What is Reddit's opinion of
Crush the Castle?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
7 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Rovio has always been taking the piss. An Amazon search for Angry Birds yields 57k+ results. Plus, this game was a shameless ripoff of Crush the Castle.
That's pretty much all popular mobile games in a nutshell. Nearly every extremely popular mobile game has been a clone of an older property, many of them being classic flash games. Zynga in particular really likes to rip off other games.
- Candy Crush = Bejeweled
- Flappy Bird = Helicopter Game
- Angry Birds = Multiple games, such as Crush the Castle^1
- Frozen Bubble = Snood, Dynomite, and a whole host of other clones.
- Words with Friends = Scrabble
- Scramble = Boggle
- Temple Run = Sonic
- 2048 = Threes! and 1024^2
That's not to say all the popular mobile games are clones. I don't know of any game that Clash of Clans could truly be called a clone of; it appears to be a genuinely original take on defensive building.
^1 Crush the Castle was released only a few months before Angry Birds, but came out just before development on Angry Birds started. It's pretty common for mobile devs to see game with an idea they like and immediately begin work on their version of it.
^2 This one came out right after the two games it was based on, but the developer himself stated that it was a direct clone. He just wanted to see if he could do it himself as a fun project, which is also why it has never been monotonized.
Remember 8 months before Angry Birds came out when Crush the Castle was a completely free web browser game that you didn't have to pay for at all, and then was adapted to both Android and iPhone for free?
Resolution wise, (but not FoV) the HMZ was superior (720p per eye) and some people attached a hydra to it. The Infiniti(sp) view supposedly was pretty good as well. I have a dk1 and it has poor quality lenses and screen, even for when it was made. Hoping peoples' dk2s were far better. The DK1 was better than the e3 prototype too, it would seem, and Carmack did the hard technical work for that to work with Doom 3, including adding the tracking sensors. Honestly, without specific software for it, I have no idea what Palmer was even testing his prototype with. Maybe side by side Tridef? Anyway, dual screen is better IMO and Oculus (primarily Carmack's endorsement and modifications) is what got game developers interested. That was the big part. Palmer gets credit for the original e3 prototype minus Carmack mod. Everything else was a group effort, especially the customers who marketed the dk1s thus ultimately leading them to get all that $ and FB stock. Many projects tend to get things done when you get a millionaire programmer to endorse it, enhance it and present it. Then after that, a hundred millionaire (Iribe) runs your operation, thousands market it... then you sell it to a billionaire. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that he had just a tad of help and good fortune getting his product developed. It's like the Angry Birds vs. http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle . Google pushing your product (and better marketing style) helps a lot. Connections + skill > greater skill + no connections .
Not everything is original! http://www.cracked.com/article_20057_5-insanely-successful-video-games-that-were-total-ripoffs.html There's even drama on Palmer's HMD itself and supposedly more than just John C. helped with it (other modders etc.).
Wonder what that lawsuit later on with Zenimax was about anyway....
Not that I've thought this well out, but you don't really need the worlds best product to rake in money, you need top level business men and of course some luck.
Imo, Angry Birds is Crush the castle brought to mobile and thus suddenly a game that can be put in millions of people's faces without having to lure them to a web page on a pc.
This version also is designed for kids and it appeals very much to them, it's timing also seem to come with the launch of the android OS and iirc it's one of the early games.
Just like the dot-com boom I'd say the Angry Birds game surfed on the Facebook boom along with the farmville games. Games with massively broad potential to put commercials into or have micro transactions, so they're possibly worth a lot before they even start making money.
The Brand name is easy to remember, easy to recognize and comes up in Coca Cola level. The only brand-ish similar product I can think of right now is Red Bull and some other caffeinated drinks. There's not much innovation going on but tons of exposure makes their visibility and potential worth a lot more than the sum of it's parts. At least early on.
Now we see childrens clothing, backpacks, mouse mats, pens etc etc and they're definitely milking this kids appeal on the Disney level of making your soap dispenser into a Disney princess.
If I made crush the castle I think I'd be walking around with a bad feeling for quite a few years.
tl;dr: I think it's brilliant business development.
> things like angry birds are the sort of same kind of thing as this interactive buddy
Angry Birds was a ripoff of an old flash game that was a ripoff of an older flash game