Inspiration is not the same thing as blatantly ripping off other games and passing them off as unique creations. Comandeer Keen started out as a project to copy Super Mario Bros. 3, for example. But is Comandeer Keen just a "rip off" of SMB 3? Hardly. And Minecraft is far from a rip off of infiniminer. If anything, today infiniminer is much more well known due to minecraft's success. Infiniminer is about as similar to minecraft as pong is to breakout.
+1 for your defense of minecraft. -1 for Hacker's News staunch outlook on intellectual property.
"Inspiration is not the same thing as blatantly ripping off other games and passing them off as unique creations. "
Who said that was inspiration? -no one goes out to "blatantly" rip something off. Your lack of understanding speaks to your lack of creative experience, sorry.
What is "amazingly unlikely" about that though? Revolutionary games that create their own genres (Rogue, Adventure, Dune 2) are amazingly unlikely. Minecraft is just evolution of the games that already existed.
Not sure of the others, but Dune 2 certainly didn't spontaneously big bang in a vacuum either, it was built on earlier iterations of similar games most notable being Herzog Zwei,whose english translation curiously enough is just 2 letters forward on a single letter, it translates as "Duke 2"
that said, played the shit out of dune 2, what a game!
No, it doesn't. It talks about him being inspired by DF, and other games, then discusses Infiniminer and has a quote from him saying MineCraft was an Infiniminer clone.
"The visuals and mechanics of procedural generation and terrain deformation of Minecraft were drawn from Infiniminer. According to Minecraft author Markus Persson, after he discovered Infiniminer, he "decided it was the game he wanted to do". As a result, if one plays Infiniminer, one can note that the visuals of blocky graphics and carving out blocks as a miner are practically identical."
So Minecraft probably is more than an Infiniminer clone.
Jim Jarmusch: "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.' "
