Re: [piecepack] ANNOUNCING THE 7th PIECEPACK GAME DESIGN COMPETITION: Good Portsmanship

["Ron Hale-Evans" <rwhe@...>]

On 9/4/06, Doug Orleans <dougorleans@...> wrote:
> How about in the other direction: how far away can a game get from its
> inspiration before it's no longer a "port"?  E.g. could Alien City be
> considered a port of Fresh Fish, since it has a similar distance
> measure?

This is a good question. I tend to consider Alien City to be more of a
"hybrid" than a port: in my opinion, it's an elegant hybrid of the
mechanics of Fresh Fish with Medina. Does that help any?

> Also, what happens if two people independently come up with the same
> game?  Perhaps the "piecepack must add value" rule will make this less
> likely, but I wonder if there's some game out there that has an
> obvious but interesting port that might be independently discovered.

I seriously doubt that any two ports of the same game, assuming the
game is sufficiently complex -- that is, we're not talking about a
port of Tic Tac Toe -- would be similar enough to be called "the same
game". As with software, there are good ports and bad ports. I've seen
plenty of ports of Poker to decks of alphabet cards recently, but I've
only liked a few of them.

Ron

--
   Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... ... http://ron.ludism.org/
Mind Performance Hacks book: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mindperfhks/
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(revilous life proving aye the death of ronaldses when winpower wine has
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