Since the dawn of video games, new games have included aspects of the best games that came before them. When gaming was young and almost any gameplay device was new and fresh, if a game was too similar to a predecessor, it was instantly labeled a "clone". Eventually, the term came to be used for games released after a game changer (pun intended) in the industry. For example, Sonic the Hedgehog was a "Mario-clone", Half-Life and its contemporaries were "Doom-clones", and after the release of Super Mario 64 most 3D platformers were labeled "Mario 64 clones".

Ironically, a homage to Track and Field

Use of the term "clone" has gone into decline, however, in the gaming media, except in cases where the history of the industry is discussed. Perhaps this decline is due to the fact that games have reached the stage of existence where there are definite genres to classify games under. There's no need to call something a "Doom-clone" anymore, as any gamer will understand what you mean if you call a game a First Person Shooter (not to mention the fact that many newer gamers probably haven't heard of Doom, let alone played it).

Or, perhaps this decline can be attributed to the rise in another term... the "homage". Friendlier sounding than "clone", this term has been applied to games such as Bioshock, Darksiders, and Dante's Inferno. It seems that game journalists apply it indiscriminately to games that borrow from others no matter what the extent. If one looks at the definitions of the two phrases and the games themselves, it becomes clear that this labeling needs to be reevaluated.

The word "clone" summons the mental image of exactly that, a carbon-copy of something. So when a game is called a "clone", the game discussed must be very similar to the game it supposedly borrows from. In the case of First Person Shooters, many of the similar games that came right after Doom were indeed clones. With the hardware available at the time, games weren't capable of doing much more than what Doom accomplished.

Sonic the Hedgehog, on the other hand, wouldn't actually be much of a clone. Sure, it had the same concept of platforming and collecting items as Mario, but the concept of speed and the complex level layouts made the series distinctly different. The same goes for the original Half-Life. Sure, it had shooting from the protagonists prospective, but that's essentially where the similarities end. The innovative story and complex visuals and gameplay mechanics (for the time) make it quite a stretch to accuse Half-Life of being derivative from Doom.

At the same time, there are games where the borrowing is simply blatant, and yet the games are called "homages" to the games they so obviously copy. The relatively new release Dante's Inferno is a prime example of this. The controls, environments, combos, character design, and even menus are almost exactly the same as in the God of War games. If a gaming neophyte were to sit down and play a level in Hades in the God of War games and then immediately play a level of Dante's Inferno, they would be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

Granted, this is not an attack on Dante's Inferno. The production values for the first few Circles of Hell are amazing, but that doesn't mean that the obvious copying of God of War should be taken so kindly by the industry. This copying leads to stagnation in innovation, as companies simply make clones of whatever is profitable in a given year. For the sake of innovative gaming, the media needs to be more honest when it comes to games borrowing ideas so blatantly.

This cartoon has the right idea.

On the other side of the coin, there are games that honestly take ideas from earlier releases and use them in a fresh, new way. Bioshock and its sequel do marvelous jobs of this. Both took the atmosphere, audio recordings, ammo types, and even plot devices from System Shock 2 and spun them into a beautiful new tale, while adding a in a new combat system and a simplified inventory to create genuine "homages" -- which, by definition, are tributes to the source material, not copies.

Another recent action game -- Darksiders, from THQ, -- manages to blend aspects from not only one, but two, games series, in a way that not only uses these gameplay devices in ways that the source games aren't quite obvious. Mixing the puzzle solving of The Legend of Zelda and the more involved combat of God of War, Darksiders manages to provide its own style; the mix doesn't feel distinctly like either game, but when a player locks on to an enemy or uses a hookshot to solve a puzzle, there is a reminder that a predecessor introduced the concept.

For games to remain innovative, the game industry, players, and media need to be honest. If a game is nigh indistinguishable from another, it's a clone, and that's that. If a game manages to take a gameplay device and use it in a way that makes it the game's own, only then does it qualify as a homage. Maintaining this distinction will keep developers from getting away from churning out the same games year after year, and push the industry forward.