When is a game a clone and when is it simply an example of a genre? In some sense, this is the question that begins our discussion of that ubiquitous example of the medium: the game clone.

From Torchlight to Saints Row and beyond, some games seem like a deliberate aping of intellectual properties that have gone before. What makes a clone a clone? And why do we sometimes really feel a kinship to clones despite their cloying adherence to a formula created by someone else?