Crimson Echoes

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Jagos

Also, what they were doing was far more complicated than merely using the established characters in words (which is what I'm assuming by your use of "fanfiction"). They made the quests, they made Crono talk, they even listened to feedback and made improvements on trying to keep some of the humor and lighthearted tone of the game they're emulating.

Oh they put quests in a RPG and listened to the fans. Obviously the writing couldn't be terrible now. Obviously. In fact, I'm pretty sure this was going to be the best game of all time because they really cared about the source material so hard.

EDIT: And if they think that Squeenix is going to hire them because they hacked a billion year old SNES rom they are fucking kidding themselves.

[Nikose Tyris]

Originally Posted by Mirai Gen

I'm going to chalk this up to Bluespeak and just let this go.

Funny enough, I can't.

Originally Posted by Bluespeak

Frankly, as a game designer, myself, I can give the honest personal opinion that people who make fan games are misguided at best and at worst are entitled, opportunistic, lazy, and/or just plain sticky-fingered (in the sense they're thieves, not wankers).

You're not actually a game designer. You know next to nothing about how designing games actually works, and the legitimate designers of games are usually overworked code junkies on teams of 14-25 that have to deal with supervisors that see half-thought ideas online and demand to have them put into a game. People who make fan-games are idealists. People who make Fan-anything usually have a story to tell, and despite being fanfiction, can occasionally be good. [See: Nukleapower.com] I'm going to pretend that your post up there about "Fan games" didn't include Fanfiction of all types, such as the work of Brian Clevinger.

Originally Posted by Bluespeak

There's a real stigma against things like decompiling code in the programming industry because it's simply not your work, and I feel the same way about using someone else's other resources, such as graphics, sound, or setting. It's plagiarism, is what it is, only instead of stealing their words, you're stealing their art.

If by "Stigma" you mean "Standard practice that pretty much everyone does" then you need to look up what Stigma means. Companies recycle code like motherfuckers. Spore, for example? Recycled Harry Potter. I'm not joking at all. It is the exact same engine.



So, if we take it from the angle you brought it in, The Spore Team stole from the Harry Potter team, since they were different devs inside the same company, but didn't write unique code.

[Jagos]

Oh they put quests in a RPG and listened to the fans. Obviously the writing couldn't be terrible now. Obviously. In fact, I'm pretty sure this was going to be the best game of all time because they really cared about the source material so hard.

EDIT: And if they think that Squeenix is going to hire them because they hacked a billion year old SNES rom they are fucking kidding themselves.

Sarcasm aside, what I'm saying is more to do with the fact that they're putting more work into it than most other outright hacks which do nothing but reinterpret the CT story by adding a Lucca and Crono love story and call it a day.

It's a game that they were doing in their free time. Fairly similar to me using 4th edition rules and the Greyhawk campaign to come up with a character. It has a basis in one world but it's their interpretation. If their story is fairly good, great. If it isn't, no sweat it's not a game to interfere with Square's main business. A few people like the game, maybe Square could use it and make their own.

As I see it, Square isn't doing squat diddly but sitting on a franchise that they have little if any intention of using to its full advantage. Great if it's their IP, but if they're not going to use it in a commercial game, why should they care what their fans do?

[bluestarultor]

Mirai, there's a wee problem with a "tribute" when it comes to games. You can make a tribute to a movie with an AMV, or a tribute to a book by recording a few scenes with some friends acting, but you don't remake the movie or rewrite the book.

The problem here is the media. They were specifically using a media, in fact the SAME media, to create a story. Nobody cares if it was canon. They were using Square's resources. They were creating a product using items that were not theirs to use in the same format as the originals and had a pretty darn high profile. That would be the difference between writing Twilight fanfiction and writing Twilight fanfiction, getting it published, and then distributing copies of it for free in a paperback. The fact of the matter is that so long as it stays on some blog somewhere, nobody cares, because it's not in the same format. It doesn't matter if you give it away for free or not.




If they had chosen to write it as a story, or make a small movie, or do ANYTHING but make it a game, it would have been a non-issue. They didn't, and they knew the risks. I'd personally put that team under the misguided category of my previous statement. They wanted to bridge the gap in the most honest way possible. On the other hand, they realized what might happen and accepted it, which was the most honorable thing they could have done. I really do look up to their honesty and wish them well in future projects. Hopefully, the work they put into that project reflects what they'd be capable of doing an original one, because from what I saw, it was a good product.








Edit: Nik: No, "stigma" is an appropriate word. There's a real disdain for people who decompile code from other programs to use in their own. An engine can be legitimately purchased, and I have NO idea what I said to indicate that programmers didn't recycle code as much as humanly possible. On the other hand, they recycle code they have the legal rights to, or else they'd get sued.

And no, maybe I'm not a "real" game designer, but I'm in the process of designing my own games and can say, personally, that if someone went about mucking around with the resources I've spent the past three years creating, I'd be a wee bit pissed, ESPECIALLY if they used it to create another game. Maybe it's because I'm a small time schmuck, but those resources are mine; I made them. It would be a real kick in the balls if someone just up and stole all my tiles to make another game from. Every last one of them was hand done by me for my own purposes. If I wanted other people to use them, I'd have posted them as a sprite sheet somewhere and been done with it by now.




Edit: And to be specific, no, I have absolutely nothing against fanfiction so long as it's not in the same format. 8-Bit is by no means a video game, so there's no problem with Brian doing it. Conversely, I think Brian would be pretty flattered if someone whipped up a decent Atomic Robo game, as it wouldn't be competing with his market. On the other hand, if someone started up a competing site called 16-Bit Theater and started copying his 8BT comics with 16-bit sprites, I think he'd be rightfully pissed.

[Nikose Tyris]

@Jagos:

Oh, I somewhat agree with you. I'm not seeing it worthwhile to get my panties in a bunch, but fangames? I'm all for them. I play the pokemon hacks myself and have a great time. There was one that replaced pokemon with Pokegirls and each girl had a description. It was terribly sexist and sexualized, but besides being perverted, was amazingly well done. Every pokedex entry was changed. It was built on FireRed, if I remember correctly.

On the other hand, If someone creates a game, it's their creation. They have the right to limit recreations and fan-made projects to their hearts content. the Pokemon Team doesn't seem to care to stop hacks being made; the Chrono Team does. While it might suck to see good ideas wasted, it's just how it is. Would it be prefferable for all things to belong to a central idea government where any idea you have can have a sequel made by anyone else?

I understand it's hard to see my viewpoint here, and I'm not doing great explaining it, but picture this:

I invent a game in 1995. I call it "Canada: The Mystery of the haunted mansion." It's a PS1 Game, and on the playstation store. Fans want to play the game on the 360, so they make a reskinned port for the 360 arcade. I haven't done anything with it except re-release it on the PS3 store, and the fans have made it a free download on the 360 Arcade.

Would I be cool with this? Maybe I would be! Maybe I just didn't have any 360 programmers, or couldn't graphic design for 360. More likely, I'd be pissed because while people on the PS3 were downloading my game for $2.99 cause it's cheap and fun to play, I'm losing money on a 360 port.


It's -NOT- the exact same scenario, but I feel it's similar enough of an analogy. "Why would I buy the Chrono Remake when I can download the Crimson Echoes Fan Sequel for free?"

[Kim]

Jagos, if you'd pay attention you'd see that the main cause of my annoyance is that they are trying to benefit from a fan work, that even if it wasn't terrible they could easily make something better if they weren't focused on it being a fan work, and that for some bizarre reason whenever it comes to fan games everyone seems to go all a flutter with how awesome it's going to be when no, it probably isn't.

If people applied the same scrutiny that they do to normal video games to these fan works, I probably wouldn't care.

If I actually believed the makers were doing it just for fun instead of acting under some delusion that it would make them popular or that Squeenix would hire them, I probably wouldn't care.

If any of these people had previous original works under their belt that said "Yes, I can actually write something without ripping off somebody else," I probably wouldn't care.

Instead it's just a big annoyance, and every time that someone says, "Hey, check out this Youtube video of this awesome fan game that is gonna be so fucking cool!" it wears on my nerves just a tad bit more.

[CelesJessa]

Man, and all of these artists who draw all of this fanart. All haaaacks.

I guess I just have the completely opposite opinion of some people. I think fanmade stuff is awesome. Opposed to NPF's popular opinion, not all fanfiction is shit. There is a good portion of shit, but I have read a lot of well done fanfictions as well . And well done fan art, etc (P.S. a good portion of original work is shit too).

What I'm more interested in is that they're actually creating instead of just ingesting what other people give them all the time. Fandom, original, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Some of the most fantastic artists/writers who have made amazing original stories make amazing fan-stories as well. And hey, not everyone wants to grow up and publish their own original best-seller book/game/etc. Some people like to just imagine and create within an inspiring world they've found.

Or maybe, as someone who has done all of this horrible fan..... dom creating stuff (that's right, I've written fanfiction, with Mary Sues to boot, AND I've helped with fangames(that never finished but HEY) and I'm totally okay with it because I was just *gasp* having fun with something recreational that I enjoy.) I read other people who want to make fan works more positively.

[Kim]

The vast majority of fan art is terrible. There is some really good fan art, but most is terrible. There are really good fanfics (probably) but most of it is terrible. However, I'm generally nicer to those and don't go out of my way to diss on them because that stuff doesn't really have a hype period. You are experiencing it now.

Fan games, apart from being much easier to fuck up, always have to release a lot of hype building stuff, like the Youtube video of the "totally awesome fan game" I mentioned before. When you see art or a story, you are able to judge it then and there, and it is more readily apparent whether it is good or bad. Fan games you can't always tell based on a Youtube vid, and yet people get pulled into the hype of how wonderfully splendiforous it's going to be simply because it's based on something they liked. They have no way of knowing if it'll be any good, like they would with fan art or a fanfic someone posted online, but without any reason other than the source material they jump to the conclusion that it will be. This is why I said I would care less if people were more critical of fan games prior to release or if the people making them had released something original beforehand for me to judge.

Also also, with fan art or a fan story you're using less of someone else's work than you are with a romhack.

[Mike McC]

Originally Posted by NonCon

The vast majority of fan art is terrible. There is some really good fan art, but most is terrible. There are really good fanfics (probably) but most of it is terrible.

This can be applied to pretty much everything.

In fact, let's do that right now. Establish a good baseline.

Eh-hem.

99% of everything is shitty!

There we go, you may now continue.

Originally Posted by NonCon

Fan games, apart from being much easier to fuck up, always have to release a lot of hype building stuff, like the Youtube video of the "totally awesome fan game" I mentioned before. When you see art or a story, you are able to judge it then and there, and it is more readily apparent whether it is good or bad. Fan games you can't always tell based on a Youtube vid, and yet people get pulled into the hype of how wonderfully splendiforous it's going to be simply because it's based on something they liked. They have no way of knowing if it'll be any good, like they would with fan art or a fanfic someone posted online, but without any reason other than the source material they jump to the conclusion that it will be. This is why I said I would care less if people were more critical of fan games prior to release or if the people making them had released something original beforehand for me to judge.

You know, I could literally say the almost exact same thing about, for example, Bayonetta, and still be entirely accurate. Just replace 'YouTube' with 'trailer' and 'based on something' with 'made by a creator'.

[CelesJessa]

Fair enough, I just never got why... hate it I guess. I mean, so what people are getting into the hype. If it's good it will be good, if it's bad it will be bad and burn in the hype it generated.

But hey! I was just showing some love for the fandom community. If you want to hate it, then, by all means, be my guest. I really don't mind.