In China, the big players crush small startups by cloning them within a few days of them getting popular, and in some cases deploy dirty tactics against them (I'm thinking of an antivirus being interfered with on users' computers because it was removing part of a giant's software - was Tencent involved?). The point is that in China, everything gets cloned really quickly and the big players keep winning the market by pushing the new services out to their existing users, who don't seem to care that much about not letting one company dominate. It's a horrible model that I believe is entrenched by the big boys having influence with those in power.
How come this doesn't happen in the US, where copying does take place, but less directly and quickly? It's not like quickly copying a startup idea is illegal, and anyone can claim they've been working on something similar to a new idea for a while. Is it perhaps because there's a diversity of channels and forums by which new startups can market themselves, whereas in China everyone uses Baidu/QQ/Renren/Weibo and some of those sites possibly block out competitors' marketing?
I don't know, just thinking out loud and looking for more-informed opinions.
Some games are hard to clone within a few days even with tens of engineers and artists. How fast do you think a Chinese game company could clone Skyward Sword? Or even how fast do you think it would take Zynga for that matter? There are other games too, up and down the spectrum of AAA to garage-indie, that I don't think are so easy to copy in a short period of time--especially not short enough that you could dispel the first mover advantage if it was actually something worth copying. There are of course even more technologies outside the game industry that are hard to copy that startups have already gotten in to or even grown into. Amazon seems like a hard company to copy everything they do and still win.
What's personally depressed me about all these mobile games and their companies is they're all just circle-jerking and ripping off the same games that came out 10-20 years ago as well as digitalizing games that have been around for hundreds of years, and many of them I think "I could clone at least 90% of that in a weekend"... I don't think there's anything morally wrong with them, but it's not my cup of tea for what I want to play or how I would want to make money and I do sense a lack of "taste". I think OMGPOP got their payday, leave them alone. But I also think if you're in the business of what can be easily duplicated in terms of effort, as opposed to flat out copying files, prepare for the big companies to win.
In China, the big players crush small startups by cloning them within a few days of them getting popular, and in some cases deploy dirty tactics against them (I'm thinking of an antivirus being interfered with on users' computers because it was removing part of a giant's software - was Tencent involved?). The point is that in China, everything gets cloned really quickly and the big players keep winning the market by pushing the new services out to their existing users, who don't seem to care that much about not letting one company dominate. It's a horrible model that I believe is entrenched by the big boys having influence with those in power.
How come this doesn't happen in the US, where copying does take place, but less directly and quickly? It's not like quickly copying a startup idea is illegal, and anyone can claim they've been working on something similar to a new idea for a while. Is it perhaps because there's a diversity of channels and forums by which new startups can market themselves, whereas in China everyone uses Baidu/QQ/Renren/Weibo and some of those sites possibly block out competitors' marketing?
I don't know, just thinking out loud and looking for more-informed opinions.