Learning vs copying: when is it ok to reuse an idea?
The question raised by Flappy Bird
Indie developer Dong Nguyen recently had something of a live-tweeted crash-and-burn following harsh criticism over his game Flappy Bird. Folks claimed he copied gameplay and art from other games. The impression of these articles was that Dong had done something wrong.
I personally find Flappy Birds addictively challenging. It gets some things right: It feels like it should be easy. It feels like, once you get it, you’d be great at it. The controls and visuals are dead simple yet consistent and catchy. And it’s ridiculously easy to start a new game when you die.
I used to believe that popular games always deserved to be so. I changed my mind when I saw the popularity of compulsion-based games that don’t add much fun to players’ lives. But I still believe that popularity is more than luck — and that there’s more to Flappy Bird than randomly copied ideas.
Which brings us to the question:
When is it ok to build a game the clearly takes elements from others?
My gut feeling is that Dong did nothing wrong in creating Flappy Bird. The art is Mario-inspired, but he isn’t selling it as Mario. The game mechanic is simple and old. Looking at all games, every major genre comes with its own built-in mechanic. Did Halo only copy the game mechanics of Quake? Is every platformer derivative of Mario? I don’t think anyone would make that claim.
Let’s jump into the perspective of a student. From here, learning seems not only acceptable, but virtuous. It’s silly to throw away the lessons of past successes. How is learning different from copying?
In the case of academic research, one major distinction is that researchers want you to copy their efforts. They don’t think of it as copying. To them, their purpose is to add to the cumulative sum of human knowledge. Each time you copy something useful that a researcher has published, you effectively confirm the work’s value. It’s win-win-win — I win, the researcher wins, and the game-player wins (since obviously what I’m doing is making a game; what else is research for?).
Perhaps the difference is in the intentions of the original creator. It seems unlikely that Nintendo wanted people to simulate their art style in future games that compete for a player’s attention. Embedded in the spirit of intellectual property law is the principle that creators have the right to exclusively profit from their ideas — at least for a while.
Now let’s jump to the other end of the spectrum. It would clearly be wrong if I copied the source code of Grand Theft Auto 8 — this post takes place in the future by the way — and sold it as GaarlicBread’s Awesome Stolen Carzz 12. That’s a brilliant game title by the way; I call dibs on it.
This goes two steps beyond illegal. Step one — it’s clearly morally wrong; step two — it’s so clearly morally wrong, I think players would disapprove en masse. Harsh words would commence and devious deeds would be done. Sandwich makers would “accidentally” put mustard in my sandwich when I clearly said no mustard.
Looking at these thought experiments — at one end, learning from voluntary teachers, to the other, with blatant digital product theft — it emerges that reusing an existing idea is acceptable when either:
- The original creator of the idea wants it to be reused; or
- The idea does not merit ownership, so that no one loses anything when you reuse it.
Case 1 is easy to understand. Case 2 is the interesting one. This is the case that confronts Flappy Bird. We can further boil down the essense of case 2 to this critical question:
Which ideas can you own?
Copyright law cares about this question — but my question is not one of legality. Rather, I want to investigate my own moral compass as to when an idea can be owned. The law attempts to be aligned with morality, but morality itself is the more fundamental concept.
I posit that an idea is owned to the extent that its value is based on the work of the creator.
An example: In 1872, Claude Monet painted Impression, Sunrise; the French title is Impression, soleil levant. This work was publicly lambasted, and the entire style of art similar to it — impressionism — was derisively named after this one painting. If a skilled artist meticulously copied Monet’s original, the value of this new painting would be derived primarily from Monet’s work.
Camille Pissarro painted in a style that shared many elements with Monet’s work. However, Pissarro’s images were original, and his style had independence. People admiring a Pissarro are unlikely to think to themselves, “self, this is only good because Monet is good.”
In other words, we’re asking: Where does the value of the new work come from? If it’s from borrowed ideas, then it feels as if the ownership of those ideas extends to the new work.
Flappy Birds is fun because it’s simple, looks easy, but is actually difficult. The art gives it a bit of personality. I don’t think it’s fun because some other tap-to-go-up game is fun. I don’t think people play because it has Mario-esque elements.
My proposed answer does not provide a black-and-white dichotomy of works that are copies versus those that borrow, but are essentially new. We’re talking about what value a work has, and where the value comes from — these are not clear-cut concepts.
If you do walk away from this post with one clear conclusion, I hope it’s this: Always be creating. Take everything around you, everything good, and add yourself to that. What you end up with will inevitably build on the work of others, but if you succeeded to add something valuable, it will be yours.
