Re: [piecepack] So Copycats and Confusion Win??

["Mike Schoessow" <mikeschoessow@...>]

Since we are on the topic of game-play or mechanics similarities between new games and games previously published, and concerns about copying, etc., I'll describe how it worked for me to utilize a key mechanic of another game without, in my opinion, "stealing". At the same time, I'll also take this opportunity to clarify the origins of the similarities between Alien City and Fresh Fish.

Since the time I entered Alien City in the Second design contest, thereby exposing it to many gamers, I have received occasional comments regarding the similarity of the road formation mechanism to that of Fresh Fish, and queries concerning whether or not that was a coincidence (it was not). I have not played Medina yet nor scanned the rules, so I can't comment on any similarities with that game.

Alien City was actually based upon an earlier larger board game of my own design, called San Jose. At that time I had not seen the rules for Fresh Fish (which was out of print), nor had I heard a detailed description of how the game worked. But I had seen a very short mention that Fresh Fish was an out-of-print but very cool city-building game that utilized the concept of negative space, in which areas not built upon automatically became roads, and that the road distance between buildings on the board was important in scoring and could therefore change when new buildings were placed. This concept seemed very clever to me and I instantly decided to try designing a game of my own that utilized the idea. The result was San Jose, a city-building game played upon a grid of 13x13 squares divided into four neighborhoods. Without going into all the details of building, I'll mention that threre are four types of buildings, which are houses, gas stations, fast food joints, and high tech companies (hence the game's name). There are some placement rules that limit the early placement of high tech companies and fast food joints until certain quantities of other buildings have been placed. The buildings all start in a common pool and the only ownership involves the fast food joints (the players are all owners of fast food chains competing for business) but only after they are placed. Players want their fast food joints to be close to many customers (along the roads) and far from competing fast food joints. Corporate customers score quite differently from residential customers, and this is very important in the game. Placement rules also require that all buildings have access to the evolving road network. Scoring occurs at three times during the game, including at the end. The game is over when no more buildings can be placed. 

When the second piecepack design competition was announced, I had just begun play-testing San Jose with two players (it is a 2-4 player game) and working on adjustments to scoring system, quantity of buildings in the pool, etc. I was wondering what to enter in the contest when it occured to me that I could try a piecepack/Icehouse version of San Jose with the different size and color pyramids representing the different types of buildings. I worked on this for a while but ran into a number of problems, mostly related to the smaller board. The biggest problem involved the scoring mechanic for high tech companies, which just didn't work with the piecepack version of the game. Eventually I scrapped that and came up with the capping system used in Alien City, and I aso decided that it would be better to embrace the piecepack features (like tile color, etc.) instead of ignoring them or trying to work around them. 

Since that time I have largely finished San Jose as well (although I'm working on a way to add auctioning for the privaledge to place high-tech companies), so now I have two different (but certainly similar in some ways) games that share much of the road forming system of Fresh Fish (although neither San Jose nor Alien City employ the eminent domain annexing of property by the city that Fresh Fish does), but which, in my experience, have quite a different feel from Fress Fish when playing.   

I believe that not only is it acceptable to borrow mechanisms from existing games, but that it is desireable to borrow from the better games. Puerto Rico, which I love, does quite a bit of borrowing of its own, and when it first appeared there was frequent mention of this in some quarters, some of it disparaging. Three nights ago I introduced it to some friends and they immediately mentioned similarities to the Settlers Card Game for example. As another example, quite a few authors over the years have utilized Sackson's "first and second highest players score but everyone else gets nothing" scoring mechanic. 

I'll mention one other thing regarding copying. If I had, by chance come up with a game which was so close to Fresh Fish (in my example) as to be essentially identical in all significant aspects of play, and then afterwards found this to be the case, I would have been very frustrated and would not have posted the game (if I hadn't already). Priority does count for something. 

>From a quick reading of the rules to Pharo's Heir, it dosn't look to me like it will play in a way very close to that of any other game, without adding anything of its own. And obviously Rob doesn't think it does. I look forward to trying it myself when I have time.

-Mike Schoessow


From: Ron Hale-Evans 
  To: piecepack@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 12:54 PM
  Subject: Re: [piecepack] So Copycats and Confusion Win??


  "Second, I'd like to put in a word on the "copycat" (what a childish
  word) controversy.  I am speaking as one of the judges of the second
  competition, which was won by Mike Schoessow's entry Alien City.  (The
  other judge was my wife Marty.  I am speaking for myself only; perhaps
  Marty will comment later.)

  When I played Alien City for the first time, I thought it was one of
  the most original games I had ever seen.  It is still my favourite
  piecepack game by a wide margin, even including the games Marty and I
  have designed.  Since we announced Alien City as the winner, I have
  discovered that there are a couple of games that incorporate
  mechanisms similar to ones in Alien City and were released before Mike
  entered his game into the contest.  Fresh Fish (1997) uses a "one big
  road" mechanism that is similar in some ways to Mike's game, and
  Medina (2001) uses a building/capping mechanism that is also similar.
  However, assuming for the sake of argument that Mike "stole" these
  mechanisms for his game, he still combined them in a fresh way and
  added many twists of his own.  The scoring mechanism of Alien City is
  totally different from either of the other two games I mentioned.
  Also, Alien City is a two-player head-to-head contest, almost a pure
  abstract strategy game, whereas social considerations such as
  leader-bashing enter into the other two.