Sporty! Long time, no see! So let's get down to business.


Nonsie doesn't have a bug in his shorts because people "have the balls" to make a fan game. It's because they DON'T have the balls to make their own. Nonsie's argument is that they're standing on the backs of greater people who came before them, using their predecessors' work and fame to promote their own work where it's really not due. That they're nothing more than coattail-riders.

And to an extent, he's right. See my previous post. They're using the fame of the source material to try to be seen, whether by the source material's fanbase or by potential employers. Regardless of anything else, they are relying on the fame of another person's work to draw attention to their own. It would be like, say, doing an exact reproduction of the Mona Lisa in a larger picture, because everyone would love to see the Mona Lisa and they'll be looking at the rest of your work, too.

The thing is that USING the Mona Lisa just says you had a picture of the Mona Lisa and copied it. All the color and composition of the piece is already done for you, so you, yourself, don't have to figure out how to make the eyes appear to follow you. Just because it's included in your picture doesn't make the rest of your picture special. You could maybe have a person looking at it, but that person is likely to be very mundane and not really be the actual draw of the picture.

To really impress someone, you'd be better off painting your own picture to start with. It's braver, because you don't have an automatic draw, but it also lets your style and talent come through better, if you actually have any to show.

Basically, working without a net always reflects better on you. This applies to anything. It shows you don't have to rely on the work of others to prop you up and your work can then be judged on its own merits and quite possibly become the next standard to aspire to.

Well damn. What does a guy have to do to be entertained until the next CT?
 

Here's my entire issue in a nutshell. It's as if we have to ask Square for permission to enjoy a game in a different way. Sure, CE is a derivative work, done for free, at the person's expense of time and resources. Sure, Square is a bunch of soulless entities, sitting on the top of the mountain snubbing their noses at us small peasants who even think of having an idea that's close to their work. Sure, I can site the DMCA's lack of give in this regard, copyright law giving Square too much power, as well as the belief that Square isn't doing anything with the property but milking it unfairly.

That's not the issue here. When can others have a say in what they like about a game? When can these fan boys, those rabid lovers of a game for complexity of story or gameplay, reveal their love to this company that isn't giving them an updated story, merely rehashes with little improvements?

Yep, they could. No doubt. Using a hack gives them a start. It already has an engine, story, characters, all which can be reinterpreted in a new way. Sure worked well for starmen.net and even getting me to play mother 3. Works well for Valve and having people forget that they flubbed Half Life when the community can do better. Should they look into making a game? Yes. Maybe they can do it commercially. Or maybe the rules could change so derivative works didn't have to be destroyed because it's based off of other works.

If anything, I'd think it actually enriches a mythos surrounding a game, rather than taking away from it.

Whoa, calm down there. Firstly, these guys probably aren't all THAT great. Maybe they just wanted to reinterpret the story and have fun with it. Maybe they had some ideas that might not work with what Squeenix has cooking. If anything, I would have liked to see this game at 100% than someone arbitrarily kill it for a reason such as "HAAACKS". It drives a community apart. Why do I use Valve so much as an example?

Equalizer - Great weapon for soldier in TF2, created by someone outside of working for Valve.

Black Mesa - Not a Valve game, which people are looking forward to. Done out of love by the fans who liked the first game and thought they could do better than the port Valve came out with.

Let's not even start on Counter Strike's success based on modding Half Life back in the day.

Does Squeenix have their cake? Yep. Not gonna lie. Should they share the damn thing with their fans so they can enjoy it instead of their lawyers?

Sounds like a win-win if they did.

Jagos:
I have to say that in a perfect world, every company would work like Valve and Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft ALSO has the good habit of taking on people who do good work with their systems. Sadly, this is not a perfect world.

See, I really feel for the people who have a story to tell. I have LOTS of stories to tell, and not all of them are my own originals. On the other hand, copyright law is a horrible monster at this point, and if you don't defend yours, you can lose it.

The fact of the matter is you DO have to ask Square to enjoy a game in a "different way." And I highly doubt anyone ever asked. If nothing else, you can pitch an idea, or find some way to show a company your collective interest in a new installment to a series. The worst they can say is no. It's a lot better than having things resort to "no, and delete all your hard work, blood, sweat, tears, and time."

Corporations are out to make money. Pure and simple. Some go about it different ways, but it's a universal truth of a corporation. They'd LOVE to make a product people will buy. By that logic, when someone else does it for them and starts handing it out, even for free, it could be seen as a threat.



I know I've argued a lot of angles in this thread, but there are a lot of good reasons these things happen. Ideally, there would be some way to get everyone a game they like, but nobody is working on the same page, here. There probably aren't very open lines of communication to big companies for this kind of thing, but that doesn't mean it's okay to assume the thing is in a bubble and do whatever you want, either. They DO notice stuff in the outside world. And it would be great if these kinds of projects could happen with some form of consent from corporations, but then you have all sorts of legal shit to deal with, and Square isn't even an American company, so God only knows how complicated that could get.

There are problems with the systems in place that need fixing if everyone is going to be happy. You'd need better lines of communication, better laws, etc. Those aren't in place at the moment, so it's harder for fans to be heard than it could be, harder to please the fans than it could be, and a lot of bad blood on both sides when shit hits the fan.




Actually, the people doing this particular project knew it could happen and were very polite about things. One of them even made an account here at the time to explain the situation and how everyone felt. The letter from Square was also very reasonable and polite, not at all threatening to read. It was all very much a "please stop - okay" sort of deal and the fans were really the ones who exploded. I just thought I'd mention that. For all the shit being flung at both sides, it's not like the corporations are evil and going to shoot your mom and eat a baby, and neither are the people doing these projects for the most part. There's just a bad public reaction from the outside when people all start in with the "but I could have had that!" mentality.

basic point is, if you didn't create something and nobody who did asked you to continue work on it, do something original.

Fan Fiction for profit (or notoriety) is a cop out because the fan base is built in. You didn't define your own audience, you didn't create your own story, you just picked up where someone else left off. You can call it an homage or a tribute or whatever, but if they tell you they don't want a tribute you stop.

Which it seems the dudes who worked on this project did, so I don't really understand the angst.

They're (Squeenix) still making games for tweens, the target audience today doesn't know what the fuck a Chrono Trigger is and doesn't care. More specifcally they're making games for japanese tweens, which I mean... who knows what they like. (apparently an awful lot of androgyny.)

You know, I've yet to explicitly state my full opinion on fan-made games in here (though it should be fairly self-explanitory at this point.

I am completely for them.

Yeah, sure, a good portion of them are lackluster or crappy, but, as I stated in an earlier post, so is most of everything. You just gotta be willing to dig to find those gems sometimes. And gems, there are.

I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game is an excellent example of a fan game. It is a marvelous love letter to the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, and the the concept of 'Nintendo Hard'. Very well put together with a great sense of humor, if being a tad on the... sadistic side.

For a more traditional Romhack would be Mario Adventure. It's a brilliant Super Mario Bros. 3 hack that not only changes the levels, but significantly changes the game engine. It adds new power ups, changing weather, a modified level select system with the ability to revisit finished lkevels (which you may need to do to find the key), a shop system, even the power-up switching system from Super Mario World is there.

The other side of Romhacks, the full conversion, you have Dragoon X Omega II. This is an utterly fantastic total conversion of the original Final Fantasy with a nice story and challenging gameplay (since you are always a party of just one person). Completely custom graphics, and music too, I believe. It is just built on the Final Fantasy engine.

Hell, even the Moother 3 translation was a ROMhack, as extensive modification of the game code was needed to get the script to work without cataclysmically crashing the game.

Super Metroid: Redesign is fantastic if you want to push your limits and have mastered the original.

La Mulana is a love letter to the MSX.

The list can go on.

Really, some of the reinterpretations som of these creators put into recrafting a game is fantastic, and being able to play these well crafted levels in a setting I know and love is just wonderful.

I'm just willing to sort through the quagmire, as I am with a lot of things.

Don't we do this like once every couple of months?

I see all the same people are making all the same arguments as last time, and the time before.

Glad to know we've all still firmly got our lips planted on the ass of Corporate America and their attempts to destroy all semblance of fairness in copyright since Disney died.

I'd hate to see something change.

Well, it's great to see a ton of people still have their asses on the other side of the fence and don't give a shit about property rights or the entire point of why copyright law was created, i.e. to protect artists from people slavering to cash in on their work. God help us, the little guy's work is actually PROTECTED from giant-ass corporations who'd steal his shit and re-sell it in a heartbeat.

See? Goes both ways.




Now I'm done being nasty and would just like to state that the system is, in fact, horribly broken and in need of reform, but at least it's broken for everyone. If these same people would go and do an original game and have it under copyright, if Square would try to use their stuff, THEY would be in the wrong, and the paperwork would be there to prove it. Maybe Square could be total asshats and use their superior firepower to drag it out, but I really don't think it would be easy to argue the case, and I doubt Square, as a professional company, would do that kind of thing to start with.

That was apparently the whole of my argument.
 

Not really.

Don't make me go and repost all the posts I already made in response to you, Blues.

You didn't walk away smelling like roses the LAST two times you made this argument, why would you expect things to change this time?

I'm just sore, tired, and feel like shit. I don't want to go into it again, so I'm taking the lazy way out.

Edit: You too, Nonsie.

Edit 2: Your argument is even less cohesive than Blues, and relies entirely on us hating fan work because it obviously sucks or something stupid like that, even though the last time you were arguing in defense of shit like Star Fox Adventures and this time you're arguing in defense of shit like Chrono Cross and the CT DS Remake. You might have a point if you were arguing for companies producing GOOD GAMES with their material, but I could shit on a plate, and write Chrono Trigger on the pile of feces and still have produced a better game with the material than Square has done in 15 years.

If I were worried about coming out smelling like a rose, I wouldn't have joined this conversation. Nobody does in these things. Yes, there is abuse of the system, but the drum section you so love to point out happened during a phase of change. It's just like composers didn't used to have their own names on the music they wrote. Just because somebody pulls a fast one and does something nobody has ever done before does not mean the laws do not apply to everyone. Want to fight it? Go copyright yourself some seeds. That's the biggest abuse of the system at the moment and I'm sure the farmers would find some way to repay you for anything you can do against the big businesses there.

As I said, copyright law is broken as shit, but at least its relatively STABLE and broken as shit at the moment, and it could definitely be worse. We can argue about copyright law until we're all blue in the face, but that doesn't change what it actually does, which is to protect the rights of the creators, regardless of who they are, and a bit too well for the comfort of most, myself included.



Edit: You know what, why the hell hasn't this been locked yet? Let's all give it ten minutes for everyone to get in their last words, then I'm finding the nearest online mod. Ten minutes plus however long it takes to lock should be sufficient for closing arguments.