Posted by terabytest 10/24/2024
Even after all these years, that experience still feels a bit surreal to me. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who connected with the game, whether in small or significant ways, and for the stories shared along the way. Some people expressed how they were going through tough times and found some comfort, however small, in playing 2048.
At the start of last year, I wanted to breathe new life into the game as it was starting to show its age. I quit my job last October to work on 2048 full time and spent a year building this new version (the original took just 5 days!). I wanted to pay tribute to what made 2048 great while modernizing and polishing the experience.
The idea of adding powerups came when Prime Gaming and I connected to see if we could create a special version of 2048 for their members, with some exclusive extras. Some of those powerups made it into the main game, though there’s still a Classic[3] mode just like the original for those who prefer a more hardcore experience. The old site is also still online[4].
2048 is now my full-time focus, and I’m excited about the ways it can keep improving. I wanted to share this update with the community where it all began, both for a bit of nostalgia and to hear your thoughts and feedback!
Thank you all so much!
— Gabriele
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566
[2]: https://medium.com/@gabrielecirulli/2048-success-and-me-7dc6...
I was afraid of flying, specially on the takeoff and landing (and turbulence as well, ha). So I read somewhere that if I focused on something else, it would help me. So for the past years, I played 2048 during takeoff and landing, and it worked. It helped me to focus on something else, not the airplane, and I started to enjoying more my trips.
Now I don't need to do it anymore, but just for the experience I still do it when I fly. So thank you for helping me with my fear!
Fast forward a couple of years, I was debugging an issue with a react component and glanced over the .d.ts of react. I was quite surprised when I saw that my name was in them. I never contributed to react's types myself.
It turned out that someone took some types I wrote for 2048 and used them in the very first type definitions for react: https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/commit/4b...
It's still there to this date, but I've lost my TS port in the sands of time.
As for the argument about Threes!, I have to say that I've generally found 2048 to be a much more fun game; the full-screen sliding and the lack of the 1+2 mechanic makes things move much faster, which for me is a priority. That's definitely personal taste, but I hate the vitriol that comes up on the topic.
I remembered 2048 as a nice all-javascript game that runs in memory... opened this "updated version" and was met with slow-loading fonts, Google Ads, sign in and payment features, and the game did not in fact work (UI rendered but the initial 2 tile never loaded).
You could call it “God does play dice with the universe. They're loaded and he hates you.”
BTW, congrats on the whole thing; what a ride. I remember staying up all night implementing the AI after seeing it here, and the rush of seeing it win the first time, plus the added rush of seeing the AI post right next to the original post on here. Thanks for the fun!
That said, I think there’s a balance to strike. As I mentioned before, I created 2048 before I became aware of Threes, and while it’s important to credit inspiration, I’m not convinced that every creative project needs to trace back every indirect influence. 2048 began as a small experiment without any intent of gaining popularity, and it grew into something distinct, shaped by the viral spread and its community of its open-source variations.
I understand the value of recognizing origins, but I also believe 2048 has developed its own identity over time. I appreciate the feedback, and I’m always open to improving where needed. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Wordle was just...
DropBox was just...
the iPhone was just...
Modern movies are just...
Don't allow others to dismiss your work. They are jealous they didn't do it first - which begs the question - if it was _just_.... then why didn't _they_ do it?
I was originally frustrated with your game and jealous of you for awhile, too.
It's boring.
No. Although that certainly can help, it's not the main point.
From the guidelines: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Seeing the exact same thing posted about Threes in over half of the comments here is the opposite of gratifying one's intellectual curiosity. It's boring. Especially when the comment is just a slight rephrasing of a comment that's already been posted several times (or worse, solely a link to your own comment elsewhere in the submission).
When people start arguing about what they did or didn't say, with swipes like "Oh come on," it's clear that curious conversation was left behind quite a while ago and it's time to stop.
The reason I replied to you is that your account was producing quite a bit more than the other accounts in this repetitive and dyspeptic discussion.
I think 2048 became more popular because it was a) on the web, and b) free, whereas Threes was only on the iPhone and cost a few bucks.
Oh, and c) the OP, to give him his due credit, did a really nice job with it! It had the same kind of simplicity and virality as Wordle.
... or did you mean that Suika Game itself wasn't the original game with the falling-circles mechanic?
It's with 2048 that I actually got hooked, it felt like a more natural and seamless game to play. I think it's the simplicity (no cuteness, no craftyness) that helps abstract the game, and of course dealing with powers of two makes it all the more natural. It felt a lot easier to get in and out of the game, be it for 30 sec to check the train station or 4 hours until lunch break.
I feel like Threes was the cute and whimsical game, while 2048 could probably become the classic game, in the same kind of spot as Tetris.
This argument has always been silly.
Three's didn't invent sliding tile games. Sliding tile games existed going back to the 1980s and 2048's mechanics are different enough that I don't even think they're comparable.
They've existed in wood for a lot longer than that.
>When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken.
From my experience, this greatly overstates the "exploit". In 2048 you get to maybe 128 this way typically before you can't move up/right any more, then you have to start thinking after the left press. Basically whenever you slide away from the "preferred" corner, supposing your plan is to slide back promptly, there's always a chance that a random spawn gets in your way and complicates the plan. Getting to 2048 on the first try doesn't sound like a modal experience at all. (Of course, most new 2048 players won't have had the experience of developing Threes first.)
For that matter, the developer talks about how rare it is to see a 6144, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that reaching a 4096 in 2048 is far more difficult than reaching 2048.
At any rate, it's not at all immediately clear why having the player join 1+2 first before making blocks of 3*2^n, should noticeably improve the gameplay over having only powers of two. So IMO it's not that the gameplay of 2048 is fundamentally less interesting; the implementation just sets a lower standard.
(Though for what it's worth, I've wondered how it might go with the Fibonacci sequence - allowing 1s to merge either with 2s or other 1s.)
2048 might well have won out for its simplicity (although personally I think the audio had a lot to do with it). Screenshots of Threes development (from the page linked in the post I quoted) imply that for quite a while it allowed for making numbers of any 2^x*3^y form, and earlier versions of the game must have tried even more complex rules - even larger prime numbers like 79 show up. Eventually this reduced to only numbers of the form 2^x*3 (as well as 1 and 2). To me that looks like a strange left-over irregularity, even if it does improve gameplay.
(After reading the rest of the thread, I think I regret replying at all.)
Hasn't 2048 always been free? When comparing a paid game with a clone that's free (or even "free-to-play with obnoxious ads and lootbox mechanics" not that 2048 is that) the latter will usually become more popular, and that certainly happened here.
I am not sure how I feel about it. I certainly don't believe anyone should be able to legally own an idea like "sliding tile number games based on powers of 2 with or without being multiplied by 3" but I also don't have a lot of respect for those who, lacking an original idea, resort to cloning someone else's creative work (or in 2048's case, I guess, cloning another clone). So I guess I have no problem with them existing, but don't feel any desire to give them accolades or to play their game.
I paid something like $2 CAD in the Nintendo eShop for a 3DS version. (If it's a clone, it hews very close to the original.) I guess I can't be sure it's supposed to work like that.
https://kotaku.com/clone-of-clone-of-clone-now-on-3ds-eshop-...
and why is the fact that the difference between threes and 2048 "not immediately obvious" salient... at all? what is it even supposed to mean? i'm not so great at number theory... that doesn't make me think that all those people are gods among humans. same with the obverse: i am really good at geometry, so honestly are we sure that the ancient greeks were even good at math? it's not immediately obvious to me that geometry even is math. they didn't even have calculators for god's sake!
It's also dishonest to label 2048 as a clone. Personally I never cared much for Threes, and same I guess with my parents etc which all got hooked for a while on 2048. 2048 strikes a good balance on being accessible and challenging, most people don't want it more complicated or deeper.
If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously. Instead, many people act as if 2048 was a slight on Threes somehow, stealing their thunder. I actually bought Threes based on all the comments back then, but didn't really like it. Too cutesy, and too challenging when I just wanted to mindlessly swipe.
It's a fair question, but Doom and Quake were both very famous and successful.
What sticks in my craw a bit with Threes is that the clones came out really fast, and 2048 in particular because much more famous and successful, so Threes never really got the chance to shine as much as it deserved (except when die-hard fans like me keep coming out of the woodwork to hype it, as you say). And I still think Threes has a much better and deeper game design than any of the clones!
If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
It's not that I resent the success of 2048 -- to the contrary, the OP did a great job with it and the success is deserved. But I assume that many people who have heard of 2048 have not heard of Threes, and I'd like them to try it, because it's great.
Why? It's not a job, or even a fun hobby, to try and ensure forgotten things get the recognition they deserve.
It can get tedious if you overdo it, sure.
Sure, but this wasn't a thread about games, or sliding number games, in general, it was a thread about 2048 specifically.
However, some might imagine it to be virtuous.
Well the great differentiator between puzzle games is the idea of the playing mechanism. The great differentiator between FPS is implementation. If I make an FPS, I didn’t really steal from Doom because the idea is pretty obvious. But if I make a sliding game that’s very similar to 2048, you might say I stole the idea. It’s like with patents, subjectively the mechanism of a FPS shouldn’t be patentable to me, but three or 2048 might be.
I think there can be a different line drawn for "what should be patentable or legally protected" and "what should be celebrated as creativity."
A clone of Tetris where the line pieces are 5 blocks tall, for instance, is not notable or creative. But also, I think someone should be legally free to make it if they're not infringing Tetris's trademarks or stealing their code.
This. I've never heard anyone mention Threes outside of a sub discussion about 2048. For all the people here that claim to love it, it has had very little impact outside of being discussed as being similar to, or a precursor of, 2048.
(PS: and on a more meta level, people like us feeling super clever about "2048 helped Threes!" might be the secret sauce responsible for much of the longevity of the games' shared virality)
"Powerups with Amazon Prime" sounds like the famous bug report that grep (I think) should search on Amazon if it doesn't find the string locally, which was submitted IIRC in protest at the Ubuntu "lens" doing just that.