So, first of all: I am slightly flattered, and more than a little miffed. The current top-selling game for iPhone is pretty clearly heavily inspired by my game Wavespark, published a year and a day prior. I’ve got lots of mixed feelings about this. I’ll readily accept that Tiny Wings has much higher production values than Wavespark; if nothing else, it looks exactly like one expects an iPhone game to look these days. I also recognize that you can’t copyright gameplay – objectively a good thing, as there’s be no room for incremental innovation or variations on a genre, things necessary for the health of games as a whole. All the same, a nod of acknowledgment at the very least would have been appreciated.
Oh, and to all those who were clamoring for an iPhone port of Wavespark: you told me so.
I believe that the fact they didn’t even give “a nod of acknowledgement” NMcCoy put it, is quite wrong. It’s just not cool man. Taking somebody’s idea and making a profit off it while they get nothing in return. At least say, “Yes, our inspiration was Wavespark.”
Eh… stop crying. This is like saying Sonic copies Mario, or Halo copied Doom, King of Fighters copied Street Fighter or Angry Birds copied physics puzzlers.
Fact is, you can’t copyright a game genre, someone else probably thought of the mechanics as well, and Tiny Wings is pretty well thought out and polished. Your game is a dot moving along graph lines. The amount of work that went into execution of Tiny Wings dwarfs the crappy work done in Wavespark.
If you had any initiative, you would have put your game up in the Appstore. Sucks to be you, loser, now back to obscurity with you.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=26129787&postcount=12410
How the heck do you know he borrowed the idea? It’s not like the gameplay is anything so ingenious someone else can’t think of it. Time to get off your high-horse and start realizing other’s have ideas too.
http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=85047&page=15
The iOS industry is based around “snooze you lose”. Polished execution is valued greatly. This is nobody’s fault but NMcCoy; but for reluctance (laziness?) of polishing his game for the mass market and putting it up in the Appstore, he too might have had a profitable hit in the Appstore.
And the devs of Doodle Jump are bad guys since they didn’t give that nod to PapiJump?
You had a lot of time to think about a port… My suggestion: bring on another great idea and sell it yourself. A good idea isn’t worth anything, as long as you don’t put it into (attractive) practice. Good luck for the future.
But I also have to think of Einstein who once said:
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The difference between Wavespark and Tiny Wings is a perfect example for Chris Hecker’s “Please Finish Your Game” rant: http://j.mp/gOn1Bt
Here is the thing. I went from gamer to game dev pretty much two years ago. Since then, I do my fair share of catching up with what I would call “the Indie gaming scene”, and while I feel I have a good handle on what is happening in the mobile space, I have to say I find the browser game space still very scattered, despite actively looking into it.
And while I’m all with you on giving credit where credit is due, I hereby confess I have not heard about Wavespark before. I think I saw your site and read about your project a while ago, but have not looked into it more. So I asked a few game devs on Twitter, well connected Indie devs, although mostly from the mobile game sector.
This completely non-scientific approach turned out that none out of six who answered knew about Wavespark before, which makes me think it might just not be me being a complete ignorant.
Now I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse and I don’t want to offend you at all, you seem to be making amazing stuff here, but there is a fair chance that dev simply didn’t know about your game.
My point is, it is very clear you deserve all credits for having an original and great idea (and game) early. I hope this drives tons of (new) traffic to your site, similar to how it made me find (and enjoying) it. And maybe it makes sense to assume some case of doubt, to contact the other dev and see what happens before you are miffed for a nod that maybe really should more go to Sonic
Again, no offense and at a minimum pls accept my apology for missing your site so far
Yeah, but acknowledging that would mean that there’s no plausible deniability.
You’re giving yourself too much credit for an unoriginal idea. And it’s not like wavespark received any considerable buzz.
I’m totally behind you Nathan. I saw this “Tiny wings” on Indie Games, and felt very bad about it. You do not deserved any retribution for this game, that’s sure, but you at least deserved an aknowledgement!
Of course there is no copyright on gameplay, and of course it’s a good thing, but when we think about it it’s a bit weird.
There is a copyright on music, and Djs, for exemple, can’t use it without authorisation, which is a bad thing, but why does it sound so obvious to anybody?
There is nothing to do, but you shouldn’t be upset : You’ve created a new game genre, Tiny wings is the proof of it. And as an experimentalist you should be proud. For the rest of my life, I’ll call this kind of games “Wavespark-like”.
Call of duty sales a lot of copies, but nobody forget about Doom.
So congratulation Nathan. You’ve made it, you are in video-game history!
(and sorry for my bad english)
I would be very interested indeed to see any prior example of a game with a core mechanic of racing over procedural sloped terrain by manipulating gravity with single-button controls. Provide such an example and I will gladly retract any claim of Wavespark’s innovation in that regard.
I can’t believe how negative some of these comments are… it’s his own fault that his game was cloned?! I guess this sort of ignorant perspective is what allows clones to flourish on iOS.
sin(surfing) came out 2 years before your game, back in 2008 on the Xbox 360!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSS2zVfzCxg
sin(Surfing) has neither single-button controls nor gravity manipulation. The only real commonality is waves. Thanks for playing, though.
Well that’s balls. I saw Tiny Wings on the app store and thought, “That’s very reminiscent of Wavespark” Didn’t realize they were so similar. Sorry to hear that, Nathan. Wavespark’s a solid game you should be proud of. And you’re right; I can’t think of another game with the same core mechanic.
Anyone who calls you lazy is very ignorant. You’ve been coming up with a new game every week for over a year now. I don’t know anyone else with that kind of work ethic. It’s the reason why I asked to write music for you; if I did it for someone else, the game would never come out.
Anywho, too bad, Nathan. At least the controversy brought some more people to your site =)
Peace,
-John
p.s. I love the new game title in the queue, Huge Wings.
I cannot believe that most people, when confronted with this issue, have the reaction “theirs came out first and has superficial differences, so they deserve to get all the money and you should shut up.” It’s a very disheartening direction for the game industry to go, especially for the people who, y’know, actually come up with the creative and fun new ideas. But I guess this should be a lesson to you: if you want to steal somebody’s idea, just put cartoon birds on it. (Look forward to my forthcoming game Angry Birds With Tiny Wings, in which you launch birds onto rolling hills for points. It’s a totally new and original idea because it’s not exactly the same as the thing that came first!)
That’s a lame excuse Nathan, your game still has the base mechanic and gameplay as Sin Surfing. If you can claim your game is different because of the one touch change you made, then Tiny Wings is nothing like yours cause of the additions and changes HE MADE. He made the zoom out feature that is not only much more practical than your marker that points the current position of the offscreen projectile, it’s also exhilarating. He created checkpoints and expanded it into a island progression feature. He created a character and artstyle that encourages people to keep playing the game again, while your game looks like some crap you made in a week (oh that’s right, you did).
I can PERSONALLY to playing flash games with the one touch mechanic for YEARS before your game came out, so YOU’D have to own up to that long before Andreas even sends you an acknowledgement tweet. And on to of that, you had an entire year to get off your lazy butt and do something with it, but you didn’t. I’m sorry, but compared to the 7 months of work the Tiny Wings dev put into his game, your shoddy gimmick doesn’t deserve to be rewarded with money or fame. Even if you had put your game up on the Appstore no one would have bought it.
So soak in your 15 minutes of fame, cause no one’ s gonna care about you in a week anyway. Neogaf laughs at you.
If this game (tiny wings) had fallen flat on it’s face and didn’t take off, no one would say anything. The reason everyone is bitching about it is because it’s the top app on the AppStore now, and people feel compelled to try and gain success from others’ ideas.
And this whole,”Aw, my game was cloned, screw you!” crap from EVERYBODY these days is just ridiculous. If it is a blatant rip off (e.g.- Angry Birdz, Doodle Jumper, etc.) then sure, you deserve the right to complain! However, if everyone had this mindset for every similar concept, then there wouldn’t be anymore new games! Every fps takes the original core gameplay mechanics and places its own spin on it. That’s what makes games successful. In Tiny Wings’ case, Andreas’ presentation is what made it take to the skies (no pun intended =P). It’s just the better game. This happens all the time (doodle jump/papi jump for example). I’m still not convinced Andreas even KNEW about wavespark, as it seems that’s the case with a bunch of people around the Internet.
And no offense intended what so ever, Nathan, I’m just expressing my opinions.
Fair enough, Justin, though I think that many are either inadvertently misunderstanding or deliberately misconstruing my stance on the matter. I’ll write a proper post when I get home to clarify things.
To the troll brigade: feel free to chill out, you’re wasting your own time more than mine.
And I think even me saying TW is better than WS is going too far in the other direction as well. They are both two different games. Almost different enough that they aren’t even comparable (except for the mechanics, of course).
I was disappointed by the arrival of the troll brigade. This site has always been an inspiration and pleasure for me because of the wealth of original ideas and constructively critical regulars who post regarding the games. It is perhaps not surprising that the negativity that has been imported is based upon an ignorance that matches their vitriol. I note that SEVERAL other sites made the comparison earlier (I can provide at least a dozen such links), and that Nathan was merely reacting to those posts, not “whining.” I dare say, as well, that NONE of the negative comments were provided by anyone who ACTUALLY has written, much less created original, games. Those that can, do. Those that can’t… apparently troll.
P.S. I still want to see a port of Wavespark. :^)
People are addicted more to the charm of the game rather than the mechanic itself. Kudos to the Tiny Birds dev for making the game enchanting. Certainly got my dollar.
Nate, your game, not so much. It’s far too barebones, I doubt I would download it even for free. Were you actually finished with the game, or did you plan to act graphics to the wire framework eventually?
Well, all that matters is the feel of the game, and how much I enjoy it. Tiny Wings just feels like a much better game than Wavespark to me, I’d rather play Doodle Jump over PapiJump any day, same goes for your game and Tiny Wings.
I’m frustrated by the comments on here – comments that show a fundamental misunderstanding of basic copyright law. All that’s required to secure copyright is that the work have a modicum of originality and be fixed in some medium. That’s it. Whether McCoy put a ton of work into the original product or scribbled some halfhearted diagram on a whiteboard is irrelevant. Your discussion of Tiny Wings having a superior overall design is irrelevant. Your discussion of Tiny Wings’ creator putting significant time into developing said superior product is irrelevant. Your discussion of anything other than modicum of originality and fixation is irrelevant.
I understand that we have a basic desire to reward hard work, but copyright law simply doesn’t work that way. Copyright law protects original ideas fixed in some medium. The overall goal is to foster creativity; to do this, we protect the originator of the idea.
McCoy, at the very least, can claim that these games are strikingly similar.
You are mistaken on a rather crucial point, Rajahdeux. Copyright law does not, in fact, protect original ideas – it protects a particular expression of those ideas. Unless Tiny Wings made use of my game’s actual source code/art/music/etc., no copyright violation took place, regardless of how outraged anyone gets on my behalf. The domain of IP law that protects ideas would be patents – and patents need to be specifically registered. If in some strange mirror universe I’d filed a patent on “a method of controlling the movement of a simulated object in a computer game”, I would have a case to make.
Regardless, as noted by another commenter (whose comment was withheld, its tone being rather more hostile than I’d like on my site) – all creative works, games included, build off of both ideas and expressions of the past. For the most part, I try to cite my own influences when I consciously recognize them, as can be seen in the Wavespark post among many others.
Have anyone updated to the latest version of
Tiny Wings? In the credits Now it says: “Game mechanics inspired by Wavespark”