Good artists copy, great artists steal?

Still hurts to be the one being stolen from though.

I don't think this is the same kind of stealing?

If you're being a great artist who steals you may perfectly reproduce something, but in such a different and novel context that it feels fresh, or taking something verbatim and then modifying it with your work, vs say taking an series of ideas from a work and then not really changing or moving from what they were originally expressing

An example of this is from Offworld Trading Company[0], which literally started by copying the market from Age of Empires[1] and then iterated on it as well as the auction mechanics from MULE[2], I vaguely recall them talking about this in their GDC talk[3], though I could be misremembering that(it's a good talk though)

I could be wrong, but I'm not sure if anyone who was stolen from in those cases feels hurt by it

Compare that to stealing, where the parties stolen from were really quite angry at what was stolen, Triple Town vs Yeti Town[4], which very much looked like a lazy clone

-[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/271240/Offworld_Trading_C...

-[1]: https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Market_(Age_of_Empires_...

-[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.

-[3]: Offworld Trading Company: An RTS Without Guns : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2C4z_apu2I

-[4]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/spry-fox-and-the-clone-wars

I'm a big fan of that quote, but always took it differently than the meaning associated with this article.

Good artists see an idea and use it. Great artists see an idea and _make it their own_.

there are only limited number of patterns for ui,ux, CTA. It sucks to be stolen from, but we build on top of each other most of the time