Clone Games – How Close is Too Close?

   One way to pad someone's new game can be by introducing clone features or characters, such as in the case of fighting games where the developers simply get an artist to recolor a few models and perhaps a voice artist to make some new sounds. They can then use this new clone character as a roster filler – depending on the quality of the game, this clone may have altered stats, maybe faster or stronger in some places, and slower or weaker in others, but fundamentally this clone is the same as the original when examined in a critical manner.

    So what about if we, instead of cloning a character, cloned a whole game? Publishers who release sequels to their games build upon the base that was made, but what if a publisher took an earlier revision of their game (the coding and programming files), and released that again with new graphics? They already had plans for where the game would go, and could re-use events and features directly from their other games, with minimal investment. The time investment for programming and balancing is already done for you, isn't it so tempting with a fresh coat of paint and some tweaks?

    MZ, inc. currently has 4 games out, Game of War: Fire age (“GOW”, “Game of War”), Mobile Strike (“MS”), World War Rising (“WWR”), Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire (“FF”, “FFXVANE”), and their fifth and soon to be released, Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate (“CBHOF”). I personally have been playing for almost 6 years between all 4 games, so I am well experienced with what they have to offer, and have used my experience to help others with gameplay decisions. In my opinion, all 4 of these games are just clones of each other with different graphics and a few unique features.

    To start, it is no secret to players of Game of War and Mobile Strike that they are re-skins of each other. They have the same troops with different names, and so forth, to where other websites can confidently just say that members of the other game can rely on combat features/tips. All features between the two games are entirely the same as of right now – in the past there have been some differences.

Article relating to release of Demigods from www.gameofwarrealtips.com (same people as www.FFXVANEHUB.com - In direct employees of MZ)

Demigod Combat Stats from www.gowcraft.com 

Players comparing Mobile Strike (MS) to Game of War (GOW) on www.reddit.com 

Confirmation of all 4 games operating under different subsidiaries by www.pocketgamer.biz 

Game of War	Mobile Strike	Final Fantasy	World War Rising
Release Date: June 25th, 2013	Release Date: July 11th, 2015	Release Date: June 29th, 2018	Release Date: October 25th, 2018
Wonder	Control Point	Crystal	Control Point
Kingdom	State	Realm	Region
Hero Hall	Commander's Quarters	Hero Monument	Hero's Quarters
Mythical Training	Titan Training	Monster Troop Training	(not yet available)
Athena's Armory	Nuclear Forge	Mythic Forge	Weapons Lab
Banners	Insignia	Crystal Cores	Banners
Hero Garrison	Commander's Garrison	Order of Heroes	(not yet available)
Monster March	Vehicle March	Monster Champion March	Vehicle March
Pantheon Dieties	Mechs	Astrals	Squad Members
Black Market	Black Market	Moogle Market	Black Market
Lifetime Boost Hall	Development Center	Oracle Temple	Science Academy
Alchemy Lab	Biotech Lab	Ignis' Diner	(not yet available)
Athena's Gift	Global Gift	Luna's Gift	Global Gift
Blessings	Blessings	Link Orbs	(not yet available)
Infantry (Thunderlord)	Infantry (Biotic)	Warrior	Infantry
Range (Firelord)	Tactical(Pyrotic)	Mage	Vehicle
Cavalry (Waterlord)	Vehicle (Hydrotic)	Cavalry	Artillery
Siege (Mythic)	Artillery	Siege	Operative
Wall Traps	Wall Traps	Wall Traps	Wall Traps
Gems	Mods	Gems	Emblems
Stamina	Stamina	MP	Stamina
Blueprints	Files	Blueprints	Architectural Plans
Stone	Stone	Stone	Stone
Food	Food	Food	Food
Metal	Iron	Metal	Metal
Wood	Oil	Energy	Wood
Silverpieces	Coin	Gil	Energy
Dungeon	Shooting Range	Proving Grounds	Combat Sim
Hospital	Hospital	Hospital	Hospital
Farm	Farm	Farm	Farm
Logging Camp	Oil Well	Energy Extractor	Lumber Mill
Quarry	Quarry	Quarry	Quarry
Mine	Iron Mine	Mine	Mine
Casino	Casino	Casino	(unavailable)
Barracks	Training Grounds	Barracks	Barracks
Villa	Bank	Bank	Power Plant
Hospital	Hospital	Hospital Ward	MASH
Armory	Armory	Armory	Armory
1 Day Investment	1 Day Investment	Treasury	Treasury
Prison	Prison	Prison	Prison
Altar	Death Row	Banishment Portal	Banishment Site
Watchtower	Radar Station	Watchtower	Radar Station
Embassy	Embassy	Embassy	Embassy
Monument	Monument	Crystal Nexus	Monument
Hall of War	War Room	Guild Hall	War Room

    As you can see above, the list of exact features between each game are numerous. Some games are not as far progressed as the others (also depending on your server number/realm number), but these features are clones of each other in that they accomplish the exact same thing between games even if the smaller details are slightly changed: ie one of them has troop attack 50 and another game has troop attack 150 as their starting point. World War Rising, their newest game, does not yet have all of the features, but ones that it does currently have are filled out on the chart above.

    I mentioned before, I am a long time player who has spent over 100 hours on each of these games. How much do I personally think they are clones of each other? I would say somewhere in the range of 95-99%, ignoring graphics. Some features on the newer two games, Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire and World War Rising may first seem to be different than Mobile Strike and Game of War: Fire Age, but only because FF and WWR use much smaller troop numbers and bonus numbers. What may be 1 billion troops in GOW is only close to 100,000 troops in these newer games.

    It was extremely easy for me to go from GOW to MS, because they are the closest two games. No learning was needed besides the changes to troop names, otherwise everything was the same. When I transitioned from playing GOW to MS, the games were not complete clones yet, but MS was about 6 months behind GOW and as I had been playing close to 3 years at that point, it was not difficult to just look up some guides on how things were previously as a refresher.

    I went next to FF, and it was a different experience at first. Very quickly I noticed that the only major change in the game was the boost numbers were smaller and troop amounts smaller, but if you adjusted for these, you would get the exact same results as you would in the previous games plus or minus some rounding. No gameplay strategy changes were needed to transition to this new game.

    Recently I also picked up WWR with some friends and again they also noticed that everything was the exact same, except they got a feature or two faster than FF did. Their heroes are even clones of the FF heroes so far. 

Game of War	Mobile Strike	Final Fantasy	World War Rising
Hero Name: (random)	Hero Name: (random)	Hero Name: Noctis Lucis Caelum	Hero Name: Riggs

    As you may have read elsewhere, Final Fantasy recently experienced a reset of the game. Game of War and Mobile Strike both experienced this before. In fact, the internal name for all of these troops between the 3 games is called “omni”, which we discovered because they accidentally uploaded the text in plain view for users to see.

Demigod term used from Game of War, showing the "Dark Troops" are just pasted from there. 

Omni troop is the internal name for these troops as shown here, this gear boosting them.

"Omi" keys is misspelled, should be "omni", thus the variable is shown instead of the data

    Demigod kills? In Final Fantasy? Yes, after the reset the text string read “omni_kills” for a while, then was replaced by Demigod Kills until finally corrected. This was an obvious red flag for those who frequent chat rooms on LINE and Discord apps, they were asking if Demigod was yet another new troop type after they had just lost their old ones and perhaps bought into these new Dark troops. Fortunately several players of other games were there to inform them that no, the game company just messed up when they copied the coding from Game of War over to Final Fantasy and dressed it in new graphics. (Also of note, the term Alliance is used instead of Guild, and in previous iterations, it said Kingdom instead of Realm. )

    This is far and away not the first time the company has done it. Other games blog posts frequently make reference to “the wonder” or “kingdom”, as they are simply reposted or based on content from Game of War.  These accidental references to their other games are clumsily hidden from the playerbase due to quick corrections made by MZ and the deliberate choice not to archive old blog posts where they might be discovered. One recent example is shown below.

The error, "Wonder titles"

Corrected "Crystal titles"

    The clone nature of these games allows support to basically talk about whatever one they like and its still applicable, such as below when a Final Fantasy player gets a copy-and-paste reply with Mobile Strike terms.

    (Deployment is the term used for a March of troops on Mobile Strike)

Thank you for playing World War Rising

Game of War

Reused art asset in Final Fantasy XV: ANE

Astrals (FFXVANE features) are not available in World War Rising

FFXVANE Crystal Nexus Building showing as GOW Banner building! 

 
    As I started out saying, I do believe these 4 games are nothing more than a clone of the original, Game of War, just at different times with some slight changes, like coloring a fighting game character's outfit red and changing his hair to blond so you have an additional character. Over time the clone games pick up a few unique features, but I don't think a few changes like that would qualify a whole new game if one game has some slightly unique troops and buildings and this other one has missles.

    Fellow players of Machine Zone games, how did you transition between them? Was it as easy as my experience, or did you have trouble because of the different names?

Clone Games? How Close is Too Close?