The success of King.com really bothers me. Sure their games are not cheap and made very well, but it seems the whole "game" and all mechanics are just designed to slowly get you hooked and extract money at the most susceptible time. And it's executed almost to the point of perfection.
It's a shame it's working so well, because they are eating the cake in front of a very low confidence game industry. Smartphones are powerful now, yet games that manage to match the quality and depth of an SNES-era game are basically non-existent. After seeing the success of Rovio, Zynga and King, I don't think they will be made sadly. Let's just hope this doesn't affect other platforms as well.
Smartphones are powerful now, yet games that manage to match the quality and depth of an SNES-era game are basically non-existent. After seeing the success of Rovio, Zynga and King, I don't think they will be made sadly.
It's important to realize that our tastes aren't necessarily representative of people's tastes in general. Most people probably wouldn't enjoy Chrono Trigger or FF3 compared to Candy Crush. The evidence is that Final Fantasy games have been available for smartphones for a long time now, but they just aren't selling. The storytelling experience is the same, but people aren't as into them.
It's easy to label the industry as "low confidence" but reality is more along the lines of "acts on hard data." It's wise to be cautious when it only takes one or two mistakes to kill your company.
I think the reason is not so much the taste of the people but rather the fact that a smartphone is not a NES. It's not the same use case.
Most successful games on phones are extremely casual, meant to be played for 5 minutes at a time while waiting for something else. The games you cited were meant to be played hours at a time.
That lowers people expectations as well as the price they're willing to pay for the games on phones.
Also, the fact that almost all interactions have to be done through the touchscreen makes many game types impractical.
Settlers on the iPad is brilliant. The touchscreen interface is perfect for such a game, and I’ve certainly played it for hours at a time. Not sure how well it would translate to phone screen size, or if it’s even available.
They may not be selling because Square is selling their SNES-era games for tens of dollars. In a marketplace where $5.99 is considered a premium/high price, it's just plain insulting.
20ish year old games with minor graphical enhancements are not worth $15.99
"Insulting" might be the wrong word there. I would think it's more insulting to tell someone how to value their work. Perhaps, it's an unwise price if they're looking for millions of downloads, but I don't know. I think that in order to keep pushing the iPhone toward a real gaming platform instead these ADHD spin offs and in app purchases, we need more of the big boys to price things at a sustainable price tag.
There's nothing reasonable or sustainable about $16 for a 20 year old game. My immediate reaction is "Are these people serious?" followed by "What do they think they're going to sell me that a SNES emulator can't provide?"
It feels like they're insulting my intelligence, in other words.
I'm not sure why the age would affect the value. Either it's a good game or it isn't. I paid for Grand Theft Auto 3 on my phone - is that too old to have value or is it still in the value zone? I'm confused.
Now, SNES emulators are something else. It's worth pointing out that downloading ROMs is not technically legal. And (at least on the iPhone) you can't use one without jailbreaking your phone.
Pong is a good game. It cost about $100 when it first came out.
Would you pay even half that for a mobile implementation?
As to the legality of roms, let's say I own a rather extensive SNES library (including every SE game available on Android). As far as I'm concerned, my conscience is clear. Nothing wrong with format shifting.
Games do age. Something that was looked impressive 20 years ago will probably look very dated by current standards.
Great games or not, trying to sell them at a price that is two or three times that of a "premium" game like Grand Theft Auto is ludicrous. The market has been conditioned to expect mobile games to sell for a dollar or two.
You don't need to jailbreak; although MacBuildServer is down now, there are still a few websites that will exploit the Enterprise License for you. This will be "fixed" in iOS 7.1 though. SiOS (https://github.com/lmmenge/SiOS) is a good SNES emu for iPhone, I did a custom build but that isn't necessary.
I have no problem with downloading a ROM for a game I already own. Plus, you can't even prove I did it if I download it through a VPN and deleted it off my phone afterwards.
A touch interface, for one. Emulates are find and all but I find their inaccuracy frustrating more often than not. Further, it's not just a 20 year old game on an emulator. Somebody has to port it, make graphics (for what they are worth), probably localize it. Sure it's not necessarily as hard as making a game from scratch (though that could be debated), but that doesn't mean the costs aren't similar.
I have Final Fantasy 1 for my Nokia, and it's actually a port rather than an emulation. I haven't looked up the differences, but what I've found so far are:
The interface supports tapping on characters rather than selecting them with the 'directional-pad' which appears on the map when walking around.
There's at least one new area to explore.
The magic system is more like later games, using MP.
Graphics have been improved
I'm not sure how many of these are ports from the DS version, though. Possibly all of them.
Based on the screenshots of FF3 for Windows, it appears to be a port of the DS re-make rather than the Famicom original
I think they're mostly just ported. I've bought a few of the Square games on iOS and they were just the normal games with touch capabilities added on top of the old menus. No usability changes at all to accomodate modern touch patterns. There are many "click" needed to navigate some menus, which would just have been one touch or drag in a modern app. Scrolling was also laggy and glitchy.
They're not really insulting your intelligence. They are insulting your first sale rights, and your decision to buy the original game and not re-sell it later.
Do we really expect the iPhone to become a real gaming platform? I'm not being rude, it's an honest question.
I don't see it ever becoming more, as a gaming platform, than it is now -- something to do to kill time while waiting in line or whatever else. I feel like the people who want a real gaming platform are, for the most part, more likely to go out and buy a full computer, an XBox, a Playstation, etc.
It /is/ a real gaming platform, and companies like King.com make a killing off of the platform(s); not in the traditional sense of the word like the AAA games of PC and consoles, but in a novel fashion with addictive games, microtransactions and buying ratings and downloads for promotional purposes.
And it's a very real gaming platform for the millions of people that play and enjoy casual games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush. No it probably won't apply to people that were into gaming before it was mainstream, or to gamers that look for something with a bit more content, but for a lot of people it's awesome. Or addictive. Or both.
What makes a 'real' gaming platform? What does a 'real' gamer look like? How often does a 'real' gamer game?
All surveys of gamers over the last 5 years show that the average gamer is female, late twenties to thirty, and puts in gaming hours way above anything your average FPS gamer would. (and the figures from before that were badly skewed by having the 'hearts' players removed for not being 'real gamers' (and some even removed commercial casual games), despite being the overwhelmingly largest group of gamers (arguably, if they'd included them, we might have seen the rise in casual gaming sooner))
The iPhone is the biggest gaming platform in the world. It is also where the main gamers are playing the most hours of games. Isn't that 'real' enough for you?
You might be onto a winner here. I've got chrono trigger and the monkey island on my phone and don't touch them - it's vastly more comfortable to play them for hours on my PC or emulators.
Phones need a different input device and a different display before they can be comfortable to game on for extended periods of time.
It really depends on the game. Somehow, I was able to get better at Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on my iPhone than I was on the N64 version I played as a kid.
Or a portable game system (Whatever the most recent DS/PSP thing is).
On the one hand it sucks to carry two devices on the other hand, many of the really good games are designed to be played with D-pads and buttons, not a touch screen and softkeyboard.
Actually, that's a good point. Maybe, for a smartphone to become a "real" gaming platform as stated above, it's not game titles we need first, but hardware.
I know there have been Android phones introduced designed for gaming, and I think they flopped pretty hard (I didn't hear much about them for long). But maybe instead of a whole phone, a company could produce and sell a gamepad that plugs into the phone? Then they ("they" being the producer of the gamepad, and any companies that it enables to sell bigger titles) could target the DS/PSP/portable console market.
To be fair, most people use their 3DS/DS/Vita/PSP/whatever more like a tablet than like a phone. They're meant for curling up on the couch on a lazy afternoon (or, uh, as something to keep you occupied on the toilet...), not for whipping out in public while you're waiting in a queue. The low battery life of the newer handhelds seems relevant: iirc the 3DS's is around 3 hours, and the Vita's is comparable.
I see people using portable game systems on the subway. But then whipping it out in public for 5 minutes at a time is not particularly conducive to the kind of deep games that we're talking about.
You're right, I should have mentioned long commutes in public transportation as the other main usage scenario of portables (especially in their country of origin), but that's not as relevant a consideration to (what I'm assuming is the average HN user) Americans living in areas with poor or nonexistent public transportation.
I'd gladly pay $16 for a NEW game of that quality but wrapping up an old game as a new product and trying to get that out of it? No, thanks. I love mobile gaming and I'm working on trying to build a company out of it but repackaging up old games for the new platforms does not advance them in the least.
We used to pay $50 for every new game, why do you want a new game for $16?
I get it, most of the games are from $1 to $4, but I don't understand why. Either you pay $1-4 for a dumb little game with no depth, or you pay $16 for a quality of game that used to cost $50, when hardware was less advanced. Why?
Because it's not a new game. There is not $16 worth of value there. There is no new content. It is a straight port job with bad touch controls grafted on.
I could have a superior experience with a SNES emulator.
Further, depth of a game has nothing to do with price. False dichotomy. The choice isn't between cheap games with no depth and expensive games with depth, the choice is between high value and low value.
There isn't a $16 value in what SE is putting out. There's not even a $5 value.
This is what you wrote. I haven't been a gamer for a long time, other than some $2 and $5 games, so I'm on your side.
I'm trying to understand why we're not interested in paying $50 for a game anymore. I have a stack of them at home, I paid $50 in 1990's and 2000's money for them.
I agree that you shouldn't pay $50 for a rehash of some old game that was never designed for touch, on a platform that doesn't provide really any other options for input control.
I'm just trying to understand why nobody is putting out NEW games that you would pay $50 for. Nobody is even targeting this price point. Is it because distribution channels are so much cheaper, and there aren't as many middle-men trying to take a cut? Is there some deficiency in the platform to explain why they /can't/ sell us games at the $50 price?
I'm not talking about Candy Crush Saga. The consoles are still successful at selling new games for $50+. Nobody is doing it for Android or iOS as far as I can tell. Are we waiting for NVidia Shield and Ouya, or is there some other reason why nobody is producing for this platform any new, original games of high quality that you would pay $50 for?
Nobody's selling them because the few people who've tried to target an upmarket price point have failed miserably and the sort of investment needed to make a game "worth" $50 in the world of mobile games (filled with insane players who seem to think a dozen hours of gameplay isn't worth $3) would be a massive, massive risk. The only people able to actually move units at a price point over $10 seems to be Square themselves, and even they're not doing a great job of it with that mind-boggling back catalog of games and name recognition to use to their advantage.
I'm making a 2D JRPG right now - first wave of platforms being PC/Mac/maybe-Linux, second wave being mobile and tablet devices. The PC version will be priced between $15 and $20; the mobile one will by necessity end up around $8-$10 because that is the ceiling that people seem willing to pay for games (and not a lot of them at that).
From where I sit, the mobile market is largely quality-inelastic (unless you measure quality on 'reactivity of your Skinner box') and while I'm porting my game, I wouldn't bother otherwise if it wasn't solely a learning experience for me. Even if I was at an AAA shop I certainly couldn't justify spending the sort of money necessary to "validate" the existence of a $50 title on iOS.
Besides market issues, it is just really hard to make a very sophisticated game on a touchscreen. The controls are inherently imprecise and require you to cover up a third of the screen anytime you're interacting. The SNES game landscape would have looked very different if it had a control scheme with those properties. The popular sorts of games for mobile are the sorts of games that actually work well with the limitations of the phone hardware.
I'm not sure I'd pay $50 for a game unless it's one I REALLY wanted because friends were playing. I buy a medium amount of games but they are almost all are $20 and under. I tend to not like the big AAA production type of games except for a few exceptions (Mass effect, Uncharted, Skyrim but that's about all) but I love super meat boy, spelunky, bastion, banner saga, and tons of other indie games like them. To me it seems a better business model pay a smaller price from a digital delivery platform (Steam, iOS app store, google play store etc...) that a much larger chunk goes to the actual devs.
Because there are many games, and there is a bigger market of people buying those games.
Since there is more people buying those games, a popular game can be profitable at a lower price now than a popular game could have been profitable at in the past. There is also no mark-up through as many distribution channels. There's no physical shelf space necessary, there's not the same sort of publisher relationships needed. A team (of any size) can create a game and publish it directly.
So because of changes in distribution and an increased market, the price should go down due to reduced expenses. But the other side is that many of these changes also reduce the barrier to entry of new developers. This means that there's more competition which means that the price will go down due to reduced margins from competition.
It's not so much that it's $1-4 for a dumb game and $16 for a quality game. It's that people sell quality games for less than 5 dollars and still make money. It's also the perception that "this game was already made". Chances are the people who are buying it have already played it because these rereleases are generally for fans of the game. So you're paying again for a game that's 20 years old. Does it make sense to pay more than a new game?
That said I'm in total agreement that the biggest thing about it is form factor. People don't buy SNES rpgs on the phone because phones aren't the best way to play SNES rpgs.
Phones have a small screen, long term playing on such a small screen causes eye strain, phones have touch screens, which are great for angry birds, because it's a very intuitive use for touch. Touch screen gamepads are not intuitive, and occlude the screen. Phones are always on you which is very handy for games that you want to pick up or put down, but not so important for marathon sessions. Phones have batteries which need to be considered, so again, you want to avoid the marathon gaming sessions.
The reason we have so many casual games on the phone is because the phone is the ideal target for casual games. Games that you can pick up and put down. Go and play a level of candy crush saga on the toilet. Go and shoot some angry birds waiting for the train. I've tried to play some RPGs this way and you might get through a minor segment of a story line or some plot exposition on the can before your legs start to get numb.
You often find $60 PC games for sale. We haven't moved to a point where games are all $1-4. We just have moved to a point where casual games are $1-4, and bigger games demand a different delivery method than a little phone screen and substandard (compared with the alternatives of a console or PC) hardware. If you're going to pay $60 for a game, you're probably planning on putting some real time aside for it, which means sitting at your desk or on the couch. When you get an app for the phone instead, you do it because you might get some use out of it when you can't spend the time to sit at a desk or on the couch.
I must be overestimating the market for tablet gamers. It seems like we used to pay $200-400 for console game systems that didn't include a TV or stereo sound (sure, we all had TVs). I've spent around and below the low end of that range on half a dozen tablets, some as gifts, and the price of this kind of hardware is going down while hardware quality goes up.
Now many people are shelling out just as much for tablets and phones (or through subsidy plans, eventually paying as much as for TV consoles). Today, I have a Wii Mini which was $99, pay extra for more controllers, $10-30 a game since mostly all Wii games are used, or at least are priced as used... and I couldn't be happier that there's no way to hook it up to the internet and Pay-to-Play.
I wish that some of the games were more casual, but from a small sample, the Lego LOTR game is engaging, multiplayer, and really just couldn't be done at all on a small screen with a touch interface. Same goes for Just Dance, or Michael Jackson Experience. Still I can't help feeling like the makers of games for iOS and Android are sandbagging the market. It is about depth for me, and I honestly can't say that I've seen a lot of Android games competing on a much higher level than even the crappiest Wii games that I got for under $10.
Then again, I haven't paid more than $7 for any Android game.
Value and price are distinct things. The value of anything is not the price the author think he is entitled to charge nor the manufacturing cost + a fair profit, it is the price people is willing to pay.
Games like Castlevania, Mario, Zelda, Metroid which have simple but well-executed mechanics have basically gone out of flavor because the broader populace... I originally said this is because they do not enjoy difficult or lengthy games, however I think that may be incorrect. I think the wider populace craves achievement, and being able to show something for the time they've sunk into the game (as well as probably being put off by games with difficult learning curves). Games like Farmville, Candycrush, and most MMORPGs, while time consuming, award "something" the player can "show off" afterwards.
I think games like Spelunky are more along the lines of games the OP and many people I speak with miss. The indie game community on PC and XBLA have done wonders as of late. It's a shame it's not quite gone so well for mobile, but PC and mobile gaming are two massively different audiences. Quality games are far, far, FAR from dead, you just need to look to places where people with like-minded interests from you are.
Seems to me like it has less to do with the tastes of kids these days and more to do with the interface and features of the device. 2D platformers are damn hard to play on a touch screen and require a lot more attention than the typical puzzler/social game. The genres of Zynga and Rovio thrived organically in mobile environments. Meanwhile, the more "hardcore" gaming companies are trying their damndest to force existing game mechanics into an environment that doesn't sustain them.
I don't care about people liking Candy Crush. Match 3 is a huge genre.
It's just sad that there isn't a clone that costs $4.99 to buy and doesn't need more purchases. It's even sadder that even if the clone did exist few people would buy it.
I really miss the Doom model of give away a few levels cor free and buy the rest.
I don't understand why people think Candy Crush is bad. I've played Candy Crush for close to a year (I'm on level 153) and I haven't spent a dime.
Sure, I've played the same level for weeks on end, but I haven't bought anything.
Of course I've been tempted to push the button, spend 99 cents and bypass the level, but I have something called willpower and a certain amount of pride that every level I've beaten is legit.
> I don't understand why people think Candy Crush is bad.
> ...but I have something called willpower
This is why people think Candy Crush is bad -- because most people don't have this willpower, and it plays on this weakness, almost to an exact science.
I've been somewhat addicted to Candy Crush for the last few months (at level 305 now - long commutes give me way too much free time) and I haven't spent a dime either. What was surprising to hear was that some co-workers have paid at every "world" change - and they didn't know there was a way to get through to the next world without paying. It seems, when it is hooked up to your Facebook account, you don't have the option to play the three bonus levels over the course of 24 hours each - only nagging FB friends and paying. The trick is to just sign-out of FB in-game, play the three levels and then connect it back up if you wanted to.
Yes, I only realised this recently. I got into the habit of paying (although via FB, as the cost to unlock new levels is 2 credits - 20c - rather than $0.99).
However, I'm actually quite happy to pay for the content directly. Developers don't work for free, and they're constantly adding to the game. I like to support them (and other devs) as so many people expect to get hundreds of hours of gameplay for free these days.
I don't see an issue with paying for content gates in such a fashion -- but I do dislike the "Pay $0.99 to get 5 more moves, you've nearly done it!" mechanic, and others like it, so I don't pay for those.
My biggest gripe is that the game is designed in a way to extract as much money as possible to the detriment of the game itself.
There are several levels you'll play where you have absolutely zero chance of winning (particularly the later levels where you need X of this and Y of that) because the colors just don't come up. Yeah, that's down to randomness, but it's one of those things that could be resolved. Also, when playing if you receive a call or switch to some other app in the middle of a game you lose your game and that life. Yet another way to pluck more money out of people. Then you have the arbitrary play limits (3 days to unlock another pack via bonus levels, 30 minute waits for lives, etc).
I'd have much less of a problem with the game if each level had a solvable method to it. Then you can make it pay to pass or skill to win.
I'm not sure -- I think it just a patience vs. money trade off.
Which levels are you talking about? Definitely there are levels where it all comes down to luck, but even with 0.5% of winning, you'll probably get there after a couple hundred games. I'm not even sure it's a good business decision for them, more like poor design imo -- I suspect there are more people who get frustrated and quit than those who actually pay...
The levels I'm thinking of are the ones that require 200 green or multiple combos of special candies. Add in the chocolate things and the tornadoes and it just gets worse.
I don't know if it was poor design or purposeful to get more money out of people, but I tend to think the latter because of just how many places it begs to buy things.
People probably do get frustrated and quit. I know that's what I end up doing. Especially when my gaming habits are 30 minutes here and there. I just want a short session, not play for 5 minutes and have to pay more or wait 30 minutes to play more.
I'm in the same boat as you - played for a while, high level, never paid.
But, I wonder if all of the levels actually are beatable. I haven't been able to figure out if some of the levels are random or not. It seems like there are definite patterns for some levels, but not all.
This is what bothers me. I want to know that any given board can be beaten. If it can't and then they charge you to keep playing, that would be dishonest.
I just haven't figured out it that was the case or not.
I am pretty sure there are people out there who have completed all levels without powerups/extensions/etc, so I think yes. And with the wheel of fortune thing, you don't even have to pay for powerups.
The only one I've had a problem with so far was 417 (which is basically a lottery level), but if I didn't have enough free powerups in storage, I am quite sure I would get lucky one time...
The fact that people are playing it regardless of whether they are paying or not helps king.com make profit to demolish games like Banner Saga (note: this is a game I backed).
You might wonder how - but it's rather simple. Even if you pay zilch to play and you get to level 153, your friend brother, mom, sister, father or acquaintance will see this and try it out, and perhaps get hooked (if it's someone that would pay money to 'compete' in levels with you, even better).
It's a numbers game. Games like that depend on few gamers that spend in the thousands (aka 'whales'), and to get to them they need to wade through a sea of people that spend 0$ but are connected to the so called 'whales' .
So yes, thanks again for helping King.com ruin The Banner Saga for me...
> I really miss the Doom model of give away a few levels cor free and buy the rest.
Sadly, things like this get tons of hate in the reviews... People would rather be annoyed with stupid social media and IAP crap than pay a dollar for the rest of the game. The only way to really make it work is (from my experience) make an ad-supported, shortened lite version, so people can test it out before buying it. That's a real pain because now you have two malls to manage, update, and promote. At least that's how it works on iOS.
I don't find this to be the case at all, we produced a game which was free and had a single purchase for the rest of the levels. People didn't complain any more than normal, conversion was good.
I also believe this model is executed well on the App Store — I personally play and purchase Tell Tale's episodic games, the Layton Brothers Mystery Room game, Phoenix Wright, Ghost Trick, and so on. All of them use this sales model.
One of the biggest, most loved games ever also used this model: Letterpress. It is free and offers a single purchase for unlimited multiplayer opponents. People love it.
A bit offtopic: where can I get recommendations for good mobile games? Geared towards a HN-like crowd :)
I've read about more interesting Android games on this article's comments (didn't know there were Layton games for Android) than in several unsuccesful searches. And all the "most popular" Android games the Play store shows me are not for me.
This scheme didn't hurt Doom though, far from it, so what is the difference?
Is the change in platform somehow making the difference? Is it that Doom was perceived as technically advanced, while these smartphone games are not? Has the audience just gotten less mature, and more entitled?
Lots of games do that, and that seems to be the only respectable way to monetize....
that and in-game item sales.... but those tend to go too far and then cripple gameplay.
The Doom model wouldn't work on me anymore, unless the game was spectacular.
Once I've played the first x levels, I've usually satisfied my curiosity about the game and, if there is a pay wall, move on.
I do appreciate the chance to try before I buy, but maybe because I'm not 'investing' in the game (either by paying money upfront or time investment in a free game), it's easy to move on to one of the hundreds of other good games out here.
>It's just sad that there isn't a clone that costs $4.99 to buy and doesn't need more purchases.
Practically speaking, a lot of these freemium games just have a lot of money to spend on creating content. It's usually a better more polished game even if you don't spend money on it. That $5 clone has to come up with all the development budget up front, while the freemium version has constant cash flow.
I have one of the Final Fantasy games on my cell phone, and the user experience is really not good for a cell phone game.
One kind of game I expected to do really well and I'm still waiting, is graphic adventure games.
In either case, I think the problem is recognizing that smartphone games are similar but different to handheld consoles, I'm sure there are plenty of insights to be had - maybe game sessions of 5-15 minutes instead of whatever handhelds have
This article says they're equal, but maybe it's a chicken and egg problem :)
There some really REALLY good graphic adventure games for iOS, like the tell tale games for instance. The walking dead series is one of the best iOS games I've ever played.
I've heard about that, and I've played one Sam & Max game by Telltale :) .
I don't have and don't plan on owning any Apple devices - not useful and too expensive in my country, the local ecosystem uses Android, so I hope they release more games for Android :) I thought they hadn't released, any but apparently they just did !!! Should show them some support by buying it :)
The Telltale Walking Dead game is actually based on the comic book universe, which is distinct from the TV show. Also, the game features a completely separate story, with only a few character references for fans to catch.
So no, you don't need to watch the show or read the comic to enjoy the game, but as with all license properties it never hurts.
I'd show support by buying it if it ran on something other than an Amazon Kindle Fire DX. :-( Rumor has it that one can side-load it, but I'm not going to hassle with that only to find out it has issues on a Galaxy Note 3.
Beyond that, there's a very limited range of games smartphones can support. Because of the lack of dedicated physical buttons, most action game just do not work. The action games that do well are runners, because they remove nearly all the controls except for dodge. Because the screen is a touch screen you inherently cover the screen as you control the game. It's the reason the DS has two screens, so you can cover up part of the second screen without blocking the main action above.
The last mobile game I worked on at a (now defunct) company, started out as an innovative open-world exploration / action game (See http://www.slantsixgames.com/games/strata-scavenger). I can honestly say, having had first-hand gameplay experience with it, that this game could have been a standout in the mobile game crowd.
Unfortunately, the day came when our CMF (Canadian Media Fund) money ran out, and the company had to look for external funding. Needless to say, publishers are not interested in this kind of game. They expect simple gameplay, in-app purchases, social features, etc. It it very hard, in the current mobile game climate, to come up with truly deep and innovative games. I applaud each and every indie dev trying to do so.
EDIT: edited link above to point directly to the company's website
It's just business. Your game (which looks cool), if it had no IAP and social features, would make a few hundred thousand bucks if it was an outstanding success. Whereas, Clash of Clans / HayDay / Candy Crush make between $500k and $1M per day.
If you were a publisher, where would you put your investment?
Yeah I've heard/played out this story a couple of times now. Investors want you to "make it like Candy Crush" and they get their way because the company has to make payroll somehow.
> but it seems the whole "game" and all mechanics are just designed to slowly get you hooked and extract money at the most susceptible time
Welcome to the games industry of today. It's all about this everywhere you look; in fact, if you are an indie doing games today and you don't build around monetization you'll pretty much be laughed at (not by the players evidently, but you get the point).
> Smartphones are powerful now, yet games that manage to match the quality and depth of an SNES-era game are basically non-existent
Well, people generally tend to have much shorter sessions with their smartphone than with a console. Stupid and simple works because that's where the demand is, so folks build more of it.
people generally tend to have much shorter sessions with their smartphone than with a console
Couldn't agree more. A smartphone is different from a console/PC not only in terms of form-factor but also in its usage (bursts of activity as opposed to long sessions).
Exactly. 90% of my gaming these days is during 10 minute train or bus rides as part of my commute. The remaining 10% tends to be before going to sleep etc.
While I occasionally play other games, the ones I play when I have time to sit down tend to be unsuitable for small screen devices.
I've got the exact same concerns. But on the other hand, I think what we're seeing is a bubble.
A few powerful companies are exploiting the current casual/F2P gold rush, but I doubt humanity as a whole will be into casual scam games forever. Games are evidently growing up. And legislators might eventually tackle games that focus on addicting and deceiving.
All this will take time of course, but I still don't think we're in for a cultural wasteland in the near-term. Indies are already filling the gap, and it actually leads to success for some of them. Most in my circles don't focus on making money first and foremost, neither do I.
It's not ideal, but I actually think it's a good thing that e.g. gambling is restricted to adults. A fairly difficult topic IMO. Ideally, people would just be educated/interested enough to identify and avoid scams. Definitely hoping for that.
But there's no gambling involved here. I agree with the parent poster, the last thing I want are out-of-touch politicians legislating more things they don't understand. That would be a worse outcome than all the scammy games in the world.
I think there's at least an interesting debate to be had. Why is gambling restricted to adults? Presumably because children are unable to comprehend the way in which it persuades you to spend more than you ever intended to. Or maybe it's because the money is unlikely to be theirs.
Either way, you could argue that Candy Crush is the same on both counts.
Candy Crush, Farm Ville, most prominent examples of F2P are nothing short of gambling. Zynga (and I presume King as well) has large teams of psychologist focusing solely on making the game as addictive as possible and exploiting that addiction, i.e. making addicts pay.
What are you talking about? There is no chance involved in most of the F2P games, without which there is no gambling. That's what the word means!
Candy Crush is ostensibly skill based, being a bejeweled-match-3 type game and Farmville and the like are based around time, not chance. (You get X actions per day, and can spend money to get more actions)
I think calling this a bubble is akin to calling slot machines a bubble. Unfortunately I feel like these types of scam games are here to stay and like slot machines, will make up a large portion of the industry's total revenue.
Yes, I don't actually think this kind of stuff is going away. I merely hope it's going to be less lucrative (it's insanely lucrative right now) and more frowned upon. And I really don't think that all games will look like that in the future, that is the main point I'm trying to make.
And yet others are sinking to the lowest common denominator, and hardcore studios are slowly learning about F2P. I love the current indie movement, but it's not strong on mobile, because players are being trained not to pay for games and indies tend to produce full content with an upfront price rather than use the "scam" mechanics. There are definitely titles that manage to walk the line well (e.g. with episode or item IAPs) and I think we'll see more of those.
The early version will be $10, no in app purchases. The latest one will be $0.99, with a million in app purchases.
In-app is fine. (As someone else says, devs need to get paid.). But some companies exploit confusing conversions (X gems to unlock! Y gems for $0.99!) and similar shady tactics.
And they do it because it works.
People do filter buying decisions by price, or number of good reviews.
I am on level 450 with no money also. Sure, it is possible; but it is clear how smart they are in the strategy of getting money. As a BizDev I actually used to praise them for this. They are so much better at it than every other casual game producer.
But I see the parent point. As a gamer, this might level down the games for gamers. But I don't actually believe it will. Someday someone will make a very good game costing $20 to play on a phone and will be a hit as GTA and others.
They are just different audiences. Casual gamers don't want to pay anything upfront, so you have to trick them into it like Candy Crush. Serious gamers like to show their praise for a game upront, and them play as much as they want with no off-game annoyances.
It's kind of weird though because there's almost no motivation to proceed. There's no goal - other than addiction (and also, I suppose, the happiness gained from passing your friends on the board). Other successful games which have grinding such as this have something - loot, abilities, unlocks - something to strive towards. Candy Crush just presents you with another board which requires a certain amount of luck to win (because the board clears so frequently, it's impossible to look more than one move ahead anyway).
But there is a lot of strategy also. It is possible to think 2 (some rare times 3) moves ahead. But sure, a lot of it is luck.
As I don't connected it to FB, I don't even use the social aspect of the game. So recognizing this is just to pass some time, and with no competition with friends, pay money to buy time doesn't make sense to me. I play it when I want to spend time (not buy it)
Also, with the reward feeling of passing a tough phase (the were phases which I played much more than a hundred times) being so big! Actually I would be paying to diminish my pleasure.
Honestly I think there's actually so little real strategy in the game that it doesn't even matter. 95% of the time a freckle crossed with a striped lolly will win the level for you, so most of the game is just spent looking for 5-in-a-rows.
Because of that I never felt rewarded when beating a level (though I did play the game a fair bit so there is something there).
For me the game was very addictive but playing it often felt compulsive instead of fun. Some of the levels were quite enjoyable but many of them felt like waiting for the random number generator to generate a level that was not impossible. Also, I felt that the new features as the game advanced were designed to increase the amount of luck needed.
Basically, the gameplay felt like I was repeatedly throwing dice until I got a certain combination of numbers. Also, in the later levels, the dice may randomly explode.
But you still have a crippled game - one which you can’t even play as often as you’d like without shelling out money. Do yourself a favour: delete it now. Stand up for decency and the future of the industry.
It's not crippled in terms of functionality, it just delays you slightly - whether it is getting friends to unlock the next level, or being stuck on the same level for 4 weeks as you won't pay for boosters.
TBH, the 5 life limit is a bit of a relief and helps prevent addition.
If I bought a toaster/car/tv/pacemaker and it physically didn't work for long periods at a time, I'd consider it crippled. Of course, that's the business model, but that doesn't stop it being true.
There are a lot of great indie titles out there. It takes some work though searching through them and trying to find the good ones. But ps4, nintendo, xbox are all starting to show support for indie titles and it is not hard to get a game onto those systems if you are an indie dev on the latest consoles.
Starting to show support? It's been going on for years now, at least during the xbox 360 and PS3; maybe even earlier. Microsoft just hands out XNA devkits for indie developers and lets them have a go.
That's not exactly true. You need to have a published game or a working game demo of a certain quality level prior to them giving you a XBOX 360/Xbox One dev kit. XNA is no longer supported or a thing at all.
they need to because of the competition with steam. But I don't think they were ever really in love with the idea. The latest generation seems different though.
Games on iOS/Android which match or exceed SNES-era games are plentiful.[1] I'm not sure why this opinion persists. Mobile games have trash like Candy Crush, but SNES wasn't crap-free either. I don't have a lot of time for games these days, but my iPad has games like Plants vs. Zombies, Final Fantasy Tactics, an Infocom / Inform interpreter, King of Dragon Pass, Waking Mars, SpaceChem, Minecraft, Brogue, Skulls of the Samurai, XCOM, Pacific Skies, OOTP Baseball, etc. There's also some great board / card game conversions like Small World 2, Warhammer Quest, and Ascension on there. And this only scratches the surface of what's out there.
[1] Pocket Tactics - http://www.pockettactics.com - is a very good site, in the style of Rock Paper Shotgun, for discovering the more interesting mobile games.
I don't know. I would never buy a smartphone game at this point because they look so low quality. Square Enix has offerings in the play store that I know are going to be good, so I can pay a few dollars more for that game instead of spending 0.99 on DRAGON DUNGEON CASTLE LOLICON SAGA.
What bothers me, is that the addictive nature and spending is up 2 par with poker sites/ casino's. You can play for free with playmoney there, and sure if you have discipline and constraint you won't deposit on such a site. Then advertising comes in..
Isn't this what all of us are complaining about right now? Various business segments (video games, content, video aggregation) doing the bare minimum copying existing content and monitizing it with psychological usury? Clickbait-y headlines, overly gamified games, etc. All the same thing, but they only work because they work--people clicking, paying, etc... How do we as developers deal with these segments or agents we find intellectually dishonest?
To be fair, the video game industry has brought this upon themselves. They haven't innovated much since the SNES era. 90% of the profits went to Call of Duty and Madden sequels for a long time.
King and their ilk aren't cutting into that, they're innovating games for people who previously didn't play them. It's a positive thing.
What a ridiculous statement. The first Call of Duty wasn't even released until 2003, more than a decade after the SNES. To say that gaming hasn't innovated since the SNES era is just wrong.
It's the form factor. Sure, a mobile RPG might be fun on a train ride, but realistically, the quality game audience is well serviced on platforms that don't have to force their control scheme into a crude touch screen abomination.
Seems like Blizzard might be coming to mobile with their latest game, so those higher quality, richer games may eventually come to mobile as AAA studios get on board (with the actual games they are also pushing on other platforms).
I played their new card game Hearthstone for a few minutes. Not really sure why it's not a tablet game by default. Maybe I didn't play long enough to appreciate some of the graphics/transitions, etc. But the gameplay seemed natural enough for a tablet/phone. But if you're into that kind of game, check out Ascention [1] or
The iOS version is in internal Beta. It's not available mostly because the game isn't ready yet and iOS lacks the ability to do a mass open Beta properly. I suspect that the iPad version will be available day one. This is likely a really bad thing for me, say good bye to gobs of hard earned cash. Hearthstone is a really really good game imo.
How is this different than playing Street Fighter, Contra, or any other arcade game? I remember pulling a roll of quarters out of the bank just so I could go to the arcade prepared to slowly spend money years back.
As someone who grew up in the Golden Age of video games, this makes me sad. You are no longer the player and the thing in your hand is not the game. The player is the company the game is you.
Maybe it was always like so, and I was young and having too much fun to realize. It really does seem like the idea of painting rich immersive worlds with challenging skills to learn and master has been tossed aside, in favor of simplified Skinner boxes with the minimum required skinning of a game and pay to play. Even more sad is how successful these "games" are. A reflection of the times I suppose - no time for dawdling about reading story or exploring worlds, quick information and quick rewards please, because time is too important to waste.
I think its obvious that mobile is a ghetto. The touch based controls don't really lend themselves to anything complex gaming-wise and high-information gamers aren't ignoring their PCs and consoles for them. It just leaves low-information casuals who jump into whatever skinner box time-waster is popular today.
In the meantime, the PC master race is having a renaissance of sorts and the new batch of consoles look pretty good.
I have made an effort in the recent weeks to try to explore the popular titles, and even some obscure ones and I have to agree. I have always said that gaming on the go is not really anything I care about, as my PC is where I want to game. But with some life shifts I have found myself on the go a little bit more with some spare time and honestly, the Play marketplace offers a bunch of half assed efforts imo.
There are games that are free, but pay to win. There are games that cost, but no way to know if they are worth a damn other than buying and going after your refund quickly. We wont even go into totally free stuff.
So while you obviously arent on par with popular opinion, I agree with you. I for one am hoping that the shift to PC architecture in the new consoles will speed up our renaissance ultimately. Ive been having the most fun gaming single player lately than I have in a long time.
> Maybe it was always like so, and I was young and having too much fun to realize.
No, I don't think so. One way to look at it: previous generations of game companies were playing a cooperative, positive-sum game with their audience. By creating lots of fun and value, they could get high dollar-scores. Now, they are playing negative-sum games with the audience: by creating stress, compulsion, and addiction, they can extract money.
If you haven't read it, you might like the book "Finite and Infinite Games". It's not about games in the sense we're discussing here; it's more looking at social philosophy through the lens of games.
"... time is too important to waste" as we piss it away playing Candy Crush et al.
So much effort has been made to streamline our lives and make every task as efficient as possible (if not eliminate it all together). We then suddenly find ourselves so bored that we have to fill it with hours of brainless smartphone games and low-quality television. We'll call it entertainment!
I guess that is what I don't understand here. Why was the trademark granted when it clearly isn't unique? Do they just grant all requests and let the courts sort them out, or what?
Pretty much. Trademarks aren't really granted they are "registered." Instead of a presumed legal right like say a patent or copyright, it's more like a warning "Hey I'm using this name!" It's purpose is so that you can pick a name nobody is using.
Trademark law isn't like copyright. It's not universal. It's limited by market scope and market geography. And the analysis is mainly focused on how confusing it would be to customers.
Trademark law is actually pretty sensible when you learn about it. But it's not easy to describe in short summary.
Trademark registration has an examination process where an expert looks at the details of the application and judges as to whether it meets the statutory requirements. It's just different nomenclature.
That's not to say that every application for registration is treated with rigour and care just that there is absolutely an examination procedure. In the UK one of the targets is [was] a high degree of validity, ie if courts overturn the registration then you've failed.
You don't have to pick a name no-one is using ... that's Trademarks 101 right there. But you knew that as you intimate in your second para.
There is a period of public comment before trademarks are granted, to give any other people with similar names a chance to object. I've been at places where our trademarks were held up by that.
I think they've just filed for "saga" I don't think they've been granted it. As far as I know filing for it can block other trademark applications, but it doesn't stop others from using the word in their games. But I'm not a lawyer.
The "candy" trademark is pretty insane though. I expect it will be challenged. Disney must surely have the Candy King in their Wreck It Ralph games.
It may not be a rule, but why does it seem like the companies who shamelessly steal from others are usually the ones to attack others for infringement when they turn into bigger companies? I remember Zynga being in a similar situation, ripping off other people's games early on, and then attacking others for copying "their" games.
It must be some kind of "organization insecurity", or some kind of "thieves knowing thieves" kind of thing. I actually don't mind seeing companies "being inspired", even more heavily, by other companies' products, but it pisses me off when they do it themselves, too, and then start attacking others for doing it to them.
it's a huge insecurity thing. That's all they know. That's all they have. They have no idea how to start on a new innovative game. They've never done it, and they don't have the people in place to take the initiative. They have no framework to launch a legitimate title. All the top people they hired were hired to clone games. They're not going to give up their jobs to some kid with an awesome idea. They then realize that ANY fool can come in and topple them. What they do is easy to replicate.
Is it that surprising to see someone plagiarize tons of games, and then later try to claim ownership of those ideas? That's just a straight-up criminal in disguise as a game developer. If they weren't making games, they would be robbing people on the street. That's just who those people are.
Of course it's all bolstered by investors who have never played a single game in their life and believe that these are good investments and will write tons and tons of articles about it. They're not. Any real gamer would have told you Zynga wasn't a good investment at IPO.
Firms don't aggressively protect their IP out of some sense of global justice, they do it to make money. These firms understand the value of IP and the legal mechanisms that exist to protect/acquire/monetize it better than the average. Why would they hesitate to use this knowledge offensively?
I figured it might have existed previously and don't mean that he would have invented the idea. Although, I find it quite interesting that King launches a very similar game as the author who just turned down their offer. It just isn't possible for one person to compete in terms of marketing with a giant like King.
If you're a game developer (or just want to make a game) then we're hosting a game jam in protest of their "candy" trademark. Make a game about candy. Check it out: http://thecandyjam.com
I always thought for the 10 minutes I installed Candy Crush before deleting it, that was a clone of Bejeweled from Pop Cap (and I'm sure that's a clone from somewhere else).
It's as much as clone on Bejeweled as Puzzle Quest is, or Modern Warfare is a clone of Doom. The base mechanics are the same (match-3) but the look & feel and metagame are completely different.
Take a look at "Juice Cubes". It's a game by Rovio. They are pretty much the same game with Candy Crush. I just enjoy playing Rovio's version a bit more.
It's like the Batman movies by different directors. It's the same basic concept but others are still better and more enjoyable than the rest.
I hate king.com for the many hours of potential productivity that I have paid them for the privilege of losing. Whenever I talk about how I was stupid for playing Candy Crush I feel like I'm victim blaming.
Anyway, horrible company culture; I don't think they can reasonably expect great success from behaving in this manner.
Really? C'mon man have some self control for god sakes. It's a video game on a phone.
I'm not particularly fond of micro-transactions, I cannot stand the way intellectual property is handled in this country (US), and I dislike rip-off artists such as Zynga/King.
However, all King is doing here is playing ball with current IP legislation, protecting whatever trademarks they can. There's hundreds of games that are exactly the same in every category of gaming, just because King has the capability to create a high-quality successful series of mobile games (which are based off of extremely common gaming concepts) does not mean they are horrible people.
People get up in arms when these large corporations sue eachother over intellectual property. Why does the HN community have this double standard whenever a "little guy" can be made out to have been harmed? Just because you're the first person to think of a popular idea doesn't mean you own it forever.
Patent/Trademark/Copyright legislation is very clearly all bunk in the age of the internet. Get mad at the stupid laws, not at the people taking advantage of them.
> all King is doing here is playing ball with current IP legislation
Not exactly. Some of the trademark threats they're making are the kind that would probably go nowhere if they were against corporations who could afford to defend themselves. Suing every game with "Candy" in the title is at least approaching the same respectability ballpark as patent trolling.
"Get mad at the stupid laws, not at the people taking advantage of them"
In other words, don't get mad at the guys that are as troll as the laws allows them to, be mad to some abstract entity that will deflect common sense so we all can ignore you (and all those who care) and keep playing business as usual.
I know, I know, I was being a little tongue in cheek and perhaps it didn't come off too well, but in all seriousness it obviously is just a lack of self control on my part. It isn't easy for me.
But this story isn't about the fact they copied the idea at all. It's about the fact that they done it as a petulant response to a business deal that fell through. As for "just because you're the first person to think of a popular idea doesn't mean you own it forever" I see where you're coming from ethically but I don't agree. Love them or loathe them, patents are here to stay and although the rules do need cleaned up, they're not fundamentally wrong. You do deserve -some- protection.
Justice wasn't really served in Zynga's case, Marc Pincus managed to cash out quite a bit, the people suffering are the "Death Star contractors" that is the developers hired at Zynga.
This is ridiculous! The provisional trademark "Candy" should be refused under Section 2(e)(1) Refusal – Merely Descriptive. Simple as that!
"...A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of an applicant’s goods and/or services. TMEP §1209.01(b); see, e.g., DuoProSS Meditech Corp. v. Inviro Med. Devices, Ltd., ___ F.3d ___, 103 USPQ2d 1753, 1755 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (quoting In re Oppedahl & Larson LLP, 373 F.3d 1171, 1173, 71 USPQ2d 1370, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2004)); In re Steelbuilding.com, 415 F.3d 1293, 1297, 75 USPQ2d 1420, 1421 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (citing Estate of P.D. Beckwith, Inc. v. Comm’r of Patents, 252 U.S. 538, 543 (1920))."
King.com must've bribed the trademark officials. Disgusting!
The main problem here is not that King copies games. Lots of games, few ideas, this has always been the situation. The main problem here is that a company is allowed to trademark a word like "Candy" or "Saga".
Evil company, maybe, retarded laws, very obviously.
Really? I'd much rather they acted stupidly over names than went out and blatantly copied people's games. The former is an annoyance which can be worked around, the latter destroys peoples livelihoods.
A Double Standard if I ever saw one. Who could have guessed that a company that develops a 'human skinner box' and brands it Candy crush would be evil.
"Pssst.. want some candy? Just give this game a try, there's no reason for fear, we're not evil. Look at the sparkling colors!"
Clearly King.com don't end up looking like the good guys here - although as the article does freely admit, "Scamperghost isn't the most original game in the world. It's obviously inspired by Pac-Man" ...
Which rather does bring to mind the supposed conversation between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, where Jobs suggests that Windows has copied the Macintosh, but Gates responds that "I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox..."
No kudos to king.com either way. In cases like these I'm almost inclined to wish that someone would just come up with a really really good "inspired by..." game and release it for free just for the hell of it. (Not terribly good business, admittedly, but you have to admit it would be pretty satisfying. I don't see a "Sugar Crash" in the app store yet...) :)
I hate to be such a cynic here, but isn't this pretty much standard practice in the mobile gaming space? It seems to be the wild wild west as far as copyright goes.
I remember reading a piece on Zynga maybe a year or two ago that detailed the games that were ripped off (apart from the obvious scramble = boggle, words = scrabble) almost exactly from other existing but much less popular games in the app store.
To anyone who have played arcade games and flash games decade(s) ago knows that so many games today are pure retries of older games. Just take a look on the games of Rovio and others. One thing that pops in mind is "I've played this game before". Great thing is that they make the good, original idea of the game more enjoyable with better ramification and execution.
I can't stand how people bag on Rovio. Their games are intelligent and fun and even a bit educational (educational content stuffed into Angry Birds Space, and Amazing Alex is great for getting kids to solve problems creatively). Yes, they're derivative, but they add a tremendous amount to their predecessors. Angry Birds is a far better game than Crush the Castle, and The Amazing Alex is the first solidly-good implementation of TIM in over a decade and has a ton of interesting ideas that add to the concept.
And they have only the most minimal inclusion of the In-App-Purchase crap. They don't make cash-driven Skinner boxes.
People bag on Rovio because they were the first big smash hit of the mobile world, not for any good reason.
This list is based on my own gaming experience:
Angry Birds -> Castle Crusher
Amazing Alex -> The Amazing Machine
Juice Cubes -> Candy Crush -> Bejeweled
This list is not to demean Rovio. I really like Rovio's execution and I keep playing Angry Birds and mostly Juice Cubes before going to bed. It's nice and relaxing.
Mobile games have pivoted from being short, fun to play vignettes into honey traps that lure you in and get you hooked to consume your time and/or money.
Every major studio out there makes formulaic bull that basically copies some other schmuck's idea and adds their own "StudioCoin" on top to monetize the game.
Temple Run spawned hundreds of clones, then Candy Crush clones came out and now apparently it's Clash of Clans clones.
Everyone from EA to Mobage does this cloning instead of focusing on bringing new ideas to the table.
If only they tried to innovate, the crappy studios like King would go out of business.
Indie developers try hard, but it takes a team to make a well rounded game with large scale mass appeal... :/
tl;dr Today's mobile games are time consuming black holes, and once done credible competition comes forth, they're sure sink.
1) I wouldn't say "from being short...", I think it's more accurate to say "from JUST short...". My reasoning here is that we have deeper long games, heck Knights of the Old Republic comes to mind, and short fun games like Cut The Rope.
2) Couldn't you say basically the same thing about the movie industry, regarding the lack of new ideas and abundant cloning? When games and movies take so much investment, it's not always easy to convince barely imaginative accountants to spend the money.
We expect some regulation to uphold the supposed ideals of capitalism, one of which is competition. But if that regulation just doesn't happen then, yes, capitalism looks pretty broken.
I don't really see a problem here. You have copyright on the code but not on an idea. I think when Nintendo and the Tetris guys fight smart game developers in making games like Tetris or Super Mario it hurts me as a gamer much more than such kind of copycat.
This wasn't just an idea. This was a product close to launch. The implicit instruction from King was to clone what already existed, not "take their idea and make it".
King.com have been around forever pretty much copying every game type it could. Bejeweled, Bubble Bobble, Peggle, and tons of board games. I'm not surprised at all. Their games are pretty good clones though.
This was an interesting part of King's history. Years ago back when they were just a skill gaming site they used to license flash games over at FGL.com which spread virally and funnel traffic back to your site from other gaming websites that host the game.
I forget the exact details but some friends of mine made the clone after the originals' licensing deal went to a competing portal at the last minute.
You can use a trademark. You can't lawfully use someone else's registered trademark to sell goods/services in the same category or when there is confusion as to where the goods originate from though.
Pepsi can mention Coca Cola in their ads, they can sing and dance about them if they want to. As soon as they put it on their packets (or use other trademarks like the Coca Cola livery) and create the possibility of confusion in consumers as to whether Coca Cola made the Pepsi product or not [at least enough to convince a court] then they're in trouble and Coca Cola should be able to successfully sue.
It's something they could only enforce in the limited context of gaming. Just like "Apple" can be trademarked specifically in computing. You couldn't sell apples and trademark "apple" in that context because it would unfairly prevent others from selling apples. But Apple gets to protext themselves from a proliferation of companies named "Apple Computers", "Apple Computing", "Apple Computer", "Apple Computor", etc.
Most businesses and entrepreneurs have a double standard. We complain when someone doesn't answer our help desk call on weekends, yet are determined not to work on weekends ourselves. We complain when an UI of an app we're using in unintuitive, yet when someone complains about your app, you tell them you got lots of bug to address and know about it.
King.com is ridiculous for sure. I do wish someone that has used the word candy in the title of their game before Candy Crush still sells/trades in significant volume. If so, they can still contact the USPTO and have the mark invalidated - process is lengthy, but exists.
A remix is like 'lets take the slick visuals of X, but with a Zoo theme, the power-up system of Y and the smooth movement of Z to create something new-ish but recognisable!'.
This is a large company realising that their smaller competition doesn't want to sell - and reacting by cloning the game and trying to push it to market before the smaller company can get it out there.
It's a shame it's working so well, because they are eating the cake in front of a very low confidence game industry. Smartphones are powerful now, yet games that manage to match the quality and depth of an SNES-era game are basically non-existent. After seeing the success of Rovio, Zynga and King, I don't think they will be made sadly. Let's just hope this doesn't affect other platforms as well.