"People tend to focus a lot on theme and narrative and, by their nature, match-3 games tend to be kind of abstract games. "First-person shooters are also heavily-framed by narrative, and I think that helped to make the distinctions between different first-person shooters feel more substantial," said game designer and director of the NYU Game Center, Frank Lantz. It wasn't until players eventually recognized the first-person shooter as a genre and understood the subtle distinctions that separated the games that people started paying more attention to them as interesting, creative and important. And while first-person shooters don't face copycat accusations any more, there was a time when all first-person shooters were known as Doom clones. This is fairly consistent among most shooters. Players are moving a reticule around and using one button to aim and another to shoot. To the outsider who doesn't play shooters, when the stories and themes are stripped from the game, it can be hard to differentiate them. But if you're not a shooter fan, those games look incredibly similar, and I think that's what's happening with match-3 games." CANDY BLAST MANIA LEVEL 806 SERIESSo if somebody is a big shooter fan, the distinctions between the Battlefield series and Call of Duty will be really, really important to them. "But I think what happens is if you're really into a particular genre, you see all kinds of interesting, important distinctions. "Shooters are obviously very, very similar, and have been going for almost 30 years now," he said. Juul says the similarities between popular match-3 games are over-blown, and that genres tend to be similar because that's how they form to begin with. "So I think you either play them and appreciate the difference or uniqueness, or from the outside you just judge them all as the same type of game."Ī similar analogy can be drawn with first-person shooters, according to author, game designer and associate professor at The Royal Danish Academic of Fine Arts - The School of Design, Jesper Juul. "You can always say that all card Solitaire games are the same, but there's tons of people who love them, who appreciate the different variations that are out there," he said. He told Polygon the copycat and cloning criticisms the company faces tend to come from "outsiders" - people who either haven't or aren't interested in playing King's games, or any match-3 puzzle games. But to a player who regularly plays match-3 puzzle games, the differences between them are clear, and the differences matter. It all comes down to the actual exposure of playing them as opposed to just reading about these games."Īccording to Knutsson, it's easy for people to be myopic and make sweeping generalizations about entire game genres and categories when they're not familiar with them. "Unless you play them regularly, you'll see that they're the same, but we know our active players are very perceptive to the differences and nuances. "Having developed casual games for more than 10 years, the misconception that all puzzle games are the same is something we're used to," said Sebastian Knutsson, the chief creator officer of King, a company best known for Candy Crush Saga. There was a time when all first-person shooters were known as Doom clones." And while there is some truth to the criticisms - there are indeed lots of video game clones, and there are puzzle games that exist only to capitalize on the success of others - members of the games industry believe there's more to a good match-3 game than a similar core mechanic. Match-3 games both new and old are often called " Bejeweled clones" or copycats, and are quickly dismissed for all being the same. The market is saturated and frequently faces criticism for its seeming lack of innovation. There's Jewel World - a match-3 gem game, Jewel Mania - a match-3 gem game, Candy Crush Saga - a match-3 candy game, Candy Blast Mania - a match-3 candy game, Matching With Friends - a match-3 matching game and, well, some 2,000 more. PopCap's Bejeweled sits at the top of the list alongside similar-looking titles that share similar names. Typing "match-3" into the iTunes App Store yields more than 2,200 search results. The match-3 puzzle game market is a cluttered space.
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