{"id":1920,"date":"2014-04-09T15:30:01","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T13:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=1920"},"modified":"2014-04-12T11:24:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T09:24:12","slug":"where-did-threes-come-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2014\/04\/09\/where-did-threes-come-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Patch Wednesday #4: Where did Threes come from? A History Example"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my fourth\u00a0Patch Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0post where I discuss a question about video games that I think is unanswered, unexplored, or simply not posed yet. I will propose my own tentative ideas, and invite comments.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The header sounds a bit like Ash Wednesday, so we can reaffirm our faith in the idea of examining video games, but Patch Wednesday to mark the sometimes ragtag and improvised character of video game studies.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"threes\"<\/p>\n

Where did\u00a0Threes<\/em>\u00a0come from? The currently massively popular puzzle game Threes<\/i> is seen as the victim of a large number of clones, particularly 2048<\/a>.\u00a0To prove their point, the developers have posted a long article explaining their design process<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the same time, though 2048<\/a>\u00a0is in many ways similar to Threes, some people also whisper that they think 2048 is the better game, because it is simpler (always doubling 2, 4, 8 rather than the 1+2=3 merging of Threes). It certainly is more intuitive to a programming mind.<\/p>\n

Life is not fair, of course, and it seems a shame that someone can borrow from the game that someone else developed and through a minor change reap the seeds of the iterative design process of someone else. But you cannot copyright game ideas, only their expression<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"triple<\/p>\n

Regardless, where does Threes<\/em> come from? As a headline, the game contains two particular and rare mechanics: merging<\/em> (the combination of objects to form higher-level objects) and slide-to-combine<\/em>\u00a0(pushing the entire screen to one side at a time, combining objects that are pushed into each other).<\/p>\n

1) Merging<\/strong><\/p>\n

The merging mechanic does at this time seem to be inspired by Triple Town<\/em>, where merging is reminiscent of match-three games. Yet where regular match-three matches lead to clearing the objects matched, Triple Town matches always creates a new higher-level object.<\/p>\n

But where does this merging mechanic come from? Dan Cook, triple town developer stated that it was inspired by the idea of sets in card games<\/a>\u00a0as well as by crafting systems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Quick research and the twittersphere proposed a few sources for merging:<\/p>\n