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Copyright and the Games Industry
A recent post at the Press Start To Drink blog examined the relationship the games industry has with copyright laws. More so than in some other creative industries, the reactions of game companies to derivative works are widely varied and often unpredictable, ranging anywhere from active support to situations like the Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes debacle. Quoting:
"... even within the gaming industry, there is a tension between IP holders and fan producers/poachers. Some companies, such as Epic and Square Enix, remain incredibly protective of their Intellectual Property, threatening those that use their creations, even for non-profit, cultural reasons, with legal suits. Other companies, like Valve, seem to, if not embrace, at least tolerate, and perhaps even tacitly encourage this kind of fan engagement with their work. Lessig suggests, 'The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer.' Indeed, the more developers and publishers that take up Valve's position, the more creativity and innovation will emerge out of video game fan communities, already known for their intense fandom and desire to add to, alter, and re-imagine their favorite gaming universes."
The author really should have done more research for this article. Epic games is, typically, not one of the overly protective companies desperately trying to nail down every fan with an idea in the name of Intellectual Property enforcement. The event cited (C&D over a gift doll) was actually done in error and was not sent by Epic themselves but rather their trigger-happy crack legal team. Mark Rein (PR dude) later explained the incident as an accident and publicly apologized for it.
Typically, Epic has been more in stride with Valve in that they actively encourage people to mess with their games in not-for profit ways. They have also released free SDK's and source code for their engines. They've held contests (with cash prizes, noless) in order to cultivate talent and often recruit employees from the community. They've even taken a mod to retail status (Tactical Ops) just like Valve did with Counter Strike. They've also helped to pioneer the feature of community made mods and maps being offered on consoles.
On the whole, Epic is one of the least "evil" gaming companies on the planet right now. And while they're not immune to making mistakes, I personally don't believe they deserve to be unfairly placed on the wrong side of this particular fence.
I was reading about a series of Japanese games called the Touhou project a few weeks back. What was interesting is that while the single author of the franchise enforces his copyright to the games themselves, he doesn't on the characters and settings that games revolves around.
This has allowed many groups to create works (primary comics, but also remixed music and other things) based off his work. He doesn't mind people even selling these things. All they're required to do, is to make sure that they state they're not an original work.
This has made him and his franchise surprising successful, but it seems he is now worried that it'll grow beyond his control. After a project announced that they would produce an short animated film with some well known voice actors, he ranted in his blog that about it. Some people would argue that Touhou is currently better known for the community's work rather then the creator's original work, and unless he starts really enforcing his copyright, this may not change. On the other hand, if he did that, it would also kill off most his community.
Stuck behind a rock and a hard place.
A mod, modificacion of a game, often have to distribute files of the original game modified. On some games this is allowed, so is not gray area, is white area, but on others theres not text that allow you to do that.
Is sad, but mods that use a popular IP are... popular. Not all mods are based on movies, books, etc.. but there are big group of then. These mods are almost all gray area, very few have the authorization of the owner of the ip.
Modding use to be something that add value to a game and the studio that created that game. People are more inclined to buy a game where there are a strong mod community and cool mods.
But Microsoft changed this with the concept of DLC's. Now companies salivate with the idea to create these mods thenselves,... small amateurist modificatios that can be created in a hour of work, and sell for $10 or $4. As a result, modding is something that remove value from a game. DLC's is modding done by the original authors. It was created on the consoles, because consoles can't have modding, but now is leaking and poisoning the PC world. Games like Total War have started to encript the datafiles, to stop modding from flourish.
Modders thenselves have changed. The original profile for a modder where Hackers, in the old sense of creative people that like to hack fun stuff. Thats what created these hacked wolfesten.exe's. Nowdays the modder scene is a hybrid of indie and amateur developpers. Amateur people that have a voice, and claim for quality in the SDK. Mods tend to be total conversions (everywhere but a few games, like the TES serie), made by people that invest time and maybe money, and some expect that to help then take a position in the game industry and get experience in game developping.
So modding is more or less dyiing. And the companys will change his opinion and modders, and there will be some badwill.. and probably we will return again to the hackers, times, where to change the weapon speed on a MW2 server, you first need to hack the exe. So we hare returning to these wolfestein.exe times.
-Woof woof woof!
Obviously, nobody wants to spend thousands of hours creating something then letting someone else (a corporation) sell it without royalties. Or letting people download it for free off the internet.
Linux.
Firefox.
MySQL.
Apache.
Gnome.
KDE.
And if you're going to redefine your original statement so that GPL counts as payment, I give you:
Chromium (browser and OS)
Open BSD
Free BSD
Hey Pirates, you think you aren't stealing?
Do we HAVE to go over this again?
The best example of using Valve's assets in a community creation would be Gang Garrison. Gang Garrison is a sprite version of Team Fortress 2 made in a parody style. Instead of the pyro you have the firebug. Instead of the heavy you have the overweight. Instead of eating a sandvich (spelled with a "v", I swear) you eat a manwich.
Although the gameplay is interesting by itself, the faithful 8-bit midi renditions of all the Team Fortress music is pretty much worth downloading the free game. Its not the best game I've ever played, but I'd be sad if it never existed because Valve screamed foul over IP rights.