found an unnamed txt on my desktop where i apparently wrote this

i'm always thinking about the concept of a “clone” in videogame discussions, partly because i've been walking around for about a decade thinking about the claim that there was a “flood of doom clones” after 1993, a phenomenon that, as far as i can tell, simply did not occur. break the concept of a game “clone” used to be incredibly literal. after pong came out, a hundred companies simply made pong, but not called pong, and sold their counterfeits not under the table, but openly, with huge advertising campaigns and the whole bit. this repeated for decades, and unsurprisingly created vast amounts of IP law in its trail. in some cases, a company like atari would succeed in a lawsuit which established towering new concepts about copyright, then later sue someone else and inadvertently establish more precedent which demolished the one they'd just set. ken williams of sierra once won a suit vs atari, and then on the courthouse steps told reporters that he wasn't sure he actually agreed with…