To me this sounds like Zynga just took an idea that was already out there, improved upon it, and executed the marketing/business side of things better than their competitors.
The blatant art rip-off is evil, but the methodology of "taking something proven, and making it better" is not.
Apple does this all the time, and I don't fault them for it.
For the HN crowd who "can't find an idea for a startup", maybe this is a really good method of finding one. Look at what's successful out there, and emulate to make it better.
As someone who actually played farmville at least from quite early on, and the competitor that they copied, I can tell you that they didn't emulate, they copied EVERYTHING.
The entire interface was identical, right down to the little people that depicted your sex, everything was identical, the layout, the images, the user interface, everything.
I will give them a grudging credit for being able to copy everything with more style, but I have to say as a user it was very confusing to see a game, pitched as a NEW game, that was identical in every respect to the competitor.
I have NEVER seen such blatant copying, and it was the same with many other games, they weren't "inspired by", they were image for image, ui for ui replicas.
I did play Farmville for a while, but they just don't know how to make these games compelling, and I lost interest.
I don't think that there is anything wrong with taking an idea and making it your own, but to take someone's work and copy it almost verbatim, that seems pretty low to me.
There is kind of a proverb related to business here, which loosely translated says something like: "In a street where there are several bakeries, it is wise to open up another bakery."
edit: I remembered that I have heard another version, with a different take: "In a street where there are several bakeries, next business that will open up will be a bakery" - I actually like that one more.
I seem to recall hearing once that this was how Subway determined whether a location was a good spot to put a restaurant. If there was a McDonald's, Burger King, etc nearby then they moved in. The logic was that if it was good enough for the big guys, it was good enough for them.
I always thought it was a clever way to avoid paying for market research by piggybacking on someone else's.
Somewhat relatedly to the proverb, but you might enjoy the "Emergence" episode from RadioLab. It's one of my favorite episodes and if you skip ahead to 18:56, you'll hear about 28th St Flower Market in New York which serves as a prime example.
But, I highly suggest you listen to the whole episode (hour long).
Last time I was in downtown Seattle, Westlake Center (a small shopping mall) had three. Upstairs, downstairs, and a standalone building, all within a couple minutes' walk of each other.
It's probably for the best they've seen the need to close some stores, but I almost wish they weren't, just for the absurdity of it.
Right, but this relates to a business venture where you can easily spot where there is a market. Thus, it is wiser to enter the market where you are sure there is one than breaking in new markets by yourself.
Well, it very much depends. If you are the new bakery guy in a street with three or four other bakers, you are entering a market of high competition. The other three bakers are competing perhaps at extreme levels already, whether through branding, building a loyal customer base by providing better customer service, better products, a nice environment, friendly bakers, and price certainly.
Now, if you, the new kid on the block, enter this highly competitive market, you need to be extremely clever to be competing while not loosing money and, if so you manage to compete, they would probably copy you before they die themselves.
If however you decide to take a little bit more time upfront and invest more effort to find a place where your service is needed and there is little competition, you'll be making healthy profits. That is why copying does not win in the long term and even the company in question has now had to start to make their own products.
It's classic second-mover advantage business. Not only do you know what works and what doesn't, you get the benefits that the technology is cheaper and easier and better now than it was years ago.
I've often thought of all of the slow-moving entrenched companies that could just have everything taken out from under them by a good hungry team using modern tools and techniques. As long as you're not actively producing new legacy code, you should be able to catch up in terms of product sophistication pretty quickly.
That's not to say one could build FarmVille in a regular weekend, it would have to be a 3-day weekend.
Ironically, Farm Town was once described as "myFarm married with Zynga's YoVille"
But did Zynga initially improve upon Farm Town or simply attract more users through a multimillion pound ad budget? For the consumer market "copy what the cool kids are doing and market the hell out of it" is arguably an even more successful strategy than "take something proven and make it better"
The blatant art rip-off is evil, but the methodology of "taking something proven, and making it better" is not.
Apple does this all the time, and I don't fault them for it.
For the HN crowd who "can't find an idea for a startup", maybe this is a really good method of finding one. Look at what's successful out there, and emulate to make it better.