[jmyeet]

I don't really like this argument because it reduces down to "all art is derivative". While true, it's not really useful. It leads to things like there being only 37 possible stories [1] and people pointing out how Shakespeare is derivative, which is a true but essentially useless statement.

Even if a story is exactly the same, like going to see a Shakespeare play, we still do it because the performance matters, the interpretation matters and the direction matters. And that's before you get into reskins of the same story (eg Taming of the Shrew -> Ten Things I Hate About You).

So the structural similarity is wroth noting and examining but it really has nothing to do with the execution, with how the movie or story or video game looks, plays or how it makes the user feel..

[1]: https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/37-possible-stories.html

[Gigachad]

That's not quite what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that there is a formula and predictability to successful games. If you do something pretty much the same as the thing that succeeded several times previously, it's more likely to succeed again than a wildly novel idea.