Wednesday 16 August 2006
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved developer Bizarre Creations has released a statement on its forum imploring would-be developers to stop copying its game.
The company claims that the "proliferation" of Geometry Wars clones "potentially takes sales away from our product and weakens our brand".
The only clone mentioned is Grid Wars, a similar arcade shooter that's free to download from the net. Bizarre Creations states that "putting (for example) a screenshot of Grid Wars next to one from GW:RE, a layman would find it extremely hard to tell the difference, regardless of how the two games played."
Even though Geometry Wars has often been compared to classic shooter Robotron, Bizarre claims that this is only because of the control system and that "a control method alone makes neither a game nor a brand"
Above: Can you tell the difference? Here's Geometry Wars on the left and Grid Wars on the right. Or is that the other way round?
Geometry Wars is the creation of Bizarre employee Stephen Cakebread and first appeared as a minigame accessed in the in-game garage of Project Gotham Racing 2. An updated version, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, then featured in Project Gotham Racing 3 and is also available to download on Xbox Live Arcade.
It seems Bizarre Creations has future plans for the game and so is being particularly precious about it. It should be interesting to see if the appeal works in an industry where nothing seems to be sacred. But, if you want to see if Bizarre makes a strong case, check out the whole,heartfelt plea.
