Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: HOW NOT TO MAKE A COMPUTER GAME

by Hazed

Once upon a time, back in the early days of home computing, spotty teenagers could sit in their bedrooms and program a game for the Commodore 64 or the Sinclair Spectrum which they could sell to a games company, and everyone would make money from it.

Now, though, producing a computer game takes millions of dollars, and huge teams of programmers and artists. The days of the bedroom games programmer are long gone.

Hoping to buck this trend, a former pub landlord and two chums from Maidstone, Kent in England created a computer game between them and signed a big distribution deal with a major US games supplier. Earlier this month, their game Limbo of the Lost came out in the US.

Unfortunately, it turns out this home-grown game may not be all that it seems. A writer for a games website got hold of a copy and was surprised to find that some of the graphics seemed rather familiar. In fact, they've been ripped off from other games. He produced a series of side-by-side screengrabs showing the similarities he spotted between Limbo of the Lost and other games such as BioShock, Diablo 2, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and many more.

Well, if you don't have a team of artists available, stealing work from other games is one way to get round the problem...

Read the story, and look at some of the plagiarised artwork, here.

I guess this is what they mean by a mashup!

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