Itagaki Criticizes Dead Or Alive Hackers

Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with Tecmo's Tomonobu Itagaki, creator of the Dead Or Alive series and the forthcoming Ninja Gaiden for Xbox. Itagaki is asked about the more creative, non-nude unofficial character model hacking currently being done for Dead Or Alive, and says "First of all I think that those hackers should spend their time on something more productive. I'm not talking about a rights issue or an OS issue or whatever, but if they have time to hack into something that other people have made, why don't they make something of their own?" When it's suggested that many games want to be modded by their fans, he adds: "Of course the creators of DOOM and Half-Life - that was their intention. That's how they want the users to enjoy playing their game, and I have no problem with that."

Comments

lol - stop whining, whiny

[DrSkwid]

Itagaki: Of course the creators of DOOM and Half-Life -- that was their intention. That's how they want the users to enjoy playing their game, and I have no problem with that.

If I recall correctly DOOM wasn't made with mods in mind. Stuff like "make the mobs into pac-man" were hacks similar to the DOA-Volleyball stuff. Some time and effort went into .WAD hacking and soon iD cottoned on and went with it.

The guy is really out of touch with gamers. We were peeking and poking and hexediting games back in the 8bit days and no doubt even Spacewars had some people fiddling with the binary to make themselves invulnerable or something.

I love the nude hacks for DOA, more stupidity added on to a stupid game.

Re:lol - stop whining, whiny

[bigbigbison]

Doom was made with mods in mind. In the first press release they hyped modability as one of the features. Wolfenstien, however, was not made with mods in mind.

Re:Then don't release for a system that allows for

[Mike Mentalist]

If he really didn't want people changing it, he probably shouldn't have released it for a system that didn't have a hard drive, or made sure your game didn't use that hard drive in a way that allowed people to replace your crap.

Typical ignorant reply. If someone develops a game, and does not want it to be modded then what is wrong with that? The Xbox itself wasn't made for the purpose of modding, so your comment is stupid.

If someone does not want their IP being fiddled around with, then that is fair enough. To say that it is their own fault for putting it on system X is ridiculous.

Indeed.

[JMZero]

So this guy, who makes his living selling games, is telling us that having fun is not a good enough reason for doing something. Everything you do should be a grand, creative, non-derivative work (unless you're deriving from a work that was meant to be derived from - which is transcendentally different).

We should all have better things to do, apparently, than mod or play one of his games.

I feel a smell of hypocrisia in the air...

[imperator_mundi]

"Of course the creators of DOOM and Half-Life - that was their intention."

Of course the intention of Tecmo was all but exploiting the nudity of pornstar lookalike videogame characters.

If I had a teen daugther (or even in her thirties, I suppose) I would never let her go out dressed like a DOA girl...

Not in my backyard

[Torgo's Pizza]

Developers need to realize that gamers are going to mod their games if they can. Frankly this guy should be honored that they are doing this with his game. Having an attitude of "Yeah, they can do it as long as they don't do it with *my* game" alienates himself from his fanbase.

Would Half-Life be nearly as popular without Counterstrike? My friend Zoid started CTF in Quake. You can't shake a stick at a FPS game without seeing some version of it already included as a standard feature. There have been plenty of hacks and mods added to videogames that all have either extended the life of the game, enhanced the gameplay or added more entertainment to playing. (Note: I'm not including wallhacks, cheats or aimbots here.) Some mods take a life of their own and even extend over to other games.

As long as the hackers don't violate any intellectual property, copyright laws or try to sell their mods for profit, developers shouldn't complain. Many times these mods are better than what developers can put out. To suggest that these people go out and make their own game... what? And make more competition for your game in the marketplace. Be happy that these mods are being done to your game and thereby increasing that fat bonus check.

Re:Then don't release for a system that allows for

[danila]

If someone does not want their IP being fiddled around with, he can (I don't know how to put it politely) stick this IP up his ass. :) When he released it to the public, ideologically (not legally) it becomes some sort of public domain and people can be expected to build on that. Yes, there is copyright, which is (ideologically) a short-term monopoly on commercial exploitation (a non-perfect solution to the real problem of large-scale commercial piracy), but it doesn't give the author (ideologically, again) other forms of control over his ideas and creations.

It's the teasing

[gamgee5273]

I think what everyon is missing is that DOAXBV has been designed as a tease, sort of like a burlesque show.

Now, don't get me wrong - if someone wants to edit Tina so she's just wearing boots and a hat, then feel free. Whatever floats your boat, homey.

But I think the point of the game is to play with the imagination, but not to go all the way. When you look at Japanese pop culture recently, especially the emphasis on the schoolgirls, there is an incessant teasing going on. That teasing may not necessarily be a good thing in Japan, since there have been increased incidents with real Japanese schoolgirls having problems with peeping toms and with incidents on subways, etc. (I've yet to hear of any rapes, though).

It's like a calm river with a severely violent undertow. However, I think that Itagaki would prefer that people mod the game than go after young girls. Just an opinion.

Everything derives value from something else.

[jbn-o]

Spoken like a person that has not spent years of his life devloping an IP.

Spoken like someone who thinks that their ideas are original, like they didn't get ideas from anyone else. There are plenty of people who spend a lot of time developing something but a lot of them recognize that their work is just like everyone else's--their work is fodder for the next incremental advance in expression. There's nothing new under the sun, as Shakespeare said; no idea comes from nothing and you have no legitimate sole claim to the expressions of your ideas. You benefit from a leaky copyright system--fair use helps preserve freedom of speech. Copyright power is supposed to be limited.

Second, you cannot understand how ideas work by thinking in terms of "IP" (intellectual property). That phrase is prejudicial and a mish-mash of laws that can sometimes conflict with one another. What we're talking about in this thread primarily concerns copyright policy and the anti-social idea that copyright is property (which even the law doesn't completely agree with), so call it by its name.

Ironically, Itagaki's concern would seem out of place in other areas of life, maybe even an outright affront to people's right of expression--nobody would balk at you modifying a recipe to suit your needs (even a recipe from a copyrighted recipe book published commercially), adding a room on to your house, or changing the brake pads on your car without going to the manufacturer's garage. Nor would they balk at helping other people do any of these things by distributing information or kits on how to do it. But modify a videogame? Maybe we should take the lessons from the dojinshi market more seriously. According to the Dojinshi article, artists (who I'm sure "have a financial and emotional investment" in their work) all effectively share with each other and cultivate a comic book market that consumers apparently enjoy.