Facebook Indie Games

Before you call your lawyer or whip up the tide of online vitriol, consider some other strategies.

1. Position your game as "the game that inspired..."
   Tarantino films are notorious for assembling ideas from other films, TV shows, and creating a pop culture collage of obscure music. Along the way he's turned little known movies, tunes, and artists into cult classics. A big name clone of your game can do that too. Most people who have heard of Crush the Castle heard of it as "the game that inspired Angry Birds". And I'd have never heard of the Vaselines if Nirvana hadn't covered several of their songs.
   
2. Emphasize the differences, not the similarities.
   Your game will do some things differently from the clone. Emphasize the differences, because some people will prefer the way you do it, some people won't. What does Tiny Tower have that Dream Heights doesn't? TELL EVERYONE. If 10% of Zynga players decide they prefer pixel graphics to childish cartoons, Nimblebit gets a big win. But if Nimblebit makes a point of how both games are the same (except one is from a huge brand and has the same graphical style as the most played games in the world), there's no reason for Dream Heights players to explore the alternative.
   
3. Clone back.
   If the clone is more successful than the original then be honest with yourself: it's probably more popular because there's some things about it that's more appealing. Look carefully at the clone game and decide if there's anything you can copy back to your game. Then do it. Pinkass made a fair point that while Zynga may copy game play innovations from indies, indie devs are now selectively copying their monetization and social play innovations. That's the way this merry go round is going to work.
   
4. Take it to a VC.
   Zynga will beat Nimblebit because it has lots of capital. Nimblebit has proven they're a hot property that can deliver great games. If they want to take the fight to Zynga, they need a warchest. Or if you want to stay "nimble", invest in releasing more innovative games and maximizing profit between their game's launch and the launch of the inevitable clone.
5. Cloning is piracy. Ignore it.
   Maybe cloning is like piracy: it goes on but doesn't take people away from your game as much as you'd think. It might even act as free advertising. Is it really stealing if you lose nothing but your pride?
   

Cloners are going to keep on cloning. If you have a really successful indie game then bigger and better capitalized companies will copy it, and copy it well. You need a strategy that can thrive through the cloning experience.