Reset: The Digital Wild West

Written by: Brandon Jones | February 29, 2012 at 6:00PM


Before the advent of the high-powered automobile, in the days when you could sack a train and take off on horseback into the hills, we experienced a unique kind of brazen lawlessness. I think we’re going through something similar on the internet right now. Sure there’s common thievery like the occasional case of stolen identity or credit card fraud, but the pranksters I find truly fascinating are the ones that have the balls to make it a full time business. These are the ones you almost admire for their astonishing inability to care for any consumer anywhere.


What this company has accomplished is phenomenal. While they do have some official properties under their belt, the majority of their library is made of games trying to be the mobile version of other games… often humorously so. Modern Combat? I see what you did there. They know that most people won’t know the difference, but more amusingly, they know that the millions of people who do can do nothing about it and will probably buy it anyway. The reason they have a development empire is because their games aren’t half bad. Their Need for Speed ripoff Asphalt is on its 6th installment for a reason, and I took the first Dungeon Hunter for a ride and enjoyed it. They’re just not original in any way, except in their desire to see these experiences realized on the platform.

What the less gullible consumers have to wonder is what the internal "vibe" is at Gameloft. Are they hungry, previously laid-off developers just looking for a familiar, relevant and exciting project to work on or do they phone-in each day of work and cackle in their millions like Montgomery Burns? I just can’t imagine taking any sort of pride in making Modern Combat. Hats off to the Gameloft employee that can say that title to the face of a 360 or PS3 owner and not burst out laughing. At least their MMO (which is actually quite impressive) wasn’t called War of Worldcraft.


I can imagine this company collectively sleeping a lot better at night just because it’s so damn huge. They made their name on a few original properties, but they're still guilty of some pretty obvious plagiarism and they know it. One of the most recent and close-to-home was their "homage" to NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower called Dream Heights. Just stopping at the name alone conjures up images of crafty businessmen and women screaming adjective-pronoun combinations. Beautiful Building! Pretty Precipices! Silly Skyscraper! How long did it take them to think up “Dream Heights,” and how long did it take a behemoth like Zynga to pump that imitation out compared to the likely hellish process a young company like Nimblebit would experience?

Nimblebit’s Ian Marsh said it perfectly on TouchArcade:


This was after Marc Pincus, Chief Executive of Social Games at Zynga compared Tiny Tower to games dating as far back as SimTower, which is a decent point until you think about it for more than 5 seconds. Again, nothing amazes me about the way these people do business. It started with the PC, Atari 2600 and then the NES, and the practice is also alive and well on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade. What does amaze me is that THEY KNOW IT and they still march around like they’re living in a fog. TinyWhat? Never heard of it. Oh, THAT game? Sure they’re similar but it’s a total coincidence… trust us.

You have to rehearse that in a mirror. There’s no way you can shovel crap like that and not have knee-high boots on. Even if it’s a clone Nimblebit doesn't really have a case against Zynga, or even other knockoffs like Glu's Small Street and Lil' Dungeon, so why don’t those companies just come out and admit what they’re doing? It seems like some companies function based on how many fans they have, and others weigh how many people they will allow to hate them and spread well-deserved venom about them on the internet. They’re planning on making enemies no matter what, as long as they don’t make too many. I can’t imagine going to that job everyday.


This one takes the cake. It’s not even a real company. They’re like ninjas. They slipped into the App Store to gobble up one dollar bills with a fake-app of Pokemon Yellow and then vanished when Apple actually realized what was going on. "World of Anime" is such a brilliant name for a company too. Throw that into Google and you’ll be searching for YEARS, but it also seems so legit at first glance. I'm not going to waste time on hold with Apple waiting to be told that they have no control over who fakes what to steal from who. I get that they, along with other gigantic media sites, can’t realistically police all their content. They have to fish for scams just like we have to bitch slap people that steal GT media and claim it’s their own.

What sets my brain spinning is that, like it was in the days of cowboys and Indians, a group like World of Anime can operate this scam like this amidst civilized society. World of Anime, a peddler no better than the guy on the street corner hiding pennies under coffee cups, was shoulder-to-shoulder with Rockstar Games, one of the most prestigious (albeit raunchy) publishers in the medium. That won’t exist forever, because it can’t, so be amused by their antics while you can.

For all of you that have been burned by tricksters like these I hope you did so willingly. We can all support devious duplicates like these on occasion because there’s nothing wrong with helping employ people making video games. I just hope that the same community of gamers that stopped Jack Thompson and Paul Christoforo can help encourage more honesty in this business through scare tactics and taking that 1 extra second to realize the app you’re about to buy is totally bogus.

Currently Playing: Iron Brigade, GTA3 iPhone, Hero Academy
Currently Listening: God of Love by Stereo Alchemy
Currently Watching: Downton Abbey, An Idiot Abroad
Currently Reading: The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1)