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Nearly 10 months after the release of Xeno Sola, a game inspired by the German board-game Carcassonne, the official iPhone adaptation has arrived. I have yet to try iCarc, as I'll dub it, but I can tell a few things by looking at iTunes. It clocks in at about 60MB and $4.99 -- 50MB and $2 more than Xeno Sola. And it's getting excellent user reviews; at my last check 54 count all with 5-stars. Xeno Sola, by contrast, averages about 3.5 stars in 40+ reviews. Kudos to TheCodingMonkeys for putting together a bigger, better game. (Of course, double the programmers and quadruple the development time will do that for you!)
The two games have a small connection. I only briefly ever alluded to the legal story behind Xeno Sola, but given iCarc's arrival the timing seems right to do just that.*
Two years ago, I decided to try my hand at indie game development. I started to adapt one of my graduate computer science projects (Mini Chess) into a couple of TGB-based PC games. Around the same time, Carcassonne for XBLA was released for free as part of a Microsoft promotion. My wife and I were quickly addicted. Like any good programmer, I thought to myself, "I can program something like this!"
Over the next five weeks, I developed and released the original Xeno Sola: Tile Placement Game. As a newcomer to game development, I had a poor sense of polish and completion. It starred cute Anime graphics, a quirky song loop, and virtually no instructions on how to play. The game managed to garner over a dozen reviews online, including at indie hub GameTunnel. The average rating, converted to a 5-star scale, was about 1.5 stars. It sold poorly.
Fortunately, I had also been fiddling with the mode7 effect in TGB. My attention shifted to what is still my biggest success, the TGB Kart Kit. I was able to use my success there to focus in on the iPhone. I had the only TGB genre kit iPhone-ready and my chess games were ideally designed to port. The ports went quickly and smoothly. A Xeno Sola port was the natural next project.
Unlike the chess code, Xeno Sola: TPG was entirely TorqueScript based. The port did not go well. The game never ran reliably or smoothly. After eight weeks, I decided to reboot the project entirely with new code, new graphics, and a new style. I also felt it needed a new name. Even though the game was distinct in several ways from Carcassonne, I felt the name Xeno Sola wasn't communicating the similarity to potential buyers. In a stroke of ultimately ill-fated genius, I coined Starcassonne.
After another eight weeks of work, Starcassonne was released in the App Store. In a span of days, it had already become my most successful game. The reviews were solid. Users expressed their joy in playing something similar to Carcassonne, though some lamented it wasn't similar enough. The feedback made sense to me: my intent was to create something that would appeal to Carcassonne fans while remaining unique, in the same way one might think Crackdown would appeal to Grand Theft Auto fans.
Less than a month later, I got an email from a man named Martin who claimed to be working on the official iCarc. He warned that Hans im Gluck was unhappy and ready to unleash their lawyer on me. (Coincidentally, I was on vacation in Germany at the time.) There was no way to verify the authenticity of the claim, so I ignored it. A few days later came the official legal request via Apple that my game be taken down.
Now I'm not an idiot. Nor am I easily bullied or intimidated. I pulled the lawyer's email address out of the Apple notice and responded (from my iPod, in my hotel room). I expressed that I saw no legal grounds for the removal of my game. We bantered back and forth, with a number of false accusations lofted my way, but ultimately it was agreed that the only issue was the game's name, as it might have been considered confusingly similar to their trademark. So I temporarily pulled the game and updated it to once again be Xeno Sola. I quickly replaced ads and even asked writers to retroactively change their reviews. This was enough to resolve the issue, I was later told.
In retrospect, I can see that the name probably skewed too close to the existing trademark, which was not my intent. (I had, in fact, a sequel of sorts planned: a WWI-themed game called Warcassonne. I can only imagine what trouble that might have gotten me into!) I never saw evidence, however, that the name Starcassonne afforded me any extra sales or other advantages. I also never saw evidence of trademark confusion. But given the micro-scale of this indie games operation, I have to pick my battles. I wanted the game, not the name.
And that's basically it.
To this day, I wonder what transpired behind the scenes with the game Kolonists -- a Settlers of Catan style game. I think their icon skewed fairly close to a Catan trademark. I also believe their game was a little closer in its rules to Catan than Xeno Sola is to Carcassonne. It was far more successful than my game. One day it mysteriously disappeared from the App Store, which was later revealed to be for legal reasons. Given what I know about the law around the issue of games and their "clones", however, I am shocked they outright pulled the game. Both Hans im Gluck and I were willing to compromise, who couldn't do the same with Kolonists?
*I will also at some point post a blog about the legal battle involving Mini Chess.
The two games have a small connection. I only briefly ever alluded to the legal story behind Xeno Sola, but given iCarc's arrival the timing seems right to do just that.*
Two years ago, I decided to try my hand at indie game development. I started to adapt one of my graduate computer science projects (Mini Chess) into a couple of TGB-based PC games. Around the same time, Carcassonne for XBLA was released for free as part of a Microsoft promotion. My wife and I were quickly addicted. Like any good programmer, I thought to myself, "I can program something like this!"
Over the next five weeks, I developed and released the original Xeno Sola: Tile Placement Game. As a newcomer to game development, I had a poor sense of polish and completion. It starred cute Anime graphics, a quirky song loop, and virtually no instructions on how to play. The game managed to garner over a dozen reviews online, including at indie hub GameTunnel. The average rating, converted to a 5-star scale, was about 1.5 stars. It sold poorly.
Fortunately, I had also been fiddling with the mode7 effect in TGB. My attention shifted to what is still my biggest success, the TGB Kart Kit. I was able to use my success there to focus in on the iPhone. I had the only TGB genre kit iPhone-ready and my chess games were ideally designed to port. The ports went quickly and smoothly. A Xeno Sola port was the natural next project.
Unlike the chess code, Xeno Sola: TPG was entirely TorqueScript based. The port did not go well. The game never ran reliably or smoothly. After eight weeks, I decided to reboot the project entirely with new code, new graphics, and a new style. I also felt it needed a new name. Even though the game was distinct in several ways from Carcassonne, I felt the name Xeno Sola wasn't communicating the similarity to potential buyers. In a stroke of ultimately ill-fated genius, I coined Starcassonne.
After another eight weeks of work, Starcassonne was released in the App Store. In a span of days, it had already become my most successful game. The reviews were solid. Users expressed their joy in playing something similar to Carcassonne, though some lamented it wasn't similar enough. The feedback made sense to me: my intent was to create something that would appeal to Carcassonne fans while remaining unique, in the same way one might think Crackdown would appeal to Grand Theft Auto fans.
Less than a month later, I got an email from a man named Martin who claimed to be working on the official iCarc. He warned that Hans im Gluck was unhappy and ready to unleash their lawyer on me. (Coincidentally, I was on vacation in Germany at the time.) There was no way to verify the authenticity of the claim, so I ignored it. A few days later came the official legal request via Apple that my game be taken down.
Now I'm not an idiot. Nor am I easily bullied or intimidated. I pulled the lawyer's email address out of the Apple notice and responded (from my iPod, in my hotel room). I expressed that I saw no legal grounds for the removal of my game. We bantered back and forth, with a number of false accusations lofted my way, but ultimately it was agreed that the only issue was the game's name, as it might have been considered confusingly similar to their trademark. So I temporarily pulled the game and updated it to once again be Xeno Sola. I quickly replaced ads and even asked writers to retroactively change their reviews. This was enough to resolve the issue, I was later told.
In retrospect, I can see that the name probably skewed too close to the existing trademark, which was not my intent. (I had, in fact, a sequel of sorts planned: a WWI-themed game called Warcassonne. I can only imagine what trouble that might have gotten me into!) I never saw evidence, however, that the name Starcassonne afforded me any extra sales or other advantages. I also never saw evidence of trademark confusion. But given the micro-scale of this indie games operation, I have to pick my battles. I wanted the game, not the name.
And that's basically it.
To this day, I wonder what transpired behind the scenes with the game Kolonists -- a Settlers of Catan style game. I think their icon skewed fairly close to a Catan trademark. I also believe their game was a little closer in its rules to Catan than Xeno Sola is to Carcassonne. It was far more successful than my game. One day it mysteriously disappeared from the App Store, which was later revealed to be for legal reasons. Given what I know about the law around the issue of games and their "clones", however, I am shocked they outright pulled the game. Both Hans im Gluck and I were willing to compromise, who couldn't do the same with Kolonists?
*I will also at some point post a blog about the legal battle involving Mini Chess.