Japanese game copyright: attack of the clones

by Ross Miller { Oct 24th 2006 at 6:25PM }

Go to the Canadian Broadcast Company's website, and play X Attack -- seem familiar? The game is a nearly pixel-for-pixel recreation of Space Invaders, the classic top-down shooter from Taito. The infringement is illegal, yet many companies outside of Japan show a lack of concern in copying Japanese games for commercial use. John Andersen, a market consultant and frequent contributor to Gamasutra, outlines the problem and provides examples of some of the large companies infringing on the rights of Japanese developers.

Andersen suggests that Japanese developers should legally document their games at the U.S. Copyright and Patent and Trademark offices, since it has an online database that is accessible anywhere and gives the name and contact information for who has ownership to the idea.

[The image above shows two games: PopCap's Zuma (left) and Mitchell Corporation's Puzz Loop (right), which came out six years prior to Zuma and whose developer receives no credit or pay for what appears to be an obvious idea theft.]

Tags: asia, japan

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Morder @ Oct 24th 2006 6:33PM

most people could care less where the game came from as long as it's fun to play so i don't see any uproar except from companies. unless, of course, it's a very very popular game that is trying to be cloned then there will probably be a slight uproar from the community

epobirs @ Oct 24th 2006 6:47PM

It's a bit late in the game, so to speak, to get pushy about Space Invaders clones. Taito needed to assert their rights about 26 years ago, when the clones were first appearing.

Namco and, by way of its license to protect, Atari were pretty fierce in fighting off the Pac-man clones. Unwillingness to mount similar legal objections set a bad precedent for Taito.

Aren't there about a dozen other games that have cloned Puzz Loop before Zuma? IIRC, there are at least three on the PS1, although some may be the same code under different names regionally. At what point does it become a lost cause when attempting to defend a game design?

A huge number of people acquiring game coding skills produce clones of old arcade classics along the way. Most know better than to try making money on them. Using them as demoes for an interactive resume is fine but putting them on the shareware market is a no-no unless the game can be considered a unique variant on the classic theme.

Vercin @ Oct 24th 2006 6:49PM

Perhaps, morder, but I feel like it's a sort of sad day when people don't mind if they're having fun by way of blatant thievery. I was considering buying Zuma, but after reading this article have decided against it. It might not matter to consumers, but it matters to the people who worked hard on the games that are being stolen. At the end of the day, developers and gamers are all real people with real feelings and real investments in how they spend their time.

Erik Novak @ Oct 24th 2006 6:50PM

was Bejeweled a Japanese game, because Zoo Keeper for DS ripped that off.

Media @ Oct 24th 2006 6:52PM

Is it a surprise for you? Better remind yourself how many recreations has famous game called Tetris

ConstyXIV @ Oct 24th 2006 6:53PM

Sorry for the pre-emptive strike, but before anyone mentions it:

Magnetica, the DS game that looks an awful lot like Zuma, was also developed by Mitchell (the developers of Puzz Loop)

tcc3 @ Oct 24th 2006 6:57PM

I noticed the other day theres an old NeoGeo cabinet at my local Pizza Hut that has a game very similar to PopCap's Astro Pop. Its basically the exact same game with an anime-magic theme, rather than the cartoon spacemen of Astro Pop. I usually respect Popcap for their quality games, but this makes me wonder: are all of their titles rip offs of older Japanese games?

slux @ Oct 26th 2006 10:28AM

Copyrights do not apply to ideas, they apply to a work. Also, game rules can't be copyrighted AFAIK.

If this wasn't the case, we'd have just one company making first person shooters, rtses, mmorpgs etc. Now how many of you'd prefer that?

Patents apply to ideas, copyright doesn't.

Geoffrey @ Oct 24th 2006 7:04PM

Just an FYI, it's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. ;)

Anyways, if you can copy an idea, make money off it, and get away with it, what big business wouldn't jump at the chance?

Probot @ Oct 24th 2006 7:06PM

I'm going to paraphrase T.S. Eliot:

"Immature [designers] imitate; mature [designers] steal; bad [designers] deface what they take, and good [designers] make it into something better, or at least something different. The good [designer] welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad [designer] throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good [designer] will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest."

Sturat @ Oct 24th 2006 7:18PM

Blatant clones of classic games like Space Invaders and Burger Time have been around as long as the originals and aren't taken seriously by many people. The really ridiculous games are Zuma and Snood, which are better recognized in the United States than the original material they stole. It is appalling that Taito and Mitchell have any reason to fear they'd lose court battles over this stuff.

Rayonic @ Oct 24th 2006 7:51PM

Do I have to be the first person to point out that it isn't and shouldn't be illegal to copy a general game design?

If that kind of thing were the case, then car makers -- all of them -- would have been in big trouble years ago.

Rayonic @ Oct 24th 2006 7:51PM

Also, why the concentration on stolen *Japanese* game ideas? I mean, there are a billion Japanese clones of Rogue/Nethack. (Most notably the Fushigi no Dungeon/Mysterious Dungeon series.)

Not to mention that the original Dragon Quest was a ripoff of Ultima, plus there's all the Tetris clones over the years.

All Your Lost Socks @ Oct 24th 2006 8:04PM

Thank you, Rayonic (and also Probot... lovely adaptation of that quote). I feel that it's just as sad for me to be the first here to suggest that perhaps we place just a little too much emphasis on copyright. Perhaps the values of Japanese designers are not quite the same? We are a nation which, to resolve petty personal issues of who makes more money off of an idea, turns to suits over intellectual property rights. On the one hand, I can understand the need for this - we have iconic IPs as a result of this that I think we would all be sad to see ripped off. And yet I can't help thinking that we are too quick to suggest that an idea be bolted down and documented just because that is the way it is generally done - the way it is generally done in the United States, no less.

Ironhide Delta @ Oct 24th 2006 8:24PM

Has the older generation forgotten K.C. Munkin? A blantent as any Pac-man rip off. Namco took them to the cleaners for the sheer audacity of this clone for the Oddessey.

Psaakyrn @ Oct 24th 2006 8:27PM

to #7 tcc3
No, some of them are rip-offs of newer games as well. To illustrate: Compare http://www.eyezmaze.com/tontie/v1/index.html to Hammerheads. Yes, they're based on the same whack-a-mole format, but when so many design elements are identical, I'm inclined there's some theft involved. (granted, there's just sufficient difference to mark them as different, but it's about the difference between Car racing and Truck racing.)

Brian @ Oct 24th 2006 9:16PM

Just look at the lawsuit between Data East and Capcom over DE's SFII clone. Even though it was blatent, Capcom lost the suit. You CANNOT copyright GAMEPLAY.

If you do copy someone's gameplay you need to make sure it LOOKS different. That's why Magnavox lost the KC Munchkin suit. The judge couldn't tell a difference when looking at the 2 games. Thus it came down to aesthetics too than just the gameplay.

Tycho @ Oct 24th 2006 10:23PM

I think you guys are ignorant to the realities of these clones, which is that you can't copyright an idea. The idea of a game where the balls rotate around and you shoot them? Nobody owns that, nor will they ever. I could never make a game called Zuma, nor could I use any of the specific words or phrases found therein, but if I wanted to make "Ooozmaugh!", 'the future of next gen spinny ball shooting games!' I could happily do so and Popcap would neither receive or deserve any of the profits from said title.

It's one of the broadest misunderstandings out there that these things are owned by the people who conceptualize them in the first place. To report on such a falsehood is just ignorant.

Puzzlove @ Nov 1st 2006 1:18PM

I have been playing puzzloop for quite a few years now, and bought magnetica for the DS as soon as it came out.... When I saw Zuma on the marketplace, I was pretty pissed, but after playing the trial to see just how close it was to the arcade/ds version, it is in fact better in most respects. From the analog control for aiming (which I like better than the flick action from the ds version), to the level designs that put new twists into the game and combos, I commend them for taking the game to a whole new level. They should collaborate with the original designers and just split the earnings, calling it magnetica 2, because that is how the game feels to be honest.

otakucode @ Oct 24th 2006 10:43PM

Is such a thing even against Japanese copyright law? Sure it is against ours, but what about theirs? As I understand it, their laws differ quite a bit from ours. Dojinshi is an entire industry that takes manga characters, settings, storylines, and reinterprets them in ways the creator has not and may even object to. As far as I know, as long as the art itself is not copied and someone else creates it, even if it looks very similar, it is still legal. I think this is a very good way of handling IP. It requires a bit of faith in consumers (that they won't just go for the cheapest clone) but provides a HUGE vista of creative possibility. You see the sexual tension between a few of your favorite manga characters but the manga itself is targetted at shonen (kids)? Someone else can come along and make a more racy version of it. Everyone knows that it's not the product of the original developers of the series, anything that happens in it is not 'canon' and is not respected by the main series, but its existence fills a gap not filled by the original content.

As I posted in the 'casual games not casual business' article, interest in a certain industry or IP lifts ALL the boats anchored in that water. Exclusivity looks beneficial, but in the end is not as good as a ton of people interested in the kind of thing you're doing, even if their interest is not specifically in EXACTLY what you're doing.