Bizarre Creations thinks that Veck 2’s just fine by them. My thoughts on the article that made my entire year, and as I’ve been officially dragged into the clone debate, my opinion on Mark Incitti’s rather excellent Grid Wars, and why it was pulled from the net.

About six months ago, a video game developer called Bizarre Creations caused a bit of a stir. You see, BC, as we’ll call them, is an old-school games development company. Back in the day, when they were Raising Hell Software, they made some fairly nice Mega Drive and Amiga games, like The Killing Game Show and Wiz ‘n’ Liz, not to mention Formula 1 for the Playstation, a game that I managed to physically destroy back in 1998. I wore the hub out of the CD. Bloody hell. I must have spent a hundreds of hours playing that game back when I should have been spending time reading my Thermodynamics notes. Small wonder I sort of, um, utterly failed my first year at Uni

Nowadays, BC generally sticks to what they do best, namely driving games (though there’s an upcoming FPS as well). One of their racers was Project Gotham Racing 2, an XBox game that has an arcade cabinet in the garage. And on this cabinet, you could play Geometry Wars - the game that’s launched a thousand clones (well, ten or twenty). Simple gameplay and graphics in the original - but by all accounts an immensely addictive little shoot.

Fast forward a couple of years and this rather ace little shooter gets a massive facelift, all ready for the XBox 360 and XBLA. Now, just to clarify - I have never played Geometry Wars (though I HAVE played PGR2, but I never knew to go and use the cabinet, y’see), nor have I played Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. I have, however, played all the above spin-offs a helluva lot, and even managed to write one, so you might say that I’m intimately familiar with the genre. I’ve also watched quite a few videos of GW:RE in action, so while I’ve never played it, I’m fairly current on precisely what it does and how it does it.

Now, on to this stir - bear with me as I recap this exciting tale for those of you who somehow don’t know what happened. Mark Incitti wrote a very nice clone of GW:RE called Grid Wars, and made it available for free. The games are so similar that, to the lay-person, screenshots from either are essentially indistinguishable (though the gameplay differs in certain areas, some significant, some not). BC’s games were available to play only on the XBox and 360, while Grid Wars was available to play on PCs and Macs. Differing markets, but apparently the fame and availability of Grid Wars was beginning to have a detrimental effect on GW:RE sales. Geometry Wars costs less than five bucks, you have to keep in mind - a paltry sum for so much gameplay. There are even some inferior GW:RE clones that are on sale for much more than this pittance. But it was apparently such a concern to BC and Microsoft that they asked Mark to remove Grid Wars from his website. Which, to be fair, really wasn’t that harsh - I mean, we’re not talking about a pack of lawyers shutting his site down. While this article leaves a very acrid taste in my mouth about what happened behind the scenes, it’s still about IP protection.

On that particular subject, I’m torn between two distinct viewpoints. A lot of people have said that GW:RE has neither original graphics nor original gameplay. A lot of people make comparisons to Robotron: 2084, or its ’sequel’ Smash TV, considering GW:RE just another knockoff. Still more consider Kenta Cho the inventor of the vector game (somehow), and insist that BC is violating his IP. What it boils down to is this: a large number of people think that Bizarre’s done Mark Incitti wrong somehow. I mean, he just copied the look and design of their game, which is itself just an amalgam of loads of other games, right?

Sorry, but no. While I completely disagree with BC’s handling of this affair (What indy developer wouldn’t shit his pants if a letter threatens ‘further steps’?), especially after Mark seems to have offered to make graphical alterations to his game, it really comes down to one very important thing: Geometry Wars is Geometry Wars. It’s not Robotron, it’s not Tempest, it’s not Asteroids, it is its own game, and you have to look at it from this overall perspective. You take something like Bullet Candy. The only things it has in common with GW are the dual-stick controls, and the fact that you appear to be in space. In the same vein, the only thing GW has in common with Asteroids is that you’re in space, and there are vector graphics. Likewise, the only thing that GW has in common with Robotron is that the game uses dual-stick controls. And that’s the problem with Grid Wars - it’s got essentially everything in common with Geometry Wars. Not to say that I don’t feel bad for Mark - I do, and it’s a crying shame that such an ace game incurred such wrath. But if you want to look at it from an entirely legalistic standpoint, the look and feel of Geometry Wars, a commercial product, has been essentially replicated in Grid Wars, a free download. Ooops. And Microsoft is involved. Bill Gates didn’t get to be the world’s wealthiest man by also being the world’s nicest man. Business, as they say, is business.

Which brings me to my unexpected surprise. I’m developing my own arena shooter, of course, which also resembles Geometry Wars, in that it contains dual-stick firing and various vector enemies, though the similarity ends there. While I was eventually expecting BC to notice Veck 2, the last thing I ever expected them to do was to praise it. I’d been worrying about this for quite a while, in fact. Veck 2 is a free game, and therefore has the potential to cut into GW’s sales. It could be argued in court, by a very good lawyer, that the games are similar enough to warrant Veck 2’s removal from the net. While Veck 2 bears about as much in common with GW as a willow bears to a pine, it certainly affected my sleep for a bit.

Then a good friend of mine emailed me to let me know that Bizarre had noticed Veck 2. In fact, they’d written an article on it…

I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never felt so good. I’d never aimed to replicate GW’s look and feel (that would be silly), but rather to create a game not unlike GW - that is, a game that stands alone as an individual experience. And I feel extremely relieved that Bizarre Creations feels the same way.

Once again, it’s a shame that an amicable agreement wasn’t reached between Mark and Bizarre. Grid Wars is such an outstanding game that I’m sure even Bizarre felt bad when they requested its removal. Still, if I were to release a song that sounded exactly like It’s Not Unusual by Tom Jones, I’d expect legal action from Tom, Les, and Gordon.

You may all now send me hate-mail…

UPDATE: March 27 - I’ve now played Geometry Wars Evolved via XBLA and a borrowed 360 - in fact, I’ve played it quite a bit over the past few hours. It’s great fun BUT! To tell you the truth: In my very humble opinion, Grid Wars is actually MORE fun…

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Indy Games, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.