Hi i'm Junebug, the bug from online. I'm very cool and everyone who has ever met me loves me.
So I know way too much about indie games. I pay a lot of attention to them, especially in certain genres.
Occasionally, U'll see someone I know talking about a cool mechanic they came up with for something they're working on or a cool twist they thought of, and i'll go "oh this is just like (that game no one has ever heard of)"
in this scenario: would you want to hear about said game, or avoid knowing about someone who "already did that thing"?
usually im happy to hear about comparisons to other games so i can look into them and see what they've done differently from me!
I generally would find it interesting but also be prepared to have a variety of reactions if it's totally unsolicited
oh yeah obviously do not go to a game dev and randomly go YOUR GAME LOOKS LIKE THIS ONE that sucks ass lol
I only really do programming for games rather than design, so my perspective is probably a bit biased in that regard, but:
I've never worked on a thing (game or otherwise) where people internally didn't use explicit comparisons and references to other, similar things. For example, a team I worked on was once "assigned homework" by the game designer to play a particular game, because we happened to be using similar mechanics. I think to ignore the outside world in the hopes of preserving the feeling that you are the first person to come up with an idea feels a little naive - by examining implementations similar to your own, you can get an idea of what worked and what didn't, how yours is different (and how you might push those differences further), how it was received, etc.
I'm sure it's different for "solo devs" - maybe in their case keeping that feeling of pure uniqueness is what's more important. But for me, it's burying your head in the sand.
I like these comparisons, because I am also something of a researcher about it - I like seeing how other devs implement a given thing and seeing what works, what doesn't, what pitfalls I can try to avoid. I mean, the fact that I largely lift mechanics wholesale from other games pretty much invites the comparisons to begin with...
Just at least be cool about it. Don't just be like "simpsons did it lol" about it.
I know on the TTRPG side at least I'd want it phrased like, "Oh, have you heard of ? It may be a good comparison point." It's important to learn from your predecessors, but it's absolutely a bit deflating for your shiny new idea to be hit with "this is just like ;" easier to stomach when there's not the assumption that you're exactly replicating the other game.
