As long as I’m not pretending to be Nintendo, can you quantify how exactly releasing, for example, a fan Mario game is unethical? It having the potential to hurt their sales if you make a better game than them doesn’t count because otherwise that would imply that out-competing anyone in any market must be unethical, which is absurd.
No, it’s about if you make a game that’s worse or off-brand. If you make a bunch of Mario games into horror games and then everyone thinks of horror when they think of Mario then good or bad, you’ve ruined their branding and image. Equally, if you make a bunch of trash and people see Mario as just a trash franchise (like how most people see Sonic games) then it ruins Nintendo’s ability to capitalize on their own work.
No one is worried about a fan-made Mario game being better.
Wouldn’t that only be a problem if you pretended to be Nintendo? There are a lot of fan Sonic games and I don’t think it’s affected Sonic’s image very much. There’s shit like Sonic.EXE, which is absolutely a horror game, but people still don’t think of horror when they think of Sonic. The reason Sonic is a trash franchise is because of SEGA consistently releasing shitty Sonic games. Hell, some of the fan games actually do beat out the official games in quality and polish.
Hypothetically, assuming you’re right and fan games actually do hurt their branding, there’s still no reason for it to be illegal. We don’t ban shitty mobile games for giving good mobile games a bad rep, and neither Nintendo nor mobile devs can claim libel or defamation.
Actually we do. If your game is so terrible, it can get removed from the Google Play store. It has to be really bad and they rarely do it. Steam does this as well. Epic avoids this by vetting the games they put on their platform site first. It’s why the term asset flip exists.
Sure, that’s fair. Either way bad or good, it’s illegal to take someone’s existing IP and add on to it. Good or bad. No one is legally banning games based on quality and if they were good or bad it doesn’t matter. It matters that the original story owner has a vision and they have the right to make money off of their work without other people trying to take or add on to the story themselves. Brand fatigue is a real thing and while all of the CoD games are great and fairly high quality, the reason they get a bad rap is exactly brand fatigue. The Assassin’s Creed games were the same for a bit but they resolved that by spreading releases out.
Either way, the arguments to let people just add on to what they want seems to fall flat. Why not just build a universe like Mario and call it Maryo? Or the great giana sisters? Why involve someone else’s IP at all? because you are profiting off of the popularity that someone else built with quality products. In even a communist society I’d want that banned because it’s lazy, misrepresents the original vision, and overall it’s completely avoidable without a problem. In fact, why not force people to create new things instead of letting them be lazy and stealing the popularity of a well-made IP?
Brand fatigue is definitely a real thing, I will agree with you there. In the same boat, so is genre fatigue. If you play a lot of platformers, you’ll eventually get bored and move on to something else. Nintendo clearly has no right to go after other platforming games that have copied from Mario’s mechanics, so why should they have the right to go after games that use Mario’s aesthetic or name?
Fan games are not normally morally wrong, but I do think it’s kind of trashy to try and make money off of someone else’s brand if you’re not doing it out of passion. I just don’t see it as a legal problem, much like how crappy off-brand ripoffs and lazily made games aren’t a legal problem. It’s also worth noting that the people making the most money off of the IP are just executives that likely had little to no part in creating the characters and care less about appreciating the artistic work than most fan game makers.
Look at Sonic P-06, a fan-made remake of Sonic ‘06. It’s highly polished, has fleshed out features that never made it into the original game, and is absolutely a labor of love. The original came out a buggy pile of garbage because it was forced out by those aforementioned business-people before it was ready. Most companies’ strict protection of their IP just prevent works of art like P-06 from seeing the light of day. I think that SEGA’s no Sonic monetization policy being enshrined into law would be a reasonable compromise.
Nintendo clearly has no right to go after other platforming games that have copied from Mario’s mechanics, so why should they have the right to go after games that use Mario’s aesthetic or name?
This argument doesn’t hold water to me. How are you conflating a brand with all games in a genre? IP and brands are a signifier of what to expect. Sherlock Holmes is a great example of what used to be an IP known for a very specific style of mystery story but now just means “genius problem solver maybe with a drug habit.”
Fan games are not normally morally wrong, but I do think it’s kind of trashy to try and make money off of someone else’s brand if you’re not doing it out of passion. I just don’t see it as a legal problem
We are going to just have to agree to disagree. Spiritual successors happen all the time. The reason people make fan games is that there is a lexicon built into their project already. It’s a shortcut instead of building (and considering) what is meaningful to your game in a lexicon. Additionally, a lot of people do not consider how their changes affect the lexicon throughout all games. So what you are left with is mostly people who don’t truly understand, never talked to the creators, never worked with them, assume everything from a product perspective, pushing out something that adds to the brand without any true coherency or consideration of future titles.
I for one see it as wrong to attempt to take someone’s work and not only pass it off as your own but also potentially break their ability to make future iterations of their work.
Look at Sonic P-06, a fan-made remake of Sonic ‘06. It’s highly polished, has fleshed out features that never made it into the original game, and is absolutely a labor of love.
Perhaps a labor of love. From my initial parsing of reviews, looks like they didn’t attempt to change anything but kept close to the source material.
Most companies’ strict protection of their IP just prevent works of art like P-06 from seeing the light of day
I feel like that’s okay. There are plenty of original and better ideas out there. It doesn’t prevent things from being made. P-06 being “still terrible but better” doesn’t really say anything. The fact that games like Black Mesa, Sonic Media, Skywind, and very specifically Zera: Myths Awaken also exists, a game that started as Spyro 4 and Activision sent a C&D, so they rebranded. These things are easily fixed and honestly, it’s great if fans want to attempt to build a game off of someone’s IP then ask the IP holder if they can continue with it. If not, they can just rebrand and create their own universe. Temtem is a great example of what happens when people are forced to create their own thing. It becomes more impactful and allows for a more interesting product. Not just a cookie cutter game.
I get what you’re saying. The problem is that you can’t argue your case just by giving examples of how IP enforcement can lead to people innovating more in the way that I can. The debate is asymmetrical because all I have to do is show that IP violation doesn’t uniquely negatively affect IP holders in ways that legal activities can’t, demonstrating precedent for that kind of competition/harm being legal. You need to justify forcibly imposing limitations on what people are allowed to do, which has a higher “burden of proof” if you get what I’m saying.
As long as I’m not pretending to be Nintendo, can you quantify how exactly releasing, for example, a fan Mario game is unethical? It having the potential to hurt their sales if you make a better game than them doesn’t count because otherwise that would imply that out-competing anyone in any market must be unethical, which is absurd.
No, it’s about if you make a game that’s worse or off-brand. If you make a bunch of Mario games into horror games and then everyone thinks of horror when they think of Mario then good or bad, you’ve ruined their branding and image. Equally, if you make a bunch of trash and people see Mario as just a trash franchise (like how most people see Sonic games) then it ruins Nintendo’s ability to capitalize on their own work.
No one is worried about a fan-made Mario game being better.
Wouldn’t that only be a problem if you pretended to be Nintendo? There are a lot of fan Sonic games and I don’t think it’s affected Sonic’s image very much. There’s shit like Sonic.EXE, which is absolutely a horror game, but people still don’t think of horror when they think of Sonic. The reason Sonic is a trash franchise is because of SEGA consistently releasing shitty Sonic games. Hell, some of the fan games actually do beat out the official games in quality and polish.
Hypothetically, assuming you’re right and fan games actually do hurt their branding, there’s still no reason for it to be illegal. We don’t ban shitty mobile games for giving good mobile games a bad rep, and neither Nintendo nor mobile devs can claim libel or defamation.
Actually we do. If your game is so terrible, it can get removed from the Google Play store. It has to be really bad and they rarely do it. Steam does this as well. Epic avoids this by vetting the games they put on their platform site first. It’s why the term asset flip exists.
Ban in a legal sense, not ban from a proprietary store.
Sure, that’s fair. Either way bad or good, it’s illegal to take someone’s existing IP and add on to it. Good or bad. No one is legally banning games based on quality and if they were good or bad it doesn’t matter. It matters that the original story owner has a vision and they have the right to make money off of their work without other people trying to take or add on to the story themselves. Brand fatigue is a real thing and while all of the CoD games are great and fairly high quality, the reason they get a bad rap is exactly brand fatigue. The Assassin’s Creed games were the same for a bit but they resolved that by spreading releases out.
Either way, the arguments to let people just add on to what they want seems to fall flat. Why not just build a universe like Mario and call it Maryo? Or the great giana sisters? Why involve someone else’s IP at all? because you are profiting off of the popularity that someone else built with quality products. In even a communist society I’d want that banned because it’s lazy, misrepresents the original vision, and overall it’s completely avoidable without a problem. In fact, why not force people to create new things instead of letting them be lazy and stealing the popularity of a well-made IP?
Brand fatigue is definitely a real thing, I will agree with you there. In the same boat, so is genre fatigue. If you play a lot of platformers, you’ll eventually get bored and move on to something else. Nintendo clearly has no right to go after other platforming games that have copied from Mario’s mechanics, so why should they have the right to go after games that use Mario’s aesthetic or name?
Fan games are not normally morally wrong, but I do think it’s kind of trashy to try and make money off of someone else’s brand if you’re not doing it out of passion. I just don’t see it as a legal problem, much like how crappy off-brand ripoffs and lazily made games aren’t a legal problem. It’s also worth noting that the people making the most money off of the IP are just executives that likely had little to no part in creating the characters and care less about appreciating the artistic work than most fan game makers.
Look at Sonic P-06, a fan-made remake of Sonic ‘06. It’s highly polished, has fleshed out features that never made it into the original game, and is absolutely a labor of love. The original came out a buggy pile of garbage because it was forced out by those aforementioned business-people before it was ready. Most companies’ strict protection of their IP just prevent works of art like P-06 from seeing the light of day. I think that SEGA’s no Sonic monetization policy being enshrined into law would be a reasonable compromise.
This argument doesn’t hold water to me. How are you conflating a brand with all games in a genre? IP and brands are a signifier of what to expect. Sherlock Holmes is a great example of what used to be an IP known for a very specific style of mystery story but now just means “genius problem solver maybe with a drug habit.”
We are going to just have to agree to disagree. Spiritual successors happen all the time. The reason people make fan games is that there is a lexicon built into their project already. It’s a shortcut instead of building (and considering) what is meaningful to your game in a lexicon. Additionally, a lot of people do not consider how their changes affect the lexicon throughout all games. So what you are left with is mostly people who don’t truly understand, never talked to the creators, never worked with them, assume everything from a product perspective, pushing out something that adds to the brand without any true coherency or consideration of future titles.
I for one see it as wrong to attempt to take someone’s work and not only pass it off as your own but also potentially break their ability to make future iterations of their work.
Perhaps a labor of love. From my initial parsing of reviews, looks like they didn’t attempt to change anything but kept close to the source material.
I feel like that’s okay. There are plenty of original and better ideas out there. It doesn’t prevent things from being made. P-06 being “still terrible but better” doesn’t really say anything. The fact that games like Black Mesa, Sonic Media, Skywind, and very specifically Zera: Myths Awaken also exists, a game that started as Spyro 4 and Activision sent a C&D, so they rebranded. These things are easily fixed and honestly, it’s great if fans want to attempt to build a game off of someone’s IP then ask the IP holder if they can continue with it. If not, they can just rebrand and create their own universe. Temtem is a great example of what happens when people are forced to create their own thing. It becomes more impactful and allows for a more interesting product. Not just a cookie cutter game.
I get what you’re saying. The problem is that you can’t argue your case just by giving examples of how IP enforcement can lead to people innovating more in the way that I can. The debate is asymmetrical because all I have to do is show that IP violation doesn’t uniquely negatively affect IP holders in ways that legal activities can’t, demonstrating precedent for that kind of competition/harm being legal. You need to justify forcibly imposing limitations on what people are allowed to do, which has a higher “burden of proof” if you get what I’m saying.