Clones Aren't Killing Gaming - They're Saving It

okay here's a question what did people call firstperson Shooters before they called them firstperson Shooters now you might be thinking quite fairly that FPS as a genre name and a broad description of a type of game is kind of an no-brainer right they're games where you shoot and they're in first person what other possible name could you need well for half a decade from 1993 all the way up to around the year 2000 the predominant terminology for a game where you shoot in first person wasn't first person shooter but Doom clone it seems bizarre now but back in the day it software's Doom was so popular that it was basically the sole definition for the early FBS genre and almost every other Proto firstperson shooter was ultimately inspired by and judged relative to Doom it was that all-encompassing even if it wasn't actually the First FPS everything from blood to quake and all the terrible knockoffs in between basically every shooter from that era was to a greater or lesser degree more or less just Doom with different graphics and levels it wasn't just that Shooters not similar to Doom wouldn't sell although that was definitely true it's that Doom had such a massive cultural presence the games that didn't follow its template felt almost wrong and it wasn't until halflife came out coincidentally as around the same time Doom clone as a term started falling off that the FPS genre as a whole was finally able to move out of doom shadow and even then a half life still has Doom's Health Systems a comparable weapon tet and even a similar setting and plot that's just how influen ual Doom was and how widespread cloning it became now the idea that the original Doom is an important piece of video gaming history probably isn't very surprising so why am I talking about this weird piece of 20th century trivia that started before I was even born well it's because in the modern day where there are an ever increasing number of games coming out every year and there's an extra three decades of History to draw from cloned video games that copy an existing title are more prevalent and influential than ever before Rogue likes and Metroid veners for example Main Stays of the indan scene are two enduringly popular genres that are primarily based around endless mimicry of a single highly influential title Rogue and Super Metroid respectively in the AAA space practically everyone is trying to flat out have a second go at their old titles and give them a fresh Spin and the industry as a whole is still reeling from many many failed attempts to copy the big multiplayer Heavy Hitters of OverWatch fortnite and Minecraft all three of which are themselves blatant clones of existing games if you look closely enough at the modern-day gaming ecosystem you will see almost nothing but clones and from this it's easy to come to the conclusion that we've entered a Dark Age of creatively bankrupt repetition repetition repetition however I'm not convinced that's actually what's happening while some copied games absolutely are transparent lazy attempts to cash in on the hard work of someone else or to blindly chase a trend clones also serve a valuable role in the greater artistic ecosystem of the medium and not only that they've been around since the very beginning of video games while sequels can take some of the credit for pushing video games forwards I think think the true engine that drives the progress of the medium lies in clones whether made by the same Studio as the original or by a completely different third party it's only by understanding the important role that clones play and learning how to distinguish a good useful clone from a bad pointless one that we can understand why clones need to exist and why some games that seem like total ripoffs can manage to feel fresh and unique whereas others that go out of their way to seem different end up feeling like you've already played them before nowhere is the tricky and sometimes unintuitive of video game clones more apparent than in the case of souls likes another genre defined by a single video game series that a bunch of people have tried to replicate with pretty limited success just in 2023 and only considering larger games we've had J Survivor Lords of the Fallen Remnant 2 and lies of P all games which could be very generously called homages to the works of fromsoft each one featuring bonfires recharging healing stamina management an emphasis on big boss fights and nonlinear level design each one of these games knly and obviously rip off the fromsoft catalog of games with most of them trying to add their own twist Remnant has its huge focused on Range combat Jedi Survivor is all about simplified cinematic star warsing and Lords of the Fallen has its very creative Two Worlds mechanics the only one of these games that doesn't really have its own standout gimmick is lies of PE a game I found to be incredibly derivative of bloodborne lies of PE steals everything from bloodborne's aggressive Health recovery to its absence of Shields and even a lot of its enemy designs hell a lot of the environments look pretty damn similar as do both games obligatory level up Wu dolls the only thing Li of P doesn't steal from bloodborne is its parrying system and that's just nicked from SEO however in spite of this blatant plagiarism Liza P was the only one of 2023 from sof clones that I ended up sticking with and crucially the only one I didn't spend my entire play time with unfavorably comparing to the proper Souls games even though it reminded me the most of them and I think the reason why this is is that while lies of PE certainly isn't an original game it's the only one that uses its status as a clone to its full potential so uh what do I mean by that well I think the clones need and be mere Echoes of the games they copy by using their position as clones to their advantage many can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their Inspirations and sometimes even surpass them with the very best clones eventually shedding the label of Clone entirely if you ask me the secret to a well-designed clone like Li ofp relies on understanding the idea that much like in any good Sci-Fi while a clone might begin life as a simple copy it will invariably develop a personality all of its own and truly great clones Embrace this fact rather than trying to stifle it look at a lot of retro Nostalgia based clones for example which often have a nasty habit of sticking too closely to the inspiration learning to chop off enemy limbs in the Kalisto protocol isn't anywhere near as fun when you've already done it in d space and when you're missing your iconic plasma cutter and atomic Hearts knockoff Bioshock combat was pretty simplistic when I first saw it 15 years ago and me already knowing all the overpower combos in advance has not done the format any favors all too many developers of Clone games as well as players looking for more of the same make the critical error of assuming that just because we like the original game will automatically like something that's similar just as much while this is certainly true to an extent Ultra faithful clones often end up fighting a losing battle against our Nostalgia wargroove is with one or two small exceptions literally just Advanced Wars with a fantasy skin and ukulele is a faithful clone of banuk kazui complete with bad mini games and boring bosses but the problem with these games is that people don't have nostalgia for Warg Grove and ukulele like they do for Advanced Wars and banjo kazui and so because these clones do nothing new and make no attempt to distinguish themselves there's virtually no reason to pick them over the originals instead of being a slave to the memory of a clone's inspiration the best clones looking to forge their own path instead leverage these inevitable comparisons to highlight their uniqueness without giving up on the advantages of a player's existing familiarity Shovel Knight is the obvious king of this it borrows extensively from games like DuckTales Mega Man and Castlevania but it always makes sure who never directly reference them and instead let fans experience the same ideas through the lens of some different gameplay Styles creating that warm feeling of familiarity without going head-to-head with any specific Nostalgia on the flip side the great gravity circuit directly references Mega Man X several times both in visual style and by reusing some iconic Mega Man level design however the game only makes these comparisons when it's sure they can be used to highlight just how different gravity circuit's flexible fast-paced movement mechanics are from its inspiration creating a clear point of comparison in gravity circuit's favor while still giving the game a nice nostalgic boost this necessity of taking into account a player's existing level of familiarity also applies to more contemporaneous clones too look at any number of the seemingly endless clones of any popular indie game like I don't know vampire survivors or Stu Valley as much as I might have liked soulstone survivors a vampire survivors clone or coral island a slavish Stu Valley clone what little new stuff these games added to the formula simply wasn't enough to keep my attention because I'd already seen all their tricks before and had essentially already mastered them before i' had even started playing this was an issue I also ran into with Jedi Survivor as well as its prequel fall in order the games make great use of soulslike fundamentals to make exploration tense and fights nice and satisfying unfortunately because the games really don't do all that much new beyond the obvious Star Wars aesthetic particularly when it comes to combat I couldn't help but slip into Souls like routine and get bored of the battles very quickly because the games were completely unable to surprise me a recurring boss fight against the guy who's all about big combo strings of magic that you've got to get good at parrying yep I've seen him before he's in Sako that guy getting replaced by another similar guy who you thought was good towards the end of the game who uses the same weapon but now he also has a gun um weirdly enough I've also seen that one before also in Ziro as it happens for the record the Jedi games are actually really good but because I've already played SEO and dark souls and the games just don't do enough to justify their relationship outside of this comparison to me they'll only ever be a slightly more ambitious than normal clone a clone establishing a unique identity isn't just a matter of being different from the game it's based on though it also needs to Define itself within a wider cultural context phrased less pretentiously what that means is that clones by virtue of being similar to something that people already know are going to come pre-baked with some existing expectations from its source material and a failure to take these into account can end up meaning that a clone will be unable to escape comparisons to its inspiration Chasm and sued for example two Metro vanas try to shake up the format by having randomly generated worlds instead of fixed ones however this ruins the exploration Centric gameplay the fans of Metroid games like and expect meaning that no matter how good these games are and how different they may have tried to be they're always going to be associated with being a Metroid clone because they cloned metroids so badly that it's impossible to escape on the other hand Hollow Knight manages to Stand Out by hitting all the requisite Metroid cornerstones from exploration to movement enhancing traversal abilities but doing so in a way that feels uniquely visceral and epic compared to the relatively subdued original Metroid games giving the game a unique identity but within a framework that people expect many of the most well-known and most successful clones of all owe their success not to bold flashes of uniqueness but simply to the fact that they excel at reinterpreting the expectations of their Source material in a new and interesting way enriching and distinguishing both games through the comparison the excellent chance of senar for example is heavily inspired by the equally good Heaven's Vault with both games being about deciphering alien languages using broadly the same mechanics however chance of Center opts for being a pure Puzzler rather than a narratively focused Adventure game and this difference serves to contrast the two games while still providing the same kind of fun and the new Final Fantasy 7 games could have been a straightup remake but instead they take the Bold step of being kind of a commentary on the original game staying true to their cinematic Roots whilst also providing a new more action Centric perspective on the same ideas meaning that both games retain their own unique identity and you can get more out of one by playing the other to see once's different for example ex Le the ending of the Remake is considerably more incomprehensibly bashit insane by deliberately playing off elements of their Source material that everyone expect clones can take control of the cultural narrative that they were invariably going to be a part of anyway and in doing so carve out their own place within it Hades for example reinterprets the core Loop of endless death in a Rog likee into the foundation for a completely linear and consistent narrative that spans multiple runs and desktop dungeons reduces the same Concepts to their absolute fundamentals and in doing so becomes kind of a Resource Management Puzzler by the same token slipways clearly riffs off of the gameplay Loop of classic space Forex games like Master of Orion but cuts out all the combat creating the same kind of experience but from a different point of view That Couldn't exist without the original games conversely many titles that fail to really meet the expectations of their predecessors or fit into the conversation ultimately end up failing as clones before they've even really gotten started humankind as a clone of civilization fails to give people the fun of historical role playing with its ever shifting factions and so regardless of its merits as a game this missing piece always stands out over everything else and Starbound failed as a clo Terraria because despite copying the core gameplay stretching the premise of multiple planets could never be as compelling as getting to explore a single everchanging world over a long period of time this is kind of related to the problem I have with Remnant From the Ashes it's a game that goes for the interesting gimmick of a soulslike with ranged combat and design influences from looty shooty games like Destiny unfortunately though the missing elements of its inspiration timately hamstring the result because Remnant is all about shooty bang bang guns enemies fail to feel anywhere near as satisfyingly lethal as in a Souls game because you can easily kill most before they can even react to you the only way Remnant can make enemies remotely threatening is to make them huge bullet sponges that just run at you or to have them spam loads of AOE you need to run away from neither of which are very fun things to do while trying to shoot equally because the game borrows randomly generated environments from elsewhere with the areas and dungeons appearing in a random order remnants locals don't feel as if they fit together cohesively as part of a single journey to Mastery like they do in other Souls likes leading to them all just being kind of generic and forgettable with no distinct Identity or sense of progression R's visuals setting and ideas are all great but it's failure to be a good soulslike on a fundamental level means that I can't help but wish that it wasn't inspired by Dark Souls at all which is let's be honest never a position you want a clone to be in this brings me on to my final key point about clones and that's that the best ones don't just attempt to distinguish to themselves from their inspiration but to supersede it forming part of a genre wide back and forth that leads to constant advancement and change as various clones all try to one up each other this is how FPS games freed themselves from comparisons to Doom each of Doom's clones try to improve upon it in different ways adding better Gunplay or exploration or a story and gradually these clones such as halflife became so good and so popular that they became the new standard inspiring a new generation of clones all connected by their shared design lineage rather than the more being copies of the same thing and many other clones have seen similar success there are a whole host of indie games that exist pretty much just as versions of existing games but designed for veterans who are already familiar with the gameplay the likes of demon crawl and let's Revolution are more advanced takes on mind Sweeper for people who've gotten bored of the classic version Ultra Hardcore extraction games are for people desensitized to mainstream battle Royals and who are in need of a stronger hit of the same stuff and intricate strategy and management games like battle brothers and City skyline assume an existing familiarity with the titans of the genre they're based on and are thus free to really push the boat out in terms of difficulty and complexity that simply wouldn't be possible in a title targeting a mass audience of relative newbies City skylines in particular was literally green lit after Paradox saw the oversimplified Sim City 2013 Crash and Burn because siries venturan wanted something more complex than the originals not less additionally rather than making a direct Improvement or followup to an existing game some clones Stand Out by copying not a whole title or a collection of titles but just one small part expanding it into a sort of pruned cutting of the original game disco elesium for example is very heavily inspired by playscape torment but removes all of these Superfluous combats and a lot of the Dungeons and Dragons baggage to focus purely on narrative RPG storytelling of course some clones of this type are made with a little bit less love and a lot more spite there's a whole sub genre of indie games out there made by fans of Sonic who've had enough with Sega and have tried to make the Sonic game they've always wanted for themselves one with no gimmicks and none of Sonic stupid friends spark the electric Jester 3 is one of the better known ones taking the Sonic and Shadow sections of Sonic Adventure 2 which were like a quarter of that game and blowing them up to be the whole experience now with the time and space they need to breathe these gameplay Concepts can finally be put to good use unburdened by the knuckles treasure hump bits interrupting my fun not all clones manag to justify their existence by improving upon or altering their Inspirations though there are a great many which take bold swings and end up totally failing to succeed what came before them a lot of the wouldbe contenders to the Smash Bros Crown ultimately failed to make a dent in its reputation because while they were serviceable fighting games in their own right they lacked the sheer variety and depth offered by the original that makes it such a great competitive game even if Nintendo wish it wasn't equally back for blood tried to add an extra layer of complexity and replayability to Left for Dead by adding a bunch of progression systems and variant enemies to what was otherwise the same concept but in doing so it ended up polluting the Purity that makes left for dead work suddenly it was impossible to tell at a glance how a particular enemy was going to attack you and gay playay became much more about optimizing your deck of buff cards outside the game than clever team playay and efficient shooting spoiling what was once a very focused experience unfortunately Lords of the Fallen one of our souls likes falls into this same trap it introduces a load of new gimmicks to spice up the Dark Souls formula but it quickly becomes apparent that this stuff was absent in fromsoft games for a reason making your own bonfire sounds cool but because you can't see what's coming you either make too many and the game's too easy or too to few and it's too hard the same goes for the game's umbrell mirror world it's visually cool and least to some interesting puzzles but it necessitates a load of really tiresome wandering around in both worlds and the infinitely respawning baddies in the umbrell world mess with the delicate pacing of the areas Lords of the Fallen also tries to up the anti on Dark Souls by having more traps but uh how do I put this when every box corner and item has a dude behind it waiting to Spring out at you in a sense none of them do really when it comes right down to it clones that stand out are the ones that eventually stop being clones at all and the ones that fail to stick in your memory and distinguish themselves exist as static cultural objects rather than as part of an Ever evolving dialogue this is why I absolutely love lies of p in spite of its lack of enemy variety linearity and general lack of original ideas whoa is that a poison swamp it doesn't just feel like a game made by people who play bloodborn and thought yeah I like that and I want more so I'll do it again it feels like a game made by people who play bloodborne and thought yeah that was good but we can do better so much of Li ofp is a direct reaction to what the souls likes changing and improving upon their systems in a way that aren't just for the better but also serve to give the game its own unique feel bloodborne's combat is pretty simplistic and spammy don't correct me in the comments so lies ofp adds a bunch of cool new moves you can do to bring fights to a satisfying conclusion like each weapon's unique charge moves the game also goes out of its way to fix a lot of long-standing quality of life issues like removing the necessity of farming healing items telling you NPC quests are on the map and giving you a customizable rechargeable weapon buff so no more having to save them forever and never ending up using them the game even lets you customize your gear with the weapon handle determining its scaling move set and one of its abilities and the blade determining its damage Elemental type and the other special move it's a super cool system with loads of depth and I absolutely love it to the point that my only real wish for it is for fromsoft to steal it and put it in one of their games it's that good and that's also kind of the point of clones right almost every good video game in fact probably almost every game period began Life as a clone inspiration doesn't just appear from thin air it comes from how we experience existing media how we react to it respond to it and want to improve upon it creating an Ever shifting cultural landscape of clones that become fixtures in of themselves which in turn spoil more clones that will in time replace them and rather than being a generic platitude to excuse lazy copying this fundamental fact of all art is a reminder that clones need to be done well and have their own voice otherwise they're not fulfilling their purpose this is why I've tried to be fair to all the souls likes that I wasn't as much of a fan of because while I don't think most of them are particularly great the Bold choices and changes they make can serve as lessons to games that foll in their footsteps and might even serve as Inspirations to Future titles that refine their raw potential and in that way they are just as valuable a clone as lies of peers this is also why many big budget games's insistence on endlessly dragging in a million games of mechanics into a single amorphous clone blob frustrate me so much the endless open world kitchen sinks like Starfield Hogwarts Legacy and ubisoft's entire catalog are clones of everything and so have nothing to say and present nothing to react to in many ways these utterly unambitious and derivative clones whose sole aim is to do nothing new and challenge or comment on as little as possible are worse than merely being bad games as they actively serve to bog down the advancement and progression of their genre and give a bad name to clones that don't without clones that tried to build on what came before them in small but significant ways evolving the medium and learning lessons with every step we'd still think Doom was the best Wolfenstein clone ever and fromsoft would still be making kingsfield games if we deify one particular game or way of making games too much and fail to acknowledge challenges to the throne then genres we love can risk stagnating and wallowing in their own history instead of dynamically evolving over time because let's be honest all the games we think are un impeachable tent poles made to be imitated are definitely all clones themselves similarly Call of Duty wouldn't exist without Medal of Honor World of Warcraft wouldn't exist without EverQuest and slay the Spire wouldn't exist without dream Quest none of these games are unique and none of them will stick around forever and that's okay hell some of them have already been replaced by clones and as a final note this philosophy is especially true for making things as well as consuming media the only way to get started as an artist creating anything is to First create a clone and then come up with its individual identity later by reacting to and building off from your inspiration Disney's Classics are all just adapted folk stories Shakespeare himself said imitation is the greatest form of flattery and even this YouTube channel started life as me doing a really terrible game makers to/ sequel ittis impression sure it didn't start sucking slightly less until I came up with a perspective and voice that was a bit more unique but that couldn't have happened without first finding my footing as a copycat so in conclusion yes clones are everywhere yes there are more of them every day and yes most of them sort of suck but without clones video games wouldn't be the vibrant varied medium they are today and they may very well not exist at all the important thing to remember is that the only way to stop lazy creatively bankrupt clones from smothering everything else is for us to spot the few that have something interesting to say genuine passion behind them or just some cool ideas worth stealing and give them the attention and publicity they deserve so that they too can one day Inspire some new clones just uh words of the wise don't try and copy this channel because um then people will find out that almost anyone could do it better than me and I I can't I can't do a real job please don't take this away from me I'm I'm I'm begging you please I I I need money to buy crisps hello and welcome to this a special holiday after the video special ho ho ho Etc don't worry I'm hard at work on the end of your video video I just thought that I'd bash this one out in the meantime while I'm still compiling my final list and narrowing it down from the 80 odd it was at the start o anyway this is the part of every video where I shout out some cool people that you need to be paying attention to and talk about why they're so great and this time I'd like to point you in the direction of marag Ganga a video seest with the self- style tagline of style is substance and if that doesn't tell you all about the kind of game she covers then nothing else will maranga specializes in weird surrealist and most importantly gorgeous games that you've probably never heard of and explains why that in spite of the fact that almost nothing she talks about has ever come close to Commercial Success these games and their offbeat messages are still worth attention and appreciation in many parts because of their incompatibility with mainstream video game design maranga is great please check her out and I can't mention the 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Wright Andrew leono asaran alna 94 Brenan Spalding Brian nariani bore Skyrim for Todd Constantin amend cool Jam Cosmic 360 Daniel menz Das kangaroo David senser Durk Jan carel diger Egon Edward Franklin Woods Eugene bulin gazol IA 93 Jacob Dylan riddle jinoy Jordan gear Kevin helus Luke kakorin M54 Marica vladina alter Mark valent meme Dragon M oi Nate graph nwd Oliver mofer Patrick rberg Peter tomasic redex Regal Rex Revelation rayed dad Sila FY steam ran Steve Riley Tom manston Ty garan Tyler Duncan up Rising Whimsical wisp Zach brandmire and cowo okay that is all from me I hope you have a lovely holiday season because some of us have got to get back to work and finish up this damn end of year video all right okay bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 242,628

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, guide, New Games, Lies of P, Dark Souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Soulslike, Clones, Best Clones, Copied Videogames, Shovel Knight, Jedi, Star Wars, Jedi Fallen Order, Jedi Survivor, Remnant 2, Remnant From The Ashes, Fortnite, Half Life, Best Soulslike, Worst Soulslike, Lords of the Fallen, DOOM, Sonic, Spark the electric Jester, Stardew Valley, Vampire Survivors

Id: k7yTp25cpdc

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023