Yes...let's be realistic here. I would wager nearly all apps on the app store have reviews by employees of the company that made them. This is not unusual, or surprising.
Hate on Zynga for ripping off another guy's work, but I'm pretty sure the other guy would have reviewed his own app too!
This "article" is BS. The average rating for Dream Heights on iTunes (at the time of my writing this) is above 4.5/5 stars. Hardly the overwhelming negative response this article claims.
However, the default iTunes sort method will still manage to do some damage. If I recall correctly, iTunes sorts reviews mostly by how many people found it helpful. Additionally, this is as an absolute value, not a percentage (so 8 of 65 finding helpful will be above one that 7 of 7 found helpful). The result is if you go to the App Store page, the reviews you are shown by default -- overall rating aside -- are all heavily-upvoted one-star reviews.
The question that's left is how much of a material effect the one-star reviews being shown by default are having on the game's sales. However, even if there is no material effect, that's probably not a black mark Zynga wants visible even if it's not affecting sales much (or at all).
The "Whose Expression is it Anyways?" article on Gamasutra (link: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyWu/20120216/9455/Whose_E...) I think is a good discussion on the topic. Using that article's terms, Dream Heights may only be the "legal distance" from Tiny Tower's design, instead of the "classy distance".
What are you quoting? The picture you post says "Give us a FIVE-STAR rating! Higher ratings mean more features!" I take this to mean they will develop their higher-rated games more than their lower-rated ones. Where does it say you can have more features in exchange for a high rating?
Other than the basic aesthetic of "you're building a tower!", Tiny Tower and SimTower have practically nothing in common. If anything, Tiny Tower draws more from Zynga's "Ville"-style games than it does from SimTower.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 50.7 ms ] threadZynga is really good at borrowing step one and executing step two, but they're not the only company that does this.
Of course, if Valve ever makes a deal with Facebook then naturally that'll be a different situation altogether.
I don't think there was any real attempt to manipulate here. He uses his real name and doesn't hide the fact that he is a part of Zynga.
Lots of companies do this with review. Lots of companies also clone other people's games. People just love to hate on Zynga.
Hate on Zynga for ripping off another guy's work, but I'm pretty sure the other guy would have reviewed his own app too!
However, the default iTunes sort method will still manage to do some damage. If I recall correctly, iTunes sorts reviews mostly by how many people found it helpful. Additionally, this is as an absolute value, not a percentage (so 8 of 65 finding helpful will be above one that 7 of 7 found helpful). The result is if you go to the App Store page, the reviews you are shown by default -- overall rating aside -- are all heavily-upvoted one-star reviews.
The question that's left is how much of a material effect the one-star reviews being shown by default are having on the game's sales. However, even if there is no material effect, that's probably not a black mark Zynga wants visible even if it's not affecting sales much (or at all).
The "Whose Expression is it Anyways?" article on Gamasutra (link: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyWu/20120216/9455/Whose_E...) I think is a good discussion on the topic. Using that article's terms, Dream Heights may only be the "legal distance" from Tiny Tower's design, instead of the "classy distance".
Proof: http://db.tt/whiVaG0t
Do other apps do this?