Flappy bird flu
The appstore epidemic
If you’re making money off of your game and its easy to copy, someone is going to clone it.
Did you notice the plague of flappy bird clones? These were likely made by people who saw the success and thought they could make a quick buck. The game was easy enough to copy that it was worth it for those who weren’t dedicated or skilled enough to create an original experience. Even the freelance sites were filled with requests for programmers to create a flappy bird clone — with a “twist”. Money is like a carrot on a stick.
Flappy bird was an appstore bird flu. These were not quality apps, and Apple eventually had to start cracking down.
Another example is Threes — a finely crafted iphone game. It has great game play, animations, sound-design, cute characters and a great smooth feel. The clone 2048 copied threes and dominated the rankings. 2048 is free while threes costs $1.99. You can read all about the threes developer’s frustration.
A solution
Ultimately there’s nothing you can do to prevent someone from copying your game. The most simple advice is to make the experience difficult to replicate and continue to innovate. Anything can be replicated but you can make it difficult, or create the illusion that its difficult. Having a bike lock most of the time causes just enough resistance to prevent your bike from getting stolen.
Stand out in the crowd. Threes is still the superior game in terms of quality, and there are always going to be people who recognize and appreciate this.
Do it better! Have better services surrounding your games, higher polish, tighter controls, game play, design, and fantastic performance. Continued effort on your app will make it eventually pull ahead of the competition.
Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, and strategies to prevent cloning. E-mail me at brian@raresloth.com.
Thanks!
