oh cool chris crawford, hes a legend
sadly i havent be able to met him cause he avoid conferences as i heard :<

Great ideas and highly successful, but not the most creative of ideas
today 99% of the games are clones, cloning a single game or combining two games to one

a new idea is always risky but a clone will mostly make money even if its not the huge amount the real one make
but some clones create a bigger userbase and more cash then the original

currently theres a trend in the indiedevelopercommunity where someone says "xyz cloned my game" but having a close look
shows that it isnt something really new just combining some stuff you already saw somewhere with little changes
this guys mostly blame others cause they think they achieved something new or they are angry cause the clone have some small changes and generate alot more cash

this happen over years in the gameindustry and its still the way how to make profitable games

and for me a game with little changes still make a big impact on the gameexpierence even changes only in graphicstyle can lead to this