Just kidding, but the UK's Court of Appeal just ruled that ideas behind computer games can be copied. So even if Blizzard noticed that the user interface layout, game controls, and many aspects of gameplay in LotRO are quite similar to WoW, they can't claim copyright infringement. Only the graphics itself and the source code are legally protected.
Not that Blizzard would have tried that, they themselves "copied" a lot of ideas from previous games. And computer games in general copy a lot from each other. Inside of one genre of computer games, game controls are often identical or similar. Many first person shooters play the same way, as do many real time strategy games. Every action RPG since Diablo used a red health bar and a blue mana bar, with red and blue potions to fill them up. Some things just become industry standards, and unless there is a compelling reason to change, people just stick to these conventions.
The obvious danger is that this prevents innovation. I'm still waiting for MMORPGs to break out of the same old "autoattack plus special attack hotkeys" mold, although I'm sceptical of proposed solutions to make combat based on real-time clicking (what if you have lag?). On the other side World of Warcraft has taught (<- notice the correct form of this verb this time) game developers that polish sells better than half-baked novel ideas. Ideally somebody develops a new idea, and others take it up and refine it, until the idea becomes overused and somebody else comes up with another new idea. There is still some room in the MMORPG market for games similar to World of Warcraft, with just incremental improvements and a few novel features. We'll still have to wait a couple of years for a game to break the mould and come out with a very new idea of gameplay in a virtual online world.
No comments:
Post a Comment