how would you react if a company ripped off starbound?

Admittedly, That Looks Pretty Damn Cool. In Fact, That Looks F*cking Awesome. But, I'll Stick With Starbound, Till' I'm Dead.

 

From all I recall it was announced before Terraria or in somewhat similar time period...

 

Honestly, this topic.

How did the Beatles feel about other bands being inspired by and using their style? It's how Europe got guns, yet China invented the original firearm. Markus Persson got his hands on an unreleased game called Infiniminer and suddenly we have Minecraft. How does the Infiniminer dev feel about that? Does anyone care?

All you've done is touch upon the way humans have progressed for thousands of years. Oh, and Naysayers never get anywhere. People called Terraria a Minecraft clone for years. Didn't hold it back one bit.

So, let's assume Starbound is super successful. Someone is bound to want some of that and try to do it their own way. Being the greedy humans that we are, our only concern will be what's in it for us. So, the community in general is only going to be concerned if the game maker screws up.

 

It's posts like these that make me wonder why I even bother with gaming communities anymore. I would say this game belongs in a genre with Starbound but is not a ripoff, just like Edge of Space. While I prefer Signs of Life's artwork to Starbound / Edge of Space I feel they all bring unique playing experiences and opportunities to the table.

That being said this whole fiasco with game Y being a copy of game X really needs to just end.....

Disgust at the communities inability to understand that multiple games form a genre not just one.

 

Hm. If this keeps up we will finally have a golden age of PC platformers.

Remember the 90s when consoles had absurd amounts of platforming goodness? No one cared about the fact that they all were mostly the same anyway.

 

(Sorry if something doesn't make any sense, these are not real definitions, these are just words I use to describe certian things)
There's what I would call a rip-off(clone, or copy) and just a simialar game.
A rip off is a quick cash grab that pretty much tries to copy everything. And I said tries, because most of the rip offs are a lot worse than the game's they're ripping off.
In this case, I wouldn't care for it. For example, we have Fortress craft. a rip off of minecraft. It's a lot worse.

A simialar game is a game that's inspired/influenced by another game. Most of the time they try to put bring their own things in. Bring something new to the table. The main goal is not copying the game, but making a simialar one that's either better than the game, or just their own vision of it. They try to improve on the idea, or change something, or just make more.
In this case, I'd like to see what the game has to offer. Think doom and duke nukem 3d. Duke nukem 3d brought character/voices to the FPS genre and objects you could interact with.
Think Inifminer and Minecraft. Inifminer was a competetive mining game. But notch actualyl liked the building itself more. So he made minecraft, where the focus was building .Than after he even went further and added survival mode, which makes it an entirely different game. Think terraria and minecraft. think Starbound and terraria. Etc. Wether the game is better than the original or not doesn't really matter. Their intent is not to copy the game just to get cash, but just make a new game simialar to it.
In this case, I'd be very interested in how it competes and checking it out.

In any case, I'd rather play a good simialar game or even a good rip off, Than a bad original game.
There are cases where people try to make a game as simialar as possible on a different device, just because they want to play it on that(Think android and xbox 360 clones PC of games)
There are rip offs or simialar games that are basicly just as good as the original game, but there's no real reason to play it over the original. But on their own, they're not bad games.
So a rip off does not have to be a bad game. They ususally are, but they can be just as good as the original if they really succeed. After all, they want something simialar to leech off of the success of the original. Ususally they just make something a lot worse but simialar, but sometimes they really try to make it as good.

You don't HAVE to be original to make a good game....
Not every minecraft-like game is a clone.
We've had block building sandbox games long before MC(Blockland for example), but the survival+building/sandbox game is a new thing since MC.

TL DR: I wouldn't really care, except if it's just a simialar game trying to improve or change things in the genre/the original game, which starbound pretty much does with terraria.

 

Haha, that's what I mean. Anything else would just be competition. But an exact copy, a precise rip-off would give me the face of that very woman.

 

I wouldn't really care....
It would come out after Starbound (unless they were already working on it), so it might be nice with something new to play, by that time.

 

Anger.

 

Google made an android keyboard that appears to be a blatant rip-off of Swype... but it's better because they have more money to put toward development so I am using it.

Does that answer your question?

 

I would be mildly annoyed.

Any developer who is lazy enough to simply/blatantly ripoff an entire game (without additional innovation) probably isn't going to do a better job than the original (and could possibly be worse).

Think The War Z vs DayZ.

If someone where to take the formula of gameplay that is going to make Starbound awesome and improve upon it, I would be fine.

Think War Thunder vs World of Tanks/Warplanes.

 

I would be so, so annoyed..

 

Depends. Is it a homage or have they blatantly stolen assets? because whilst it would be annoying I kind of hate people who think that there should be one and only one variant and no other ones similar may follow.

If it's innovating a series of inspired titles then not so much. If it's a blatant steal of assets then yes I would. As much as I'd side with Tiy i gotta stick to my principles which don't like to hinder innovation. Sorry >_>

 

I doubt that someone would make a "rip off" of as complex a game as Starbound.

Developing games, despite what you might think, is not easy, nor is it fast. Sure, someone could make a similar game, which technically Starbound is to Terraria, and Terraria is to Minecraft.

What really matters is whether they can do a better job and make a game that surpasses its predecessors.

Other developers making similar games isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact its a good thing as they help to refine and define the genre, which sets a benchmark to follow for similar games in the future to emulate and improve upon.
And achieving that is no easy task. Think of how many games took ideas from other games, but somehow couldn't quite match the feel, depth of gameplay, style or any of the critical elements needed to be considered a true successor to a classic game in its genre.

For example, countless games have tried to replicate the classic X-Com games, but most if not all somehow lack something crucial to be considered a step above the original. Even X-Com: Enemy Unknown, while undeniably a good game, is fundamentally different and not really a successor, if you ask longtime fans of the series.

 

I answered "fear", because I'm scared of how THIS community would react.

 

I'd be kind of disgusted. Who in the right mind steals content from an indie company?
But then again... Starbound is the name of an old 1990s DOS game...

 

id play it

 

Going around crying about "ripoffs" is something you really see mostly on the bottom tier of Internet communities, we should try to be a little more mature than that. There's a big difference between a wholesale ripoff of someones game, and someone doing their own implementation of an idea.

If we lived in a world where no one ever tried to out-do someone at their own concept, it'd be an even more expensive place to live. No competition would mean lower quality products and services for all of us. Game developers recognize this, since almost every game is inspired by and derivative of some other game. They don't complain, and neither should we.

 

Other: I wouldn't really care...

 

Are they taking pre orders. Games literally rip each other off all the time so ya. I mean we use to call open world games GTA rip offs till there where just too many that we had to start calling them sandboxes.