for profit, though. In fact, that is not what matters to me.

I'm slightly confused, because he repeatedly states that profit is not a motivator, but then that menu screenshot of the app shows a "Remove Ads" button, which presumably means there is some monetization in there.

I don't have anything against the OP monetizing the app, but if he had the altruistic intentions that he claims, wouldn't the app be 100% free?

edit: seeing that I'm getting down-voted - it's an honest question. I don't mean it to be accusatory. I personally think the OP should monetize his creation. It's what I would do if in his shoes. I would just be honest with myself about it.

The conclusion was that he changed his mind and profit is on the table for him. I guess altruism lost to profit. But considering money is the only way to develop good, interesting games in the long-term, it's the most "altruistic" thing he could do.

Not at all. Look up Effective Altruism.

We need to stop the apologia for people who do minor tweaks to existing properties and have a "dilemma" about if they should profit over it.

He still has to pay a developer license to get it on the iPhone, that seems fair that he tries covering third party costs.

Putting non-obstructive ads with a paid option to get rid of them is very mild: more like putting google ads on a side column of your blog and a button at the bottom to tip the author.

You can get rich that way, but that is as close to a proper monetization strategy as lottery is to investment.

note: I'm not sure what type of ads the author is displaying, just speaking generally.

  because he repeatedly states that profit is not a motivator, but then that menu screenshot of the app shows a "Remove Ads" button

Profit may not have been a motivator, and may still not be. But if he can make some on the side with very little effort and without detracting from the other motivators (presumably the challenge/fun of creation and improvement which is what I think most of us in software will cite as our main reason for keeping at it) or offending his other values (some developers won't have adverts near their output if they can help it, even if it is the only way to make something out of it and making money is a an active desire) then why not (either through ad-sponsored methods or directly paid)?

I totally see where the OP is coming from.

12 years ago, I built a site I had absolutely zero intentions of making money from. I had an interest in an upcoming video game, and thought it would make a perfect mate for an online community. So I reached out and found a talented guy online that was also interested in the game and also had the skills that I didn't (web design), and in a couple months, we launched.

After about a year or two, money became a necessity: the popularity outgrew the free bandwidth, and I was forced to find paid hosting. So I started accepting donations. But that wasn't quite enough to cover the costs, so I added ads to help supplement the donations.

But surprise, as the popularity grew, the revenue generated from the ads and the donations coming in started to largely outweigh the costs, and now I'm making a pretty decent passive income from it.

I could easily scale back to just donations now, but since the ads are there and pulling in quite a bit (for a site mostly on auto-pilot), I have no intentions of scaling back.

(I will say, though, that I don't go to the extremes that most do to monetize their site. The ads are only in the forum area of the site, and are only in two to three locations. No interstitials, no videos, no popups/unders, etc. And they're located at the top, bottom, and right vs. right in the middle of the content. Pretty much anything that would annoy me (banners don't annoy me) I keep off the site.)

I'm not saying the OP is making money out of necessity, but just that I understand going into something with the intentions of it just being a fun side project, and then later realizing the potential of making money from it.

I assume the site is what is listed in your bio? Nice work. Is it a full time job sized income or some nice money on the side?

Yes, that's it. Unfortunately, not quite enough to rely on full time. I would love for it to be, and I've thought about building a broader community to gain a larger audience and potentially cover my income. But I just don't have enough time to dedicate to side projects now, having a young family and all.

Yep. I'm not here to talk trash about the idea of ad-supported apps in general. But I thought I read a post about the metal struggle over releasing a port of a game clone, not a monetized version.

The last thing I expected was ads in light of: "It took me a few days, but what eventually led me to accept this was knowing that my change of heart would not be motivated by greed. I chose to do it to save myself from feeling like I missed my chance for the rest of my life."

Oh, I get it. Missed a chance for money. Not greed. No, wait, nevermind, I don't get it at all. Why are the ads in there?

I know it's easy to fall into the advertizement rationalization trap: It costs money to put things into the world. It doesn't take anything away from the user. Everyone else does it. Nobody will blame me for it.

"I said that I wouldn’t try to profit from the game for ethical reasons. I thought that if I changed my mind, I’d be seen as a hypocrite, and I really didn’t want to be that kind of guy."

He is a hypocrite, and it does betray expectations of him (because he set them).

The original game had a donate button on it. Maybe the more "altruistic" way would have been to make a "donate" in app purchase, but is that actually allowed by app store rules? I could see Apple at least blocking it on the grounds that then anybody could put in a cleverly worded in app purchase that actually did nothing.

What exactly is your ethical basis for the expectation of altruism? I'm just not seeing it. The original post never mentioned the word, he simply said he never expected to make money off of it and felt ambivalent about the possibility after he saw the reaction of the Threes creators. Indeed, given the stated motivation that he originally posted it hoping for feedback on the design, I can't see how altruism ever figured into Cirulli's motivation.

The article has an entire section (Changing my mind) dedicated to the topic whereby the OP admits that for the most part he has been espousing that he is not motivated by $ and does not want to "profit" from 2048. If he was really ONLY motivated by getting his mobile version out there, as the original author of the game, why not just release a free version?

Again, I am not against him monetizing his app. Go for it, I say. What I commented on is that he's seemingly not being entirely honest with himself about his motivations.

I already quoted the key phrase, but here it is again:

This is the paragraph in the Changing my mind section where he reveals the reasoning to release an app that includes monetization. Yet, in the same breath, he says he's not motivated by profit. Hence the confusion.

I could see making something without a profit motive and providing it for free. However, after someone else stole it and commercialized it heavily, many of the benefits of providing something for free are gone (maybe a cool community could have grown around the game? Someone coming to the creator and propose building another game?)

Now that money is being made, he'd probably rather see the money coming to him.

He seems so worried about taking someone else's credit, that he's missing the value HE brought to the table. He made the game approachable. The visual style of the game made it more fluid, which made it more approachable. At least to me, the two games he derived his own from don't seem to pull me in the same way. The app has a similar appeal. In games, there's a lot of value in visual design... he got the visual design right.

Exactly, without his version of 2048 I would have never gone on to try Threes. The aesthetic of 2048 alone prompted me to pursue better looking mobile alternatives than some of the terrible clones in the App Store.

Absolutely. There's always the tendency when doing work like this to not notice when you've made the breakthrough. The inspiration 2048 (without animations) is unplayable, to be honest. There's simply no chance it could have ever succeeded without the touch-ups.

Totally, I don't even have a cellphone let alone a smartphone. 2048 was the only version I played. It got me so interested I even made an awk version. That's what I liked the best, all the creative versions people wrote based on it. Someone on here wrote, 'the only thing more addicting than 2048 is making a 2048 clone.'

I have no idea why you got multiply downvoted. I tried to compensate but doesn't seem to have helped much.

Would certainly love to see your awk implementation. I think I heard of a sed one, so awk would be the next logical progression, may be REBOL too, or its new incarnation Red.

Here you go:

https://github.com/msliczniak/onetenth

It's long past where I should have just rewritten it in perl, tcl, or python. Running x1k might be a good starting point. You can read in onek what are the keys to press, I redefined them from the vi home keys that the awk script uses by default. Have fun!

Edit; Oh wow, thanks for the heads-up!

https://github.com/themattrix/sed2048

This is very well said, and a very good point.

Not all derivative works are strictly bad, in the same sense that copyright infringement (eg, downloading an album on The Pirate Bay to try it out) can be a gateway to purchasing content (albums, concert tickets) a consumer wouldn't have otherwise.

"I didn’t feel good about keeping it private, since it was heavily based off of someone else’s work."

Isn't that the opposite? Shouldn't you have kept it private since it was based off of someone else's work?

I think he's referring to the source code, rather than the game itself.

Visual design is important in games. Novel game mechanics are important in games.

In this case, I think the mechanics were the difficult thing to create. And the mechanics took months to refine.

Looking at the history of Threes -> 1024 -> 2048, I think the business incentive for copying and polishing existing game designs is clearly superior to the business incentive for designing a novel mechanic. Why make a novel mechanic when someone can just copy it? That strategy is too risky.

I think the story of these games is a microcosm for the game industry as a whole. More game sequels are released than original game ideas. And I think that has to do with the incentives we create for game developers.

I think the creator of 2048 has priced his value about right. He knows what he brought to the table, but he thinks his contribution is not the lion's share of what made 2048 special. At the same time, he does not really know how to create a system that values innovative games more highly. And all the while, an opportunity to make a lot of money is whizzing by his head.

There's several extenuating circumstances no?

One, as original as Threes is it's unfortunately super easy to clone. 2048 being made in a weekend being proof. Yes I know it's not an exact clone. Let's say then it was very easy to make a similar game.

There are plenty of popular games that aren't easy to clone quickly. So I'd argue the lesson there is consider making something hard to clone.

Also, he open sourced the game. That effective says "please clone this". The license effectively implies "feel free to copy this to phonegap and publish it". Which once it was popular people did.

Do you think ease of cloning is the correct metric to optimize?

Put another way, if a game developer thinks this: "This would be a really fun game! But it would be too easy to clone, so I guess I will not make it. I'll do something else." Is that a thought process that you would support?

I think it's reality. Do I like it? I'm mixed on it.

I'm sad that Threes didn't seem to get the attention that it kind of seemed like it deserved. On the other hand I think even if Threes is arguably a better game by some metric most people seem to enjoy 2048 more so 2048 brought something to the table that wasn't there before.

If you think your game is easy to clone, rather than not make it, maybe you should take that into account when releasing it. Maybe Threes should have been free? Maybe knowing it would be easy to remake they should have invested more in getting the word out? Or, maybe as you suggest they should have done something else.

Basically I think it's reality. An easy to clone game has some risks that a non-easy to clone game doesn't. You should take those risks into consideration.

Really enjoyed this post. As someone who has been on the "Threes! was there first!!!!" train since 2048 took shape, I think I agree with both parties. Threes! is a polished game that people can pay $2.99 for in the App Store and enjoy. 2048 is a free web game that's insanely approachable (it's free) and people "get it" immediately. They both provide immense value.

I see where the Threes! devs are coming from because, well, a lot of people called their game a 2048 clone, and I'm sure it sucks to see people playing a similar game instead of buying yours.

I also see where Gabriele comes from. The guy just wanted to make a game! He wasn't trying to steal anything from anyone, he made a lot of people very happy and he has nothing to be ashamed of, or worried about.

To be honest, I think if you take the intersection of 2048 players and people who would pay $2.99 for Threes!, you'd end up with a pretty small group.

I think everybody won here.

I'm just happy he's willing to give credit where it's due.

That to me, speaks volumes towards the dev's character.

Yeah kudos to him. But wait, could he do differently at this point?

I mean after all this publicity and everyone(well too many to lie about it) know it is a derivative of another game.

Having played a lot of 2048 and Threes, I have to say that while 2048 is fun, it is a shadow of the game that Threes is.

There is a polish and outright joy to Threes that the clones lack. While the games are superficially similar Threes has a depth of play, complexity, and game design that reflects true craftsmanship. They took an idea and put in the hard work to make it the best they could make it. 2048 and other derivatives play like a rough draft of Threes.

As a hobbyist game designer myself I can appreciate the difference.

I'd challenge any 2048 fan to drop the $1.99 on Threes and see what they're missing.

All that said, I appreciate the awkward position Gabriele is in and appreciate his effort to address what has been going on in an open fashion. He's not the bad guy here. He has made a very good clone of an imitation of a great game.

That's funny, I started playing Threes, was addicted to it for a while, and when I found 2048 I never looked back. I find 2048 to be a clearly superior game both in terms of visual clarity and repeat playing. The mechanics of Threes are super annoying, especially the end game swipe when there are no more moves, swipe through the pointless point tallying, click next, etc. etc. etc. The cutesy noises and animations seem sort of unfinished to me.

The max card I've gotten with threes is 384, while the max card I've gotten on 2048 is 8,192. With Threes I don't really care about not getting any better, while with 2048 I feel close to getting 16,384 and still think it's interesting to do so. Threes just doesn't have the staying power, the mechanics are simply more frustrating.

I've seen your argument before -- the big post the Threes guys did had it also, that they felt their game was clearly better. I can understand why they felt that way, but I don't get it. And given the taking over the world popularity of 2048, I'm not sure that the evidence is there to support that position.

Most of 2048's fanbase enjoys it because it makes them feel smart. It gives them an adrenaline rush as they tap buttons or swipe the screen, watching the numbers combine and become higher and higher. Some say that playing 2048 makes them "feel like a computer", and that Threes does not.

If pushing buttons quickly and watching numbers fly everywhere /and somehow not cause you to lose/ makes you feel like a computer, then Threes absolutely does not make you feel like a computer. You can get pretty far in 2048 just by rapidly pressing two buttons and then adjusting when the board gets messy. That is the entirety of 2048's strategy. I've been playing Threes since its release three months ago, and I still find that my scores are improving as I notice new strategies. Threes has infinitely more depth than 2048, which is what keeps me coming back for more.

The only reasons 2048 is more popular than Threes is that a) it's free, while Threes costs $2, and b) it is EXTREMELY friendly to newcomers. It's absurdly easy to get a 2048, while it actually takes thought to score high in Threes.

So yes, if you're looking for a mindless free time-waster, 2048 is the game for you. If you're looking for a deeper, more polished puzzle game, Threes is superior in every way.

meh... Threes has some annoying UI issues. Any time anyone in history has thought "its only one extra click/tap/swipe, who cares" they are wrong. These things add up.

I think what you mean by the first sentence is "most of 2048's fan base enjoys it because it's fun".

Your back and forth strategy doesn't work as you get to the higher point levels in 2048 btw. It certainly may get you to 2048, but not really that much further past that. The fact that the ideal strategy changes as you get to 4096 and 8192 is something that makes the game more fun to me.

If you like Three's better that's great, but like I said, I started with Threes, got addicted to it for a while, and then moved on. I got addicted to 2048 for a lot longer than I did Threes. It's not a matter of one being free or more accessible. 2048 is simply more fun, which is another way of saying it's a better game.

gabrielecirulli's success has been one of my favorite moments I've witnessed on HN. Congratulations to him, it was/is an amazing phenomenon. I also think we can take a few important lessons here to take the tech world a little more out of the shadows.

1) As a few have said, show your friends the source code and say "if you could learn to do this, you could have made 2048". It's not too intimidating of a codebase and it might make some more people want to learn to code.

2) If you've ever met anyone who didn't see the point of open source, the 1000s of 2048 derivations are a public monument to FOSS. I have tried to explain to my friends a million times what Github is, but then all I had to do was say "yeah for that clone someone just forked the original repo and changed yellow to blue" and suddenly they get it. I know that leaves out the part of open-source where people contribute back to the original but it's a good starting point.

3) This, or some variation of this, is why many of us do what we do. The power for a few thousand keystrokes to become a worldwide phenomenon with the only cost being $0.00 and some time. It's amazing how much influence you can have from behind a laptop monitor. When people explain why I code/blog/read HN for fun, what i tell them is that programming gives you an amazing sense of mental potency. 2048 really maxed out the gauge on how potent you can be.

It's not only "not intimidating", it's actually a prime example of good quality code. See http://blog.danieljanus.pl/blog/2014/04/02/2048/

I don't understand the concerns about theft and ethical issues about profiting from this. The license on GitHub says I am welcome to copy the source, modify it, and sell copies. Maybe I take that too literally, but if you see a popular game that people are willing to pay for, and there isn't already one in the app store I think you should take advantage of MIT licensed code and put it up for people to enjoy. Anyone who doesn't like the idea is welcome to make a better version and offer it for free.

I am strongly against blatant copies of apps someone is basing a business on, but I support making apps based on open source code, and making fun games available to as many people as possible.

>I don't understand the concerns about theft and ethical issues about profiting from this. The license on GitHub says I am welcome to copy the source, modify it, and sell copies.

Because 2048 was a version of 1024 but he didn't realize until later that 1024 was a version of Threes which was a commercial product in the app store. So he kinda sorta MIT licensed someone else's commercial product.

They do have a tiny mechanical different but it's much smaller than what you normally consider a clone.

I'm sorry, but that is an absurd thought process. What on earth is he missing out on if he doesn't want to profit? What is this once in a lifetime opportunity being wasted? The chance to work for a month with no return? That's an absolute joke.

I have absolutely nothing against him putting ads and IAP in the game to try to make money, as money is in fact the main reason for doing work. What I don't understand is this BS post. Sure he cloned a game style, but who really cares about that. It's not even a little unreasonable to clone a game mechanic. Does anybody think candy crush is a worse game because it is a cloned mechanic? no, it is a highly polished and well done version, and it's fine. Same goes for 2048 IMO.

The real question is what is the point of this post? Oh noes I didn't want to profit off it and I felt bad, but I was missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to waste a month of my life, oh what the hell let's put ads in it anyway.

-1: Your comment is aggressive and lacks empathy. Morevoer, you should interrest yourself in the free software movement and understand the motivations of the people behind. Books like "Richard Stallman and the free software revolution" might interrest you (https://www.google.com/url?q=https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/fa...)

Thanks I know what the free software movement is. Stallman I mostly find to be a jerk. On Steve Jobs death: As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."

I'm sorry, but that is uncalled for. Free software might be a noble goal, but as someone who makes software for a living I can't imagine why. Yes I want to be able to run whatever I want on my computer. No I don't want anybody to take my work and redistribute it.

Calling Stallman a jerk is definitely uncalled for. I personally think he is the epitome of everything that is right with the Computer Science. It is your prerogative to distribute the software however you like. Remember that Stallman created something which most of us can only sapire about.

Threes hardly came up with this combination game idea. I know for certain Triple Town [1] has basically the same gameplay (except you drop instead of swipe, some extra cutesy elements) and is from 2011, and I highly doubt it originated the concept or gameplay. To use their example, I feel like Asher Vollmer and Greg Wohlwend created Dr. Mario and not Tetris, and were shocked when people started playing other Tetris knockoffs. I understand being frustrated that someone else hit success with the same idea and different execution, but I don't get the "my copy is novel" attitude. Feels like a 1 click buy patent.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spryfox.tr...

Totally agree, I read the letter from three and I've found it really annoying, maybe they wrote that for marketing.. I understand how they can feel but I don't understand how can someone have the courage to say that their game is better.. Million of people choose something else that's a pretty clear sign

They made a game with lots of effort in design, then put a price tag on it to make money off of it. Then someone else clones it makes it free. The pretty clear sign is that free stuff propagates way faster than paid stuff. Which is not a surprise at all.

to me it seems that they are only motivated by bitterness and pride:

1) they assume that people who played 2048 or similar will not use their game. I think they could use 2048 for free advertisement, as they not the same thing, what's wrong about downloading two similar game? expecoially when one of them it's free

2) their game will not have nearly as many users as 2048, it's spread it's due simplicity, ui and design

3) They say their game is better (also) because it's more difficult to play: nonsense, games are not designed to be difficult but to be enjoiable

4) they knew someone will clone them, I think it's a risk to take into consideration

I my opinion 2048 could only have boosted their sales, because it focused the attentions of millions of people with this sort of games. I would like to see the growth of the two compared

IMHO It's to late for the "official" apps. So many clones out there (let's call them clones, even if they're maybe based on the original code).

I think that this is a big missed opportunity for him (even if he had enough "success" from the original game alone)

Indeed. I just installed the official one and won't be using it. Ads, small numbers. I use one from estoty entertainment lab which is ad free afaict.

This is the one I have as well and there used to be ads when you lost IIRC.

I tried Gabriele's but it's indeed (sadly) inferior, by the size of the board and the input lag (on my Nexus 4).

Same on Nexus 5. Maybe it's Phonegap. Dunno.

Very interesting insight. I don't always agree with the decisions he made (and he doesn't even agree with the decisions he made), but it's a pleasure reading someone's feelings as all the stuff of the modern world hits you at once.

it's kind of sad that so many people insist on a native app. 2048 has always worked great on my nexus 7 just using a browser, there's no need for an app. Developers shouldn't be forced to put in extra work porting webpages to native code just to ensure they don't get overrun by cheap clones in various platform's app stores.

on my Nexus 4 sometimes the page will scroll up or down as I play. I agree that you don't have to go native to fix this, but it is one of the things to consider with the many viewport sizes out there in the mobile web ecosystem.

but he didn't build a native app, he just wrapped a newly rewritten html/js version of it.

What about those without data plans? Wouldn't it let them play 2048 when without Wifi?

HTML5 AppCache could be used to easily allow offline play.

On my Android phone, it seems to aggressively cache "web apps", so after I added it to my home screen, I've been able to play it when out of Wi-Fi and data reception.

Whoa, this is a great hack. I get so annoyed when my browser cache dumps and tries and fails to reload a page that I had already loaded. Write up this tip as a blog post and submit to HN :-)

It's probably not worthy of a blog post, since it's just a regular feature of Chrome. :-)

  Menu button > Add to Homescreen

It eats the battery on my tablet and phone.

I would have done nothing with the initial success too. I have a very definite "freeze" reaction to stress, which causes quite a few problems for me. I can sometimes progress to "flight", where I run away from the problem, but "fight" is very often out of reach.

Quick thing -- you should title your iOS app something like '2048 - The Original Version', not '2048 - by Gabriele Cirulli'

And here is some design feedback according to Wired: "Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece" http://www.wired.com/2014/05/threes-game-design

I added that thing to my homescreen and played it as an "app" for weeks. The only problem is 2048 gets really boring once you have a framework for how to do it.

It's nice to see the background of how he was feeling during that time. The (relatively muted) outcry of "derivative" never felt fair to me. His game is more fun to play than Threes. Millions of people agree.

It's funny that you say that 2048 "gets really boring" after a while, but that it is "more fun to play than Threes".

It's interesting that the balance and effort that went into Threes resulted in a game that (to me) is more complex and possesses more staying power. However, it is still regarded as not as good as a game with more immediate gratification and significantly less staying power.

edit: for clarification.

> It's interesting that the balance and effort that went into Threes resulted in a game that (to me) is more complex and possesses more staying power. However, it is still regarded as not as good as a game with more immediate gratification and significantly less staying power.

You have summed up the entire game industry in a nutshell.

2048 for me was about a week or two of daily play and then done.

And yet, while the games are obviously based on the same mechanics, I find 2048 to be the better game because it is simpler. 2048 gets right to the point, and is trivial to understand. This is an important design point that is often missed: games often work best when they can be easily discovered. Stuff that slows that down (unnecessary complexity, a UI that slows down how fast you can iterate on mistakes, etc) can impact how "annoying" the game is perceived to be.

(I do they're both good games, though, and could see how either could be preferred)

I'm always wary of game designers who espouse "balance" all the time. The only place you ever need balance is in a multiplayer game as people like be on an even playing field.

In single player games however, too much striving for balance can lead to a very boring game. One of the classic failures in this regard was Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It had a balancing mechanism for all the enemies in the game, so that they leveled up in step with the player. However, this meant that every single monster was almost the exact same challenge, all the way to the end. ie. You may have leveled up and increased your damage output, but the monsters have increased their hitpoints and it still takes the same 3 attacks to kill anything. It removed all sense of progression from the game.

So it just goes to show that too much balance can really bore people! You need to hook a player and get them interested by giving them a sense of progression, of achievement.

Some ways that you can give a sense of achievement is by letting them work out optimal strategies, min/max'd character builds, etc. These can be unintentional or artificially included (eg. super weapons near the final boss fight).

tldr; People like a sense of progression, even if that is achieved by having an unbalanced game.

I don't quite agree with you here. I think Elder Scrolls is a bad example to give because the series as a whole is probably one of the most unbalanced RPGs there are: even in Oblivion, the 'balancing mechanics' you refer to just encourage more unbalanced play -- as opposed to, say, Galsiah's Character Development in Morrowind which is ultimately a balancing mechanism but promotes more aspects of gameplay and prohibits undesirable behavior.

Balance is best used as a function to encourage meaningful and difficult gameplay, which I'd argue can be defined largely as the number of interesting choices a player has to make. I think 2048 does a poor job of this relative to Threes: after around a week of play I was able to consistently win using the corner strategy. In Threes, the variance in tile distribution means there is no such panacea.

(That being said, I agree that pursuing 'balance' in a game is like pursuing 'colors' in an artwork. It's a road to reach some desired destination: not a goal in of itself.)

I modified the code for myself to start with higher tiles and end at 8192. It's still fun and reduces the initial boredom ;)

FYI for those searching for this on Android: (1) it isn't on Amazon yet (or at least I couldn't find it), and (2) to find it on Google Play, you have to search for Gabriele Cirulli if you want to find the actual game he's talking about. He links to the app in his post but, because I had a bit of trouble finding it, here it is:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gabrieleci...

If anyone else finds it on Amazon I'd appreciate a link, my phone (Jolla) doesn't have access to the Play Store.

If someone wants to cure his addiction, here is my variant of the game - 2048 with AI autoplay and taking back moves:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/random_strangers/2048-analyz...

Also, 511 is a variant of 2048 on a 3x3 grid, completely solved:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/random_strangers/511-game

I think Gabriel's aversion to profiting from this creation is laudable, but I wonder how much of it is driven by a sense of guilt over the reaction from the creators of Threes. That said, I'd hope that those guys would get in tough with Gabriel and have a candid conversation which amounted to "okay, seriously dude - make some money already!"

This comment might not be the most popular but I happen to think it is right on point.

At twenty years of age this kid got a chance of a lifetime and blew it. This is tantamount to getting a winning lottery ticket and throwing it in the trash KNOWING that it is a winning ticket.

I get all the altruistic stuff. I do. I also get that business and innovation is and has always been about doing it different, better and faster than the other guy.

There's nothing ethical about recognizing the opportunity of a lifetime and ignoring it out of a really questionable sense of duty. This is some really faulty decision making.

Let me put it in more simple terms: A good person can do a lot more good with money than without. Period. End of story.

This can take many forms. If he felt so strongly about owing to prior projects he could have offered to share in his new-found fortune in some equitable way. If he really didn't want a pile of money he could have taken as much as he felt he needed and donated the rest to worthy causes. Perhaps support FOSS efforts, help entrepreneurs in his country, launch an incubator, etc., etc., etc.

I know people who are currently relying on the benevolence of friends to have a place to sleep. I know one person who is probably within a couple of months of seeing his last dollar go through his hands.

The idea that someone is dealt a hand like this one and he absolutely blows it out of some juvenile mental fabrication takes on a very different context when you see people who's lives could be changed in massive ways with just a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars per month. At some level I could see a person not taking advantage of such an opportunity as incredibly naive and selfish. Don't do it for you, do it to help others. What could be better than that?

Here's my back. Ready for the arrows.

The thing I found most interesting about the 2048 was the sudden assortment of variations that immediately followed. It was a perfect example of how the thing we call "culture" works: people recursively sharing their interest in something, often without even trying ("hey, that looks cool. What are you playing?").

It is also a powerful argument in the idea (described very nicely by Lawrence Lessig[1]) that culture and creativity are hindered by copyright. While git (via github.com) made it technologically trivial to clone the source, it's the lack of the "don't touch it - somebody will sue me" barrier that allowed a huge number of people to try their hand at a variation.

To re-use a quote used by Mr. Lessig[2], said by composer John Philip Sousa as the technology of the phonograph (and the ability to restrict the use of music through copyright) quickly became widespread:

"These talking machines are going to ruin artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day, or the old songs. Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left..."

I believe talk about "profit" or "lost opportunities" misses the forest for the trees. The potential of future personal profit on a small game like this can be very hit-or-miss, but the contributions to our shared culture have already been huge. The fact that the game caused an incredible amount of attention - with multiple people sending messages about taking the idea further - is conclusive evidence of the cultural impact it had.

The reaction by the authors of "threes"[3] (linked from this article) is an interesting example from the other side. It is clearly annoyed at the loss of profits that 2048 may have caused. Their game is also proprietary, restricting the possibility of making a legal derivative work. this eliminated one of the big sources of initial "word of mouth"/"viral' attention their game received.

I'm not trying to argue for the elimination of copyright[4] or other sweeping changes. For some works - especially games and other works of art - the monopoly benefits of copyright are probably worth the loss of some popularity. I simply suggest that there are other benefits besides "profit". As this article mentions, even stuff like "lack of stress" can be a huge advantage; knowing you've been able to impact so many people is something many artists dream about and hope for their entire lives[5].

TL;DR

If you're thinking of trying to squeeze some profit from a small work like this, you may want to consider letting it spread in our shared culture and taking the fame and reputation as the author of a Cool Game/App.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strang...

[2] ibid.

[3] http://asherv.com/threes/threemails/

[4] While I do believe we should eliminate most "IP" laws, that argument is for another day.

[5] said best by the comic PFSC: https://31.media.tumblr.com/2cbf666fc1881d6c0f158a6bece2bb95...

Bullshit. Culture does not consist entirely of repeated derivatives, that's the thing we call "being a poser," and that is more specifically the shitty part of culture where someone takes a good idea claims it as their own.

Culture doesn't have a built in versioning system in place, so when something does all the right things it isn't a given that the predecessors are given credit. There are far too many derivative works that completely crush the inspiration and predecessors...

The reason why is that the derivative work has nothing to do except tweak and improve the initial work, where the initial work had to concept the thing and give it a form out of nothing.

Convenient then, that someone comes along and takes something 90% good and makes it >90% good and everyone claims how it is better and so important that they brought such innovation to it.

Zzz.

The app store, steam, even triple a titles are glutted with this revisionist crap. So when you look around and see 9999999999 clones and attempts at "betterment" for every 1 work you'll know why.

You seem to be unaware how so much of what seems "original" to you is derived from prior art. This is strange, because you describe (and deride) the phenomenon moments before you ignore it.

Oh dear, the children are downvoting you. This is the inevitable consequence of an educational system where copying and pasting from the web counts as original work. These people actually believe that copying is being creative.

"Vocal chord" is a beautifully punny way to describe people singing together.

I understand where he is coming from about the stress and the relief he felt when he renounced the idea of developing it for mobile.

I think the lesson we can all learn is that we should do both, reduce stress and pursue the goal, otherwise it might be too late and you might regret it for the rest of your life. Someone he knows could have developed the mobile app for him. He could have offered them money right away or a percentage of profit. If he doesn't know anyone, I'm pretty sure any company would have jumped at the chance if they were offered a reasonable percentage.

Even if you are blocked, at times of stress try to think of what the possible alternatives available to you are. Write them down on paper, cross them out, write them again until you are happy with your final decision.

My suggestion would be if you've enjoyed 2048 in the past and you think Gabriele should be awarded that the least you can do is go and download and review the app to bump it closer to the top of the popular results.

And if you think that you've gotten USD$0.99 of enjoyment from the game now or in the past (like I did), you should pay for the upgrade.

App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/2048-by-gabriele-cirulli/id8...

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gabrieleci...

Am I the only one who feels like his new "native" version feels slower than his web app? There's a brief but noticeable delay between my finger flicks and the sliding of the tiles. I wonder if this has anything to do with his use of Phonegap.

Yeah, feels like there's more "inertia" needed. Subtle, but noticeable. Longer pull to make a move happen.

It's not a matter of "inertia", it's an outright delay. I suspect it's double-tap detection kicking in.

It's not "native" if it's in PhoneGap.

Yes there is a notable lag on android, also the app doesn't quite scale with screen size so on bigger phones you get a smaller version of the game which isn't a problem it just doesn't feel quite as clean and well implemented as the web app. Way better than my first cross platform atempt

Dont forgot 1024, 2048 etc are all a huge rip-off of threes. Its a ugly copy and people are trying to provit from the creativity of somebody else. I hate it personally.

Also 2048 should have asked threes for permission. In court, i would have decided in favor of threes.

For authors/creators that feel themselves in situations like that, should see this talk, it might help:

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_success_failure_a...

I hate seeing people quit because they've been too successful all of the sudden, like the Flappy Bird guy, too, and not necessarily because "they've made it" and don't want to work anymore, but because they're freaked out about launching a "failure" next (at least in comparison with the previous breakout success).

I appreciate the authors honesty but perhaps it is hard to notice that he (and all of us) will always justify our choices. He chose not to profit and thereby uses the Threesgame authors angst over clones as reason to support that choice as being right. However, if he had made profit I could have written a blog post for him about how Threes benefited from the clones, or various other reasons one would use. The more weight your choices seem to have the easier it will be to find reasons for them after the fact.

I'd be tempted to create the phone app but have any proceeds go to charity - that way you take the opportunity, gain kudos, avoid greed, and give something positive to the world. Perhaps also including a prominent link to Threes as an acknowledgement of their founding status and to help drive the popularity of their original app. That said, if to do that you need to put your regular income stream on hold to focus on the project, I can understand not going that route.

It's a shame it's not a truly native app. Input response is very sluggish even on my LG G2 (high-end phone with a Snapdragon 800).

Based on some of the performance issues with Android 4.4 phones, I would strongly recommend that you port your code over to the Game Closure devkit: www.gameclosure.com and www.github.com/gameclosure/devkit

It's MPL licensed, super easy to get started with, and very fast. It's pure javascript/canvas however, and doesn't support CSS or DOM-based UI.

Thinking about this dilemma it seems to me it would have been better/faster/easier/more ethical to add an affiliate link to the 'original' threes app. That way everyone wins. And while that was there start work on the definitive 2048 app *(maybe even collaborate with the threes creators to get that out faster).

The difficulty for the Threes guys was that they spent a lot of time polishing what was a very simply concept. Nothing wrong with this, but it made their game straight forward to clone. If someone was releasing Tetris for the first time in the current climate they would have the same problem.

Can someone please enlighten me? The number one 2048 app in the iOS store is by some company called Ketchapp. It looks pretty much the same (very similar). Did they all clone the web version by the op? Has op released his own version after a month? How does he expect to climb up the charts?

Thanks for the post. I suspect the creator of Flappy Bird had similar feelings of shock, worry, being overwhelmed, and the need to defend himself -- but was unable to get to the point of reconciliation.

I thoroughly enjoyed 2048, played several variations, and even made one myself with photos of raptors :)

I've been playing the mobile web version daily since this hit HN. It is a great little game for those times when you are standing in a queue or waiting to see someone. Who cares who came up the idea first. Yours is very mobile friendly. Credit goes to Gabriel for that.

> Many of the people around me, however, didn’t feel the same. My friends and parents thought that my choice was honorable, but at the same time I was probably throwing away a chance that I would be unlikely to get a second time.

> A few days later, all of the issues I thought I had overcome crumbled back on me much harder than before. I had started to regret “wasting” this opportunity, and I felt as if the people around me were disappointed by my actions.

It can be really disorienting when our intuitions and convictions clash with those of the people we listen to and trust. The cognitive dissonance can be so great that we find ourselves desperately trying to reorient our perspective to dissolve this conflict, as Gabriele manages to do:

> Thanks to the help of my parents and my friends, I realized that the only way to get over this without feeling like I had missed an opportunity would be to embrace it and produce an app. I wouldn’t be doing it for profit, though. In fact, that is not what matters to me. All that matters is knowing that I didn’t waste a chance, no matter if I’m going to succeed or fail.

This is not to say that Gabriele "sold out" or did the "wrong" thing. Rather, "right" and "wrong" are concepts we assign to actions as we fit them into our own patchwork of moral attitudes, and are probably more malleable than we'd like to believe.

I was once faced with a very lucrative offer from a major tech company to work on analytics for their popular ad engine. I was extremely conflicted about this as I happen to dislike online advertising, and especially search engine marketing. To my horror, the majority of my friends and family encouraged me to take the position despite my ethical qualms, as the benefit to my resume would be enormous. Up until this point my own ethical intuitions had more or less aligned with those of my peers, but suddenly I found myself alienated. Was I stupid to pass up this opportunity, or were they wrong to tell me to take it?

It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life, but I decided to turn down the offer. It was liberating, in a sense; I came to realize my own ethical agency and that I could choose for myself what "right" and "wrong" meant. But it was also a lonely decision, one whose "rightness" was not shared with those I cared about.

I'm not sure what my point is here, except to say that I'm glad Gabriele found peace with his decisions. When you believe one thing and everyone else believes another, it can be difficult to know whether to change your own beliefs or not, especially when the content of those beliefs is something as abstract as "right" and "wrong." In some sense, there is no right choice, only the one you make.

I just want to say I think you made the "right" choices along the way even if they maybe weren't the most savvy financially. I hope you profit from your app. It's hard to know what to do and stay motivated. Good luck!

That was a good read, but I think that in the fear of losing an opportunity he ended up blowing it entirely by releasing a PhoneGap app which is very slow and unresponsive even when it's very well designed.

Phonegap was more than competent for simple CSS slides/fades on the phones of 2010, when I published a game technically similar (wrt HTML+JS architecture) to 2048. What went wrong on the meantime?

I find it interesting that this is the first I've heard of the original game. Before now, I had only ever seen/ played the Doge version. Thinking about what that says about me...

I prefer the original Threes game. But this is a cool game too.

Question: why does the app need "full network access"?

I'm guessing for the ads.

Hey, Gabriele here. Nothing weird going on. It just uses it for Google Analytics (the official library has a bug where it won't work unless it has full network access on Android). Of course, there are also the ads, and they also make network requests.

Cool. Installed!

It's a required permission on apps built with Phonegap.

Not true - a phonegap-based app does not necessitate network permissions. I've even installed/used phonegap/cordova apps that require no permissions whatsoever. I've also published my own pg/cordova app on Play that and it doesn't require full network permissions.

My son asked me yesterday if he could play 2048 on android. (I showed him the js version on my computer)

I hope there is the option to tilt the phone to make the tiles slide...

Great post. I don't know why you feel so hesitant--it's your design and implementation that made the game a hit.

Looking forward to trying your app version.

oh ok. since you have a blog entry mentioning Three's Dev open letter I think you can keep stealing credits from their hard work.

Its good to have the story and perspective behind the evolution. An interesting business lesson on the threat of fast followers.

It's a pity that phonegap apps don't perform nearly as well as a natively written one, especially on older phones.

I downloaded it from the blog post but I find it sad I couldn't find it from the Play store search

Thanks to gabriel. 2048 made me interested in learning javascript. Forked and had fun.

Every week I see more people playing it on the subway in NYC. Congrats mate.

Put a price on the app, I'll be happy to buy it to say thanks!

put a popunder ad on the game page (web), its not that anoying and you can make like 200+$/day with 100k -150k visits /day. let me know if you need help with setting up.

The whole 2^11 movement is fascinating.

There is a chance for world peace. ;)

When you're 20 years old, and you get 20 million hits, you should have something reallllly good that you're working on to justify not pursuing your breakout hit.

Very awesome game, i'm addicted to it.

Self plugging?

Awesome success story ! Inspiring !!

A few thoughts as someone who has developed games for iOS, Android, and the web:

In today's world, if you want to retain implicit ownership of your product's name, a simultaneous triple-platform release is not optional, it is required. It must be performed in precisely the following way, or your launch will fail:

- Register your game's domain before announcing it to the public.

- Next, upload your iOS app to iTunes Connect and wait for up to one week for the app to be approved.

- Next, upload your Android app to the Google Play store; approval only takes a few hours.

- Finally, make the web version public, and announce the game along with links to the mobile versions.

If you deviate from this order, then you're screwed. One example: I released a game on the web and waited one day to upload the Android version to the Google Play store. I figured that gave me a little extra time to test and check for bugs, and what's the rush anyway? Nobody could steal a game in just 24 hours, right? Wrong. My app was rejected because Google insisted my app was attempting to impersonate another developer's app. The other developer's app was simply my own website, stolen line for line, tossed into Phonegap, and released the same day as my website. I explained this to Google in the appeal form, even including a link proving I owned the site the other developer stole it from, and they rejected my appeal without checking the link - I could clearly see in my server logs that they never clicked on it. Google does not allow you to file a second appeal, so I had to give my app an awful name no one would recognize it by, and the clone received all the downloads and glory thanks to the buzz my website's name was generating for it.

Another example: I was the first to publish an iOS app with the same name as my website. After the app had been waiting for review for four days, I figured it would be approved any moment now, and that it was safe for me to launch my website. I launched, and it turns out that Apple's app review process is not FIFO, because two days later, a clone with the same name and all the code stolen from my site was already approved for iOS, yet my own app was still waiting for review. My app was then rejected a few days later because it had the same name as an app that stole my code... again.

Gabriele Cirulli is an extremely unlucky man stuck in an extremely unfair landscape, and I cannot fault him for wallowing in the first of the five stages of grief. If Flappy Bird's alleged $50,000/day income can safely be assumed to be the average earned by the ads on any given #1 iTunes free app, then the entity which first claimed the name "2048" in iTunes Connect is currently a millionaire, because 2048 was at the very top of the iTunes free app charts for weeks. Gabriele seems to believe or hope that the masses will see his "repost" of his own app and be stricken by the desire to do the ethically right thing and uninstall all of the rushed clones and install the legitimate version and play it with all the fervor and excitement as if the global 2048 hype still currently existed. Unfortunately this will NEVER happen.

On a side note, Phonegap is only getting worse over time. Typical Adobe rot is setting in; the last version had a catastrophic bug causing the xml manifest to simply not be read during the build process, because a critical "for" loop was referencing the child element of a nonexistent variable. They swept this under the rug; countless hapless developers were mindlessly releasing broken apps during this period. Half of Phonegap's documentation refers to "Cordova" and executing "cordova" on the command line where it should say "Phonegap". Commands that have different names between Cordova and Phonegap are still documented as the Cordova equivalent, so one must use Google to find other people who searched for hours until they themselves came across the explanation that the same command in Phonegap requires the use of a completely different word. It is an absolute trainwreck, but aside from that, the primary issue for consumers now is that apps built with Phonegap no longer work correctly on newer versions of Android and haven't for months, which is why Gabriele's extremely simple and resource-minimal app is currently getting a bunch of 1- and 2-star reviews in the Google Play store with complaints about the speed.

> The other developer's app was simply my own website, stolen line for line, tossed into Phonegap, and released the same day as my website.

> two days later, a clone with the same name and all the code stolen from my site was already approved for iOS

And there is no recourse when this happens? You can't report them?

As someone mentioned above, a lawyer. I feel it's extremely rare someone is going to steal an unreleased game in the first place, If you're a well known developer or big gaming company, maybe the probability goes up slightly, but even then, a big game success is still a shot in the dark.

> I feel it's extremely rare someone is going to steal an unreleased game in the first place

This seems like an example of people throwing things at the wall until something sticks. If all they have to do is copy-paste into (e.g.) PhoneGap, and submit it to an app store, then why not? If it takes off, then they get to reap the benefits. If it doesn't take off, then they've just wasted a little bit of time and effort.

Regarding your Phonegap remarks in last paragraph. Are the described problems in Phonegap or in Phonegap Build? What about local Cordova?

The xml manifest bug I was referring to was introduced in the release build of Cordova 3.4.0. Here is a sample of some of the confusion caused at the time: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/phonegap/ahzIwbUqr4A

Adobe apparently blindly tosses the current release build of Cordova into Phonegap without testing for bugs.

The existence of a bug was not hard to see: During the Android build process, one would see "ReferenceError: a is not defined" pop up multiple times.

I scoured google and even asked in #phonegap on freenode, and no one seemed to know what was going on yet. I found the cause of the bug by spending an hour poking through the source files. I then spent the rest of the day idling in #phonegap, explaining to the confused newcomers what they could do to fix their build. That was the first and last time I ever tried using Phonegap.

Thanks for the details!

So what's your process for writing three different versions of an untried app without killing your productivity?

If they literally copied your website, this is a simple case of copyright infringement. Source code, descriptive text and graphics are each individually subject to copyright. You should be able to file a DMCA request to remove the offending app. Assuming their app that copied yours was successful, a lawsuit for damages might be worthwhile.

Note that the simple concept of a game is not subject to copyright. Also note that your failure to register does not relieve the offending party of liability though it might remain advantageous to do so.

In short, talk with a lawyer.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and the foregoing should not be construed as legal advice.

Remember: your app doesn't have to be launched to the general public immediately after Apple's approval process is done. Just set an availability date in the future. You can then make it available manually when you are ready.

You can even submit an app that is not yet finished (if it is a game, it may be missing levels, for instance), as long as it is usable in the current state and does not crash. Of course, when you update you have to go through the process again, but at least the application name is yours already.

If simultaneous launch is required, that seems to be a better approach. I am not sure if the Play store has the option of not making the app available immediately after launch, but if it has, you could flip the switches all at once.

Also, do you have to release a web version? It doesn't seem to be paying off.

There is a reason we have the patent and copyright system ;)

That's very interesting on how close you have to time the releases. Regarding Phonegap: I tried Cirulli's original app on the train this morning having read the article above. I found that there's a highly noticeable delay in reacting to swipes on my (brand new) Samsung S5, and that this was rather detrimental to my experience. As such, I can only conclude that Phonegap is best avoided if performance matters at all.

The native version I'd already installed by merit of it being amongst the highest ranked in Play store when searching for 2048 is fully responsive and fluid; unfortunately this clone does not pay any respect to Cirulli's work.

I'm happy to see a donation button on Cirulli's github page and will utilise it shortly.

I have been playing the 2048 for Android in the Top 1 of 2048 apps and now tried this guy original. Well it sucks..

the original programmer 2048 is so slow and laggish in comparison it makes it unplayable for who's coming from the other one. Visuals are also better.

Why are you down voting an helpful critic to the programmer. Only praising comments allowed ?

Your username is kind of against the rules here. Maybe a mod can help you change it?

Your comment was rude. It is also so poorly written that a reader can't tell what you're trying to say (other than "well it sucks"). On reflection, probably you can figure out why "well it sucks" isn't actually helpful as a comment.

I think it would be OK to be poorly written, but not both.

Good on you for staying cool man

I can understand why but DAMN the article from the Threes! people comes off really bitter.

Well, we all have the opportunity to steal things in everyday life. But in the human space outside of the twilight zone we call "HN", there are laws that keep people from profiting from stolen material. Unfortunately, you're enabled by the app stores and their allowance this type of theft. Calling it an opportunity doesn't mean you should take it.

You already had the gift of recognition, even for something that wasn't truly your own creation. Did it need to be milked further, or could you have moved on and created another game, riding your reputation? That's a big "if", but it would have been the right thing to do.

Stolen? Come off it. Games have a long history of being cloned and improved on.

Agreed, but I'd argue that the only "improvement" 2048 made over Threes! was its pricetag.

Except this version of 2048 was made with no knowledge of 3s.

The original web 2048, true. And I've got no qualms with that version. OP took some open source code, modified the stylesheet, and added some animations. It caught on - cool, whatever.

However, the "official" mobile version of 2048 - which this blog post is specifically promoting - was created with full knowledge of Threes!.

I disagree - I can't stand the look of Threes, or the inconsistency in the first couple of stages of arithmetic.

But that's what makes Threes superior, for me - the needing to add 1 and 2, and the fact that they don't match each other makes for a more difficult game that requires much more thought. The fact that you can make matches with the basic tile that has the highest percentage of popping on the board every moves means that there are less consequences to not making the optimal move each turn.

That's just my opinion of course, but 2048 seems annoyingly easy - so much so that the up right down left repeat strategy is very valid to score a somewhat decent score when compared to some players.

Disney used others stories for their movies. He used others games for his game. Derivative doesn't not equal stealing.

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