It's the 3rd or 4th account you create to spam your game. Stop.

The last product of theirs I used was TheSettlers III. It was fun. But, after that, they made a series of bad decisions. Weren't they the first to have an umbilical so even LAN play required a working Internet connection - and rumoured a good one - or the game would quit?

I wish them well and I wish them a lot of smarts so they can get better.

Well yeah, all creative, talented and ingenious gaming professionals have long left and joined/founded other studios.

The company corporatized so much, it completely lost touch with what made it grow in the first place.

Now it's almost certainly heading the way of Sears, Toys R Us, blockbuster, Blackberry...

No new ideas, and money line must go up. Welcome to the vampire economy.

Yeah totally, I'm sure there are multiple aspects to it. I don't think Nexomon counts as a rip-off game, a rip-off idea maybe? poorly mimicking the original game is ,for me at least, the one thing that separates a rip-off from a clone or a spiritual successor etc.

The intention being, most of the time, riding on the popularity of the original to success.

I also wouldn't generally consider fan games to be rip-offs.

You know what, I've never thought about it before but I think you're spot on. Portal 1 & 2 are essentially tomb raider puzzle rooms with different movement mechanics.

I like the legend trilogy, but more so because they felt like platformers. They're difficulty was instead more to do with route reading and finding out where to go. Whereas the original had that plus the strange (but cool) combo style methodical inputs for doing all of the different acrobatics required for the route. Here's hoping the new games can blend the two a bit more.

Because new tomb raider was inspired by Uncharted.

However I feel uncharted, 2-4 in particular, have more classic tomb raider esque moments with puzzles outside of combat.

New tomb raider felt like it leaned more into uncharted combat and exemplified the death defying set pieces. All of the puzzley elements in the new tomb raiders felt like they were just side content.

Because I'm biased to the way PS1 games look with their imperfections I'd always lean PS1.

What if the thing they brought to the table was being able to get a similar experience for cheaper?

This usually is still called a rip off regardless but more gauging if you would instead think of that as potentially having a positive connotation instead.

Like say if you didn't think X game was worth its price point but you were instead able to find something else that gives the same experience but at a price you instead feels more justified.

Not played either games but an example could be say current Pokemon games vs something like Nexomon. Nexomon at face value just looks like a Gen 3-esque Pokémon game. I can see others preferring that "rip off" over the real deal due to the real deals' price point and any potential disappointments one may have had with their recent directions.

Not exactly specifically on topic but thought it would still be an interesting tangential discussion.

Right, therefore the looks and theme should be massively different (like sci-fi when the original was medieval, etc.).

If you can't figure out how to take something change it without breaking the fun then you're most likely doing a rip-off.

You have to do something transformative for it to not be a rip-off. Just add an example, if you take Hollow Knight gameplay and then make a game with art style heavily inspired by Hollow Knight art and your story is about some other bugs, then that's pretty much just Hollow knight and as such would be a rip off. But if you took Hollow Knight gameplay and made it about robots in a space derelict that could be transformative enough to be its own thing.

It depends - if it was enjoyable but I found that it was a carbon copy afterwards, I'd feel betrayed, but only if the original company was wholesome would I be upset, and I'd probably buy the original. If it was kind of copied, but mostly in spirit or inspiration, or it was revitalising an archaic game, then no harm no foul. If it were a dime-a-hundred game like those fort building MMOs or three-lane infinite runners on mobile, very insignificant. If the original company was a greedy anti-consumer corporation like Nintendo I'd gladly pay the knockoff company to help fund their legal fees.

I've always been an ethical thief - steal from the rich and the evil, support the small and well-meaning.

A lack of a distinct identity, that leaves the player feeling like it's just trying to piggyback off another game's success rather than sell itself on its own merits. It's gotta bring something new to the table to set itself apart, something to justify playing it over the original game it's copying homework from.

If you’re not copying setting, characters or story then you’re not copying everything. Those are also part of the recipe that makes the game work, through things like level design, narrative design, and game feel.

Copying critically means not just copying blindly but understanding how things work and why they were designed that way to begin with. You talk about wanting to make changes, but do you know how they would affect all the other parts of the design?

It’s very common for new game designers to dive into making changes without a full understanding of what they’re even trying to solve, let alone the knock on effects of their proposed solutions.

But what does it mean to copy critically if you're copying everything?

What I'm thinking of is copying all major mechanics and only making a few minor changes based on what I find more fun. It's the kind of thing where it could be a mod, but it'll be a new game with new setting, characters and story just all the same mechanics.

Developers can - and should - lift systems, mechanics, and whatever the hell else they want from any other title (occasional sticky legal protections aside). The problem arises when those things are copied uncritically.

Good games are intricate systems of interlocking mechanics, and good game designers put a lot of work into designing those things to create the specific play experience they have in mind.

If you want to reuse some or all of those aspects, you need to also understand how and why they work, so that you can apply them correctly in a new context. If you don’t, and instead just lazily copy with no plan or vision? That’s when people start calling things out as rip-offs.

I have made games in the past that were basically copies of other games, but those were made for fun or for learning

I feel like the difference should be caused by the reason the game is made

Good point. But apparently they're also synonyms

I would call that a "knock-off" or a "clone", not a "rip-off"; a rip-off is when the purchaser feels like they're being cheated out of their money. e.g. movie theaters, airports, and anywhere else with "captive audiences" charging outrageously higher prices for food are classic examples.

But game mechanic differences can be pretty minor or they can be major reworks. It's really hard to think of major changes to game mechanics that don't break the fun in an already established formula

I think its (usually) a bad idea in that its very hard to outdo the original. Often times games don't quite nail what makes the original work and changes to the formula usually aren't consequential enough to matter. Sometimes its great for a stagnant or platform locked genre though.

I consider a game a 'rip-off' if it blindly follows mechanics or the art style in an attempt to get the player to buy in thinking its whatever game its trying to copy. That is you're not trying to sell it based on what it does differently or the game itself, but merely piggybacking another game's design and marketing.

Games that are inspired by other games, even if they are pretty similar, are totally OK. (Stardew Valley or Lords of the Fallen for example)

forgetting to use the words "inspired by" or "homage"

I would say that it's a hive-mind feeling of laziness about the effort put in, starting with mechanics-copying. I don't think anyone would ever say X is a ripoff of Y if X uses totally different Z mechanics, even if the graphics are similar. It's when the mechanics are recycled that it'd better be more original in other aspects.

Not really, that's usually how games evolve actually. I would personally consider a game a rip-off if it poorly mimics another game, without bringing anything new to the table.