I just brought on this topic by some other discussions on some android game developer blogs like droid-blog.net about the Copy Cat Situation.

What is a Copy Cat? People tend to flame developers for copying foreign game ideas or concepts.

Even Developers tend to flame other developers for making a similar game or overtaking a concept, they think, they have inventend.

That's some sort of ridicolous because it is even hard to say who actually invented an concept or an idea just because nobody does remeber or know.

To make it clear, nowadays nearly everything is a copy of someone elses idea or concept. Take the iPhone for example. They did not invent the smartphone nor the touchscreen. There were dozens of smartphones out before, thus they were not sucessful does not mean, they have not invented it.

The only thing Apple has done was picking up the ida, improving it and being sucessful.

Int the end the result was a better product and therefore is better for the consumer. A good product is not the result of just having the idea about it.

There are so many examples where people had great ideas but just were not able to make a good product out of it and completely spoiled the invention itself. So, they failed. Even when they do not fail in the first run, it is always possible, that someone comes up with an even better product.

There is no reason to flame people to improve something. The inventor always had the opportunity to make it better in the first place and also has the benefit of not needing to start from the scratch.

That's how competition works and that's also how consumers benefit from competition and get better products all the time.

Google was picking up a great concept (the smartphone) and tried to improve it - somehow they succeeded and now we have android - is that a bad thing? I think not.

Samsung was coming up with a phone which looks like an iPhone (which is just a screen with rounded edges and a round button below it) and improved it by using android instead of iOS.
Isn't it a bit sheepy to have to sue them just because they not made their smartphone with triangular screens? They always had the chance to improve their product to beat them in terms of functionality and features - that's what the consumer is looking for.
Remember, that does not mean, that the iPhone is bad! It just means that it is different!

Long words, but it is merely the same with games. Will anybody tell, that Command&Conquer is a copy of Dune, just because Dune was one of the first real time strategy games? Is now every Strategy Game a Copy?

Or Angry Birds .. it relies merely on the concept that you throw birds in the right angle with the right velocity to destroy the environment.
That was already done by games in the early 80s like "Gorillas" or "Scorched Earth". Even "Worms" does rely on that concept somehow.

So it would be unfair to call Angry Birds a Copy, because it is still a unique game, where developers take effort to produce it and people like it because it was improved in any ways.

And that's the whole point of copy cats. There is none. You are free to find games, that already exist and make them better. Indeed that's a great opportunity and the whole thing about competetion: Find something that does already work well and improve it. If you do not improve it, you will fail anyway. And if you improved it not enough, the original will have an easy day to improve itself and you will fail as well.

If you flame someone who copied a game .. just play the original one and abondon on any improvements.

If we would not allow improvements on existing ideas, everyone of you would still carry big pieces of nokia phones with them ;-)

So your job - as a developer - is not to invent something completely new, but make something better than the others - that way you will suceed.