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Narrative
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"That old Koopa may have thought he was super. But when you're talking Super Mario Bros., there's just no substitute for the real thing!"
—Toad, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, "Super Koopa"
It's a Fargate! Not a Stargate! We'll put it in a wheelchair and give it a mohawk if we have to!"
So you're reading a review of the latest game to come down the pike, and you find a line that states said game is just like another title. And it is. Sorta. It may have been "inspired" by a more successful franchise, or it may be that the more successful franchise so changed the face of its medium that all future works in that medium demand a response.
One thing's for sure, though: The reviewer will act as though the similarity is all you need to know.
There's a high demand for innovation and new ideas, so if a new work has similarities to an older or more popular one, expect those similarities to be the dominant subject in discussion about the work, even if they're entirely superficial. Some people go on to say "if you can't come up with an original idea, don't even bother trying to make the game." Despite the fact that most original works get ignored because of lack of advertising or that it's just not a name brand that you'd be crazy not to try and pry ideas from another source.
Of course, many times creators do borrow ideas from another work as inspiration to create new stories and concepts. Considering that just about everything has been done, it's difficult to properly think of something new and fresh. This is not always the case, however, as sometimes creators deliberately try to copy off a particular franchise as soon as its success becomes evident. They will immediately try to make something to compete — and most of the time it will fail miserably, because it was rushed or just implemented poorly. Other times it might come up with a really cool and ingenious new spin on the idea, and still never reach the same kind of popularity as its competition because somehow being too much like the original is deplorable.
The error here is the automatic assumption that just because something is similar, it can't have any value on its own merits. If everything that was derivative was that bad, it wouldn't be done so much. Some can actually be quite good on their own. See Cloning Gold.
This is the justification behind Sequelphobia. Compare Older Than They Think. Not to be confused with They Changed It Now It Sucks, where a sequel or an official adaptation changes an aspect of an original work for better or worse.
—-Oglethorpe, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "Universal Remonster"
Examples:
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