Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - Ridiculous Fishing

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

From gaming hosts Josh and Paul, we're bringing you even more gaming content each week.  Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back, and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode.

Shazam! Boom! Hey guys, this is Paul here with another Quick Take episode. Just wanted to say thank you so much to all of you out there for helping support our podcast. We really appreciate it. What I wanted to talk about today is a mobile game that's actually no longer available on the Android store, although I believe it is still available on iOS. And it has a really interesting backstory that I wanted to talk about. But this is about a mobile game called Ridiculous Fishing. Now, I remember running

across this game many years ago. This game first released back in 2013, and I remember sinking a lot of time into it. I remember really loving it. I remember my kids anytime they would want to borrow my phone they always wanted to play Ridiculous Fishing and the concept of the game was very funny and it was incredibly fun and addicting. Basically you were a fisherman out on a lake and you would cast your fishing line and the camera would follow the hook as it would go underneath the surface of the water and you could navigate your hook left and right and you would try to avoid as many fish as you could and as long as you didn't hit anything your line would keep going deeper and deeper underwater and then once you would hit the bottom

or hit a fish then he would start reeling the line up you would basically try to catch as many fish as you could and then once the hook reached the surface it would fling all the fish up into the air and you would shoot it with a gun and however many fish you destroyed with your firearms you got a certain amount of money for like harvesting those fish and then you would use your money to invest into upgrades for your fishing line or upgrades to your weapons and so of course as you can imagine you know the firearms get more and more ridiculous just like in the name of the game you would end up with like machine guns i think there might have even been like a grenade launcher you know

it was it was totally wild and then as you would beat certain areas, it would unlock new areas that had more fish and they would go even deeper underwater. Really, really, really fun game. And I remember about a year ago, my son was looking for Ridiculous Fishing in the Google Play Store and couldn't find it. And I did a quick search and sure enough, I didn't see it. I kind of saw like a couple of knockoff versions that were similar, but Ridiculous Fishing was nowhere to be found. So I started doing some Googling and I start running across stories on Reddit about how there was this crazy story about the development and other companies cloning the game and releasing

it before Ridiculous Fishing and how the developers were just so companies cloning the game and releasing it before Ridiculous Fishing and how the developers were just so fed up with the game. And so I started reading more and more into this story. And it's kind of interesting and it's very sad in a lot of ways. But basically, what I did not know is that initially what this game started out as was a game called Radical Fishing, which was a flash game you could play for free online. Now, anyone who's a little bit older or near my age range probably remembers the days where you could play games for free

at AddictingGames.com, Congregate.com, websites like that. And basically, that had the bones of the entire game. It had all of the gameplay mechanics, but the art design, everything was not quite as professional as the eventual product. And so what they ended up doing was they had filed with Apple that they were going to release a mobile version on the iOS store. And then the plan was to also release it for Android. Well, what ended up happening is that another game developer, whose name is GameNauts, ended up deciding to just straight up rip off their game, and they basically released it first. And so it had exactly

the same items, exactly the same gameplay mechanics. Everything was literally identical in gameplay. It just had completely new art design. So literally a different, you know, coat of paint, but everything else underneath the hood is exactly identical. And so what the guys discovered who worked for the radical fishing and the ridiculous fishing company, their name is Vlambeer. And what they discovered is that they really had no legal recourse to stop the release of this cloned version, which was called Ninja Fishing. Which, by the way, is still in the Google Play Store, and I believe it's also on iOS. And I was kind of surprised to learn that there's really no legal recourse for any developer to stop another developer from essentially just stealing their ideas and even stealing their code because gameplay mechanics are actually not copywritten at all.

You can copyright your art and music and things of that nature, but the gameplay mechanics are not at all. And to an extent, I kind of get that. Because if you created the first first-person shooter, you can't just put a copyright on all first-person shooters. That's a generic enough idea. And even the whole concept of fishing and then throwing fish into the air and shooting it i i get it that's like broad enough that anyone could make like a knockoff version but here in this case you know they literally were using exactly the same items you know all of it was straight up lifted from this you know smaller

developer and so you know for a short while vbeer, they weren't even sure if they were going to finish the game because here they saw Ninja Fishing come out. It got rave reviews, and they were making boatloads of money on this game. And basically, Vlambeer decided, okay, well, we're just a small team of a couple of young guys. I don't know how old they were at the time, but I get the impression they're like in their early 20s. And they basically decided, all right, let's go ahead and set a deadline. And if we don't finish the game by this time, then we're just going to kill the project.

And so they ended up really buckling down. They were putting in 14-hour days. They ended up finishing the game, and they ended up releasing it. And you know what's really crazy is that their game got rave reviews on Metacritic. It's still currently a 91. There's 25 critical reviews and 24 of them are positive. And Metacritic actually has it listed as a must-play mobile game. And it was actually the highest-rated game on iOS

on Metacritic back in 2013. So they made a vastly superior product in the end, but at the same time, the wind really got taken out of their sails because someone else did it first. A lot of people bought that game and then probably weren't willing to shell out another couple of bucks to buy Ridiculous Fishing. And here, you know, Vlambeer, who had the original idea,

ended up producing the better game. And it was just such a negative experience all around. You can really just, you know, you can hear it in their voices if you watch interviews with those guys. And you can even read between the lines. So there was an issue with the Google Play version that I guess there was some kind of concern about, you know, with an update that they needed to update the game to keep it in the store. And they just didn't care. They just let it go. So you can still go to their website for Ridiculous Fishing. It's got a link to the Google Play store that's just broken. It doesn't go anywhere. You can no longer get it there. I did see that you can still buy it for $3 on the Amazon store, but then of course you have to have the Amazon game

app installed on your phone as well. So there are some workarounds that you can do to get Ridiculous Fishing. And I just thought that it was such a sad story just to have these you know young developers have a fantastic idea end up with this you know hit flash game and decide you know let's let's go full professional let's you know make this a career and get it released and here it just totally got stolen out from under them and it was perfectly legal and you know it's just you know incredibly sad in a lot of ways and even just the fact that you can't even find ridiculous fishing in the google play store is regrettable i installed ninja fishing which i had never played before and i gotta say even though it has like all of the same bones and the same mechanics

it's just not as good ridiculous fishing looks better it worked faster it was more enjoyable and ninja fishing just even as soon as you see the artwork you can just tell it just doesn't have the same level of passion and love that ridiculous fishing has so anyway a lot of you guys maybe played ridiculous fishing and didn't even know the backstory or maybe you did play ninja fishing and didn't know about it but i thought it was an interesting story here and just thought i would share it with you all. So anyway, if you have an Apple, it's really easy to find. It'll be there in the iOS store. Those of us with the Androids, we got to do a little bit more of a roundabout approach if we want to get it.

All right. Well, that's it for here, this Quick Take episode. Thanks so much again to all of you for helping support the show. Can't wait to come back at you guys with another Quick Take, and we'll see you guys next time.