New Comic: Wednesday January 3rd

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Iolo

Those noses...

815165

trenches cross over right here yall

Henroid

... I haven't slept yet and this fucking thread title made me double-take to the calender to be sure I didn't quantum leap.

jackal

Does Zynga publish other studio's apps or is this a reference to a different incident.

Aldo

Now there's a joke I've seen plenty of times before. CheckPoint spent their last episode scolding Zynga for a similar case, their observation was literally that Zynga just puts "Ville" behind a random word and claims that their game is totally different from an existing game. I mean, sure comedians come up with the same humorous observations all the time without any malice or awareness of someone else having made the exact same jokes, but when CheckPoint makes it on Monday you'd think that would be enough time to come up with something different instead.

Good Looking Fat Guy

Yeah, but, aren't the comics done a day or two in advance?

SaintElmosWire

Funny that this is also super similar to the whole NcSoft Vs. Bluehole lawsuit, but in that case it was the little guy being the dick

Simon Moon

Who the hell is CheckPoint?

Good Looking Fat Guy

@Simon Moon: See the PATV link at the top of the page.

Dark Raven X

Simon Moon wrote:

Who the hell is CheckPoint?

The news show on PATV on Mondays.

This is very Trenches, both in the subject matter and the mild case of trenchnose these dudes have got going on.

Dextolen

trenchnose!

ThreeCubed

I flipping love triple town. Everyone should play it.

Fucking bears.

Fucking ninja bears.

Simon Moon

Good Looking Fat Guy wrote:

@Simon Moon: See the PATV link at the top of the page.

Huh. I swear, every time I look at the top of the page, it's the FF figure. Didn't even notice the other stuff.

Juc

jackal wrote:

Does Zynga publish other studio's apps or is this a reference to a different incident.

I think this is referencing Spry Fox suing 6waves Lolapps.

The story from what I've gathered is that 6waves Lolapps was going to publish Triple Town, decided not to after a while, and instead released a nearly identical game Yeti Town.

From what I've been told the only real difference between yeti town and triple town is the art.
The wording, prices, UI, costs of items, etc, are all identical.


been seeing this sort of stuff talked about a lot this week, so I'm not surprised there's a comic about it.

Maz-

Dear god, those noses.

Fayili

Huh... Kathleen also spent a bit of time talking about how great Triple Town was in the latest LRR podcast... A lot of comedy can come up with the same ideas at the same time, though, especially when working with the same source material.

marsilies

The full account of what happened can be found on Daniel Cook's site Lost Garden, which is linked to in the news post.
http://www.lostgarden.com/

What's ironic is that Daniel Cook had written a blog post titled "Plagiarism as a moral choice" about a month before 6waves Lolapps ripped him off, unknowingly speaking against a practice he was soon to be the victim of.
http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/11/plagiarism-as-moral-choice.html

Also, after Yeti Town was released on December 20, 2011, Spry Fox was able to turn around and release an Android and iOS version of Triple Town in about a month, which is pretty impressive:
http://www.lostgarden.com/2012/01/real-triple-town-available-ios-and.html

SaintElmosWire

I want to peel those noses off...

KoopahTroopah

That second panel mouth. I laughed at that alone.

Good comic for those of us who haven't seen a 'ville' joke yet.

jackisreal

Noses are out of controoooooooool

RoyceSraphim

RE: Syndicate demo

I am happy about these words and this game for many reasons, having yet to play it.

#1 Copying the L4D formula. This small teamwork based multiplayer concept is really fun and expanding it to different types of settings makes me happy in my pants. We have this and we have Payday, I predict a Star Trek game where you play 4 Klingons raiding Romulan bases and a D&D variant not unlike that crappy comic from PAX 2010.

#2 Difficulty. There's a reason most of the Payday missions people have out are on hard or overkill and its not because we want to complete challenges. Its because killing a dragon is awesome and killing a bigger dragon is more awesome.

#3 Variety of gameplay. MW3's gameplay was quite fun and from a story standpoint, it was a satisfying conclusion to what I first saw in the trailers and the first level of Modern Warfare. Things came full circle. However, playing it never extended past shoot the people in your crosshairs. Compared to Modern Warfare 2 or Half Life 2, or even Half life 1, it lacked that ..... that.... you know, where the rhythm changes and you get a pallet cleanser that makes you appreciate everything before and after as separate experiences rather than a jumbled mess?

Letting us have a variety of gameplay options lets us have these moment where we choose the gameplay we want to use at the moment and separate our experiences into distinct moments. Playing TF2 as the various classes always feels different depending on the class you use. BF:BC2 feels different based on your kit and how you are play the game, MW3 felt different when I was supporting the team sniping or in close quarters. Cyberpunk options lets us also do that and makes me happy in my pants.

Of course, the downside is that when you give players too many options without clear guidance, people will have Gabe's experience.

SalmonOfDoubt

does anyone remember when tycho was complaining about people saying the comic didn't make sense without the newspost

Aurich

I wonder if Gabe is even aware of the spread of Trenchnose. Has anyone taken a close look at Mike's nose lately?

Gaslight

Aurich wrote:

I wonder if Gabe is even aware of the spread of Trenchnose. Has anyone taken a close look at Mike's nose lately?

Spoiler:

I'm sorry.

Spoon1

Tycho wrote:

I played a lot of Syndicate as a young person, playing Syndicate and listening to Tori Amos was my thing

Whilst not surprised I am pleased to discover that Jerry is also a (early career at least) Tori Amos fan. I would have been playing Civilization or Master of Magic though.

Jerry = win.

MuddBudd

Those noses look like a lot of the characters in Psychonauts. I approve of this.

kingworks

Triple Town is hands down the best game for the Kindle, IMHO. It uses barbarians and wizards instead of bears, though.

I'm happy to entertain other suggestions.

KingofMadCows

I wonder if indie developers are going to start moving towards more story drive games since new gamaplay ideas keep getting stolen.

Aurich

KingofMadCows wrote:

I wonder if indie developers are going to start moving towards more story driven games since new gamaplay ideas keep getting stolen.

I don't think that would go well for them. Generally speaking, you go to XBLA or the iTunes store or what have ye to get your simple, pure, fun gameplay kicks. And it's not as if a story couldn't be ripped off using exactly the same methods anyway.

darknessKri3hReaver

Uh.. I don't know if I'm the only one.. I'm sure it's happened before though. I came here to begin with because I was having a real hard time, trying to figure out how MineCraft Legos was related to the issue, because that's where the "summarize" link takes me as of typing this.

Donnicton

Speaking of Triple Town...for those that haven't seen it, there is a fascinating recording of Jason Bailey of "East Side Games" giving a "speech" at Full Indie 2012 last month on how to properly rip off a game.

He mentions ripping off Triple Town towards the end, if you are able to make it that far without trying to punch the screen in an attempt to see if he physically feels it.

Aurich

WHEW. That was some weapons-grade douche right there. To be fair, I think his point was that these popular games (like poker) belong to like, everyone, so he doesn't feel bad ripping them off. And he clearly thinks the rip-offs are superior. Neither of those points will save him from getting punched in the face though.

AnteCantelope

He gave a speech to indie developers about "My game sells so well, you have 11 players". Zynga doesn't rip off other games, because they are more stingy.

If the story up to now weren't bad enough, he is now officially a douche.