Why do people accuse certain games of being clones of other games? 'As brilliant as this game is, it's still such a rip-off of a game that, while predating this one, wasn't quite so good.' As if the developer of the newer game presented it as a completely original idea (which often isn't the case, as is revealed in interviews where the developer almost invariably cites inspirations from older games), hoping no one will notice any surreptitious acts of plagiarism.

A good example is Cortex Command, which, within twenty minutes of its introduction into the Steam Store, had a Discussion thread entitled 'Clonk Clone'. Or any blocky, procedurally-generated sandbox game post-Minecraft (which itself is a clone, if you want to call it that, of Infiniminer). If you really want to be picky, you might call Pong a rip-off of real-life tennis.

It seems to me that these accusations are filed against games that are set in a genre not often seen (the antithetical example these days would be 'tower defense' games and 'retro, 8-bit/16-bit styled platforming RPG adventure puzzle action!'), or are too similar to popular games for the comfort of those most rabid of fans (who are often oblivious to, or in denial of, the fact that they're favourite games, e.g. Final Fantasy MMCXVLIII and Call of Duty 40K or Worms: Hermaphroditic Haplotaxid Holocaust, are really just more of the same thing and add little to the series beyond some new shinies).

If you dig at a game long enough, you'll find it has at least one or two things in common with a game that came before it (though, admittedly, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a game similar to, but predating Lemmings; I'm sure someone will point it out to me shortly after posting this OP). More often than not, it's a matter of taste concerning the developer's 'personal touch', but sometimes these games that are eerily similar to earlier games are a case of 'it does the same thing, but it does it so much better'.

[edit]
I'm removing the 'tl;dr' tag from the end paragraph, as it doesn't properly summarize the whole of the post, and has lead at least one person to argue against something I never implied. If you won't bother to read the whole thing because you can't take five minuted out of your busy day to read a few two sentence paragraphs, don't bother replying to any one part of it.

Posting links as your argument is a lazy thing to do. Posting links of a dispute filed by EA is like posting a link of a greedy bastard being greedy.

Anyway, I wanted to add to my OP that there are a lot of games that have similarities to games never released. Like 'Nimbus', which looks a lot like a never-released game called 'Velella'.

A game is really only a rip-off if game assets (art, sprites, sounds, music) are copied, or very slightly altered, like those cheap knock-off plushies you see at carnival midways. And, of course, such accusations are almost the only thing that come from the mouths and pens of overzealous, corporate IP lawyers. Like the ta-da over the 'Scrolls' trademark, or how the Monster Cable Products sues EVERYONE with the word 'Monster' in their company name, or in the name of one of their products.

Yeah, it's kind of like all ARPGs are Diablo clones for whatever reason, or all older FPS games being Doom clones. It's a dumb way of thinking, but I suppose it's the fastest way of describing similar games.

Which is perfectly fine in normal, face-to-face conversation. 'Have you heard about this game, "Game X"?' 'No, what's that?' 'It's kinda like your favourite game, "Game Y".' 'Oh, cool. I'll have to check that out sometime.'

You can pretty much find this in any medium; it just seems that gamers tend to be more vocal about it.

Look at all the horrible hack writers flooding the market with post-Twilight romantic vampire nonsense, for example. Can't swing a dead cat in a bookstore without running into it. But somebody's obviously buying it.

Or television and movies, with its rehashes and rip-off's of previous shows and movies.

It's hard to find truly original ideas these days, and it's easy to sit at a computer and criticize. :-)

I like to use the term 'clone' for ease of reference, but I wouldn't used it as a defined term in the course of discussion.

So yeah, I agree with you more or less.

I have played thousands of games and I remember most of them pretty well. That being said, any game I have played has had echoes of games that have come before, even if that inspiration wasn't a video game originally.

Just like people, video games are made up of many parts that are stereotypical or at least, un-original. it's the way they are assembled and what is added to glue them together that creates a games identity, just as it creates a human's. The only difference is that humans in general don't have fanboys to bitch about the validity of the difference and claim who is stealing what from whom.

Let's look at Sacred, quite possibly my favorite isometric Action RPG. Some people claim it's a Diablo clone. If that is so then the following is also true, Diablo it'self is actually an Ultima clone, and Ultima, actually a Bards Tale clone, which is actually a Rogue Clone which is actually a Dungeons and Dragons clone. I'm sure I've missed a few others in between, but each of these games are equally composites of other games and unique in their own right. Rogue was arguably the first top down view RPG, Bards Tale took that idea and put it into a first person perspective, but kept all the classes and rules and what not. Ultima went back to the top down view, but placed the camera off center so that you could see the players avatar better. Diablo took this design a step futher by incorporating audio and visual atmosphere and by streamlining the stat and spell system (spell systems were usually pretty clunky up to that point). Sacred takes that idea a step further and creates an open world where the character can go anywhere without waiting for the game to allow access, it also incorporated cool downs for abilities (common in MMOs).

We could not have Sacred without Rouge or any of the games that came in between.

I only have one caveat to that, I do not appreciate games that are simply retreads, without any actual contribution of it's own. The idea of a clone as a negative thing is realized when the game is purely the work of others, without any new ideas of it's own. This is why I generally stay away from AAA titles, they don't have anything new to offer as a general rule, ir if they do, it will be sequeled so badly that the idea becomes boring.

Oh, another clone is actually Halo, which could be considered a "clone" of two novels, Ringworld and Starship Troopers with the addition of FPS elements courtesy of, well any shooter really. Not unique, not even close, but very popular and very much it's OWN entity, even though the core elements were borrowed from other sources.

So many use the term "clone" in a neutral manner to refer to anything modelled after a particular game that you can't automatically take it as being any sort of accusation. Titan Attacks is a clone of Space Invaders, and it's blatantly superior. Clones gleefully refers to itself as such.

That sounds like something a clone would say... :p

I can understand using that clone term for games if they're basically the same, like something that one Facebook game company does. I'd prefer if people said "Minecraft inspired" or something similar.

Ekhem...

Also - this reminds me of a joke, where one guy went to the zoo and is retelling another what he saw there, starting with a giraffe:
"- What's a giraffe ?
- You know what a horse looks like ?
- Yeah.
- A giraffe looks like a horse with a really long neck. Anyway - then there were the zebras...
- What does a zebra look like ?
- Well... You know what a horse looks like ?
- Yeah.
- A zebra is like one with black and white stripes. Oh - there were snakes as well...
- What does a snake look like ?
- You know how a horse looks like ?
- Yeah...
- Well... A snake look completely different, man."

In other words - a narrow frame of reference and a desperate need for a coherent picture of the world are the culprits here. People want new information to relate to what they already know... but, unfortunately, they don't know Jack. So we're surrounded by clones-of-this and rehashes-of-that...

The term clone probably gets tossed around in inappropriate circumstances, but there are cases where the similarities go a bit beyond inspiration and cross the line into the realm of blatant rip-off...

http://www.mobygames.com/game/oh-shit

Also, don't a lot of us want clones, affectionally labeled "spiritual successors"?

Think about how all the popular Kickstarter projects are technically clones of games from the 90s.

There's a certain connotation that breaks that as a conversational piece.

When you use the word "clone", there's a certain sense of "meh, why should I check it out when I've already got game x?"

When you use the words "similar to", there's a certain sense of "oh, I liked game x, I should try it."

And connotation makes all the difference.