Poll: FortressCraft and You

[EternalFacepalm]

Wait, they say that it's going to cost ?30 in the end? That's more than Minecraft. The guy's a dick, and that seriously hurts his chances of people wanting to play and promote his game.

In an interview, he said he'd release ten big updates, priced ?3 each. Then he has the audacity to start raving about how it's cheaper than Minecraft.

 

[Phlakes]

There's one thing that pushes a game from being inspired by something to ripping it off.

If it's riding off the hype of the original game.

Yeah right. That means that any platformer to come after Mario is doing just that. Mario has never NOT been popular. How about Final Fantasy or Diablo. You need to rethink that.

I mean for the purpose of riding off hype. I'd assume most developers who made platformers after Mario weren't doing it for that reason.

 

[Tax_Document]

It's obviously a take on minecraft, but minecraft was a take on infiniminer, halo was a take on doom, starcraft was a take on dune, and so on and so forth.

Halo a take on Doom!? Come on man, one has vehicles and a fully 3D environment complete with cinematic and visuals whereas Doom is an old school FPS.

Just because they're the same genre doesn't mean it's a "take" of something, do you believe South Park is a take on Charlie Chaplain because they're both comedy? No.

 

[Xman490]

I consider FortressCraft to be a rip-off of MineCraft, as the names and playstyles suggest. That's not particularly bad, though. To me, a "rip-off" in this sense is some medium (singular of "media", as in TV show, game, etc.) whose creator intentionally uses most of the ideas of a preceding medium, often to reach a similar market. (Or you can look in some dictionary, which I don't feel like doing.)

Despite core similarities, FC has Xbox Avatar multiplayer while MC has blocky-man multiplayer. FC goes for realistic textures while MC stays retro. FC has "chapters" while MC has free updates (for the most part?).

 

[Xman490]

I consider FortressCraft to be a rip-off of MineCraft, as the names and playstyles suggest. That's not particularly bad, though. To me, a "rip-off" in this sense is some medium (singular of "media", as in TV show, game, etc.) whose creator intentionally uses most of the ideas of a preceding medium, often to reach a similar market. (Or you can look in some dictionary, which I don't feel like doing.)

Despite core similarities, FC has Xbox Avatar multiplayer while MC has blocky-man multiplayer. FC goes for realistic textures while MC stays retro. FC has "chapters" while MC has free updates (for the most part?).

 

[Razor Z7]

Minecraft and Halo were two of the most original games out there. Fortress craft is a lousy negligent developer's shot at making riches from Minecraft's Success, They also think that it being on 360 would improve it's sales. Edit: Tax_Document is right. Halo is not a take on Doom.

 

[AyreonMaiden]

Hate is an overused and devalued word in these kind of discussions, but if I was inclined to throw it around then yeah, I'd hate Fortresscraft, if for no other reason than the message it sends out - that the way to succeed in indie gaming is to blatantly rip off a genuinely original and innovative game.

At the time, as far as I know, FortressCraft was the only one of its kind on Xbox. You'd deny them their rip-off of a glorious PC title? For what reason? An "ideal" of "originality"? It's so hard for me to relate to this idea because not even Notch cares. Dick or not, FortressCraft's dev was doing what Mojang wouldn't at the time, and people liked that. I simply don't see the problem with the existence of this game when I look at it that way.

And FortressCraft is the last game I'd use to say that it's sending out a bad message to the indie gaming scene. I'd sooner say that anyone doing those stupid 8/16-bit retro-pixel artstyles is doing more harm than good. It feels like THOSE games get most coverage in the indie scene and for no reason other than looking old AND THOSE WERE THE DAYS GET OFF MY LAWN KIDS. The retro shit feels especially like a cash-in fad, not too different from WWII last gen, or the mascot platformers of PS1/N64. As said above, at least FortressCraft showed there's a market for Minecraft on 360, as Eden and its ilk showed there's a market for Minecraft on iOS.

At least with Minecraft clones I'm witnessing how a genre is born in a way that's not too different from the FPS. In its inception everything was a Wolf3d/Doom style shooter, only with a stylistic gimmick to set it apart (Duke Nukem = Doom with Dick Jokes, Doom = Wolf3D with scarier monsters, Marathon = Doom on Mac, etc...) There are LOTS of ripoffs of Minecraft and I agree that FortressCraft is one, but look between those and gems that do it differently are born, such as Terraria. Eventually there'll be "Sandblock" titles that won't even share the artstyle of Minecraft, will have a working game component along with it, a compelling story, etc. It needs time, though. Again, this is how genres are born, and I don't see the problem at all.

 

[II2]

FortressCraft's dev has said a lot of nasty, contentious things (including broad declarations of superiority to Minecraft and, oddly, also how poor a game Minecraft is, on it's own, overall, etc)... I know a work shouldn't be judged by the opinion of it's creator, but a modicum of humility goes a long way; one in glass crafted houses should not throw stones.

Personally, I think as blockbuilders / adventure games go, Total Miner: Forge is a much more compelling XBLA indie game, along the same formula, having tried both.

 

[Hoxolotl]

Hi there! and my first post will be about FortressCraft... comming from Projectorgames "partner" company Catnip Games (where Korenn works), I have kind of a different view from the inside, but I just couldn't help myself and as a big fan of the Escapist (especially the Jimquisition) I had to drop by.

On average it seems the conversations here go a bit better

Hello fellow Escapists!

FortressCraft came out several months ago, and has been selling extremely well, to the point where it's one of the fastest selling Xbox Live games.

Not "one of", it is THE best selling XBLIG game ever by a HUGE margin. So much so that Microsoft is kinda in a twist about what to do with this XBLIG thing now that it's suddenly making a profit on it. 84% of the people trying the demo, buy the game... whereas it's more around 30% max on average for other XBLIG games.

So, with all these people playing the game, I'm a bit surprised that there aren't any fans of the game on the site (or at least that I've noticed).

Because people playing on Xbox don't necessrily use the interwebs. And because you wouldn't believe the amount of fanboyism of Minecraft is out there, see link to youtube with all the bile we had to endure.

So, to all of you who have played the game or not, what to you think of it? Is it a Minecraft rip-off, or just another game in a quickly growing subgenre of games?

It was an accident, a happy accident. A thing came out of a dare, some PR went completedly wrong or right depending on how you see it, some bad and good decisions were made, life caries on, we're just human.

EDIT 1: Ok so I just thought of a new question: What about games like Total Miner, Castleminer, etc. that also have the same basic gameplay but offer different features? Why are they left largely ignored?

Oh they're not being ignored, some people are trying, buying and playing them, but they've got about 6 months of polish to catch up to. I personally haven't tryed them but I'd appreciate it if some garme journalist could make a comprehensive 6 page article about it...whaaat?

Now because I try to be nice I just will add some personal opinions here:
DJArcas (main coder FortressCraft) is a nice guy, he's a great game designer with at least a decade of making games under his belt. Having experience in coding and making games he might come over as a bit arrogant at times, but that's only because he knows what he's talking about.


PS: EternalFacepalm, Dunkerloop and Sixcess are lying to each other, then II2 reads stuff out of context... mostly because what they say has been invented, then repeated over and over without basis in true fact. I'd argue with them but I learned not to feed the ...dratt I did it again

Although kudos to II2 for having actually tried the game.

And the promised link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaK_lqtaMQc