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NAMCO Takes Down Student Pac-man Project
An anonymous reader writes "The core of how people first learn to do stuff — programming, music, writing, etc. — is to imitate others. It's one of the best ways to learn. Apparently a bunch of students using MIT's educational Scratch programming language understand this. But not everyone else does. NAMCO Bandai sent a takedown notice to MIT because some kids had recreated Pac-man with Scratch. The NAMCO letter is pretty condescending as well, noting that it understands the educational purpose of Scratch, but 'part of their education should include concern for the intellectual property of others.'"
first post
If the programmers in question had infringed on Linux copyrights and licensing, would /. be as quick to take their side?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Learn by duplicating? Doesn't sound right to me.
My first game is being pretty much a massive thing, not a Mario/Tetris/Whatever clone. You don't have too much ambition if you just copy something else.
You got the hardest part done for you, in terms of design, mechanics and whatnot (contrary to popular belief, the actual coding is just the icing on the cake as I see it, specially nowadays where 3000+ libraries help with that). Plus, doing "your game" instead of "someone else's game coded by you" will make you a better programmer as I am experiencing myself. "The first game being a replica" is pretty much lost effort.
Learn by making something new. Plus no one will have motives to sue you that way. Everyone will benefit from that.
Anyway, the whole aspect of designing a game is fun by itself, making an engaging story, matching music and sound effects to obtain the desired results or convey actual emotions, making use of ambiance...you don't experience all that by cloning some NES/Arcade/Classic title.
Amusingly this is the motive most "Linux games suck" (quoting the general opinion). They are just mere clones except for a few of them. No wonder they "suck" if they don't venture into offering something new. "Copyright-friendly Mario" is just good for a play or two but it's unlikely to leave any impression at all (unless it's buggy). I am also seeing similar trends with the iPhone's app store, where a HUGE number of games are "copyright friendly" clones of existing games.
The tools and libraries (going into "coding a game whole" as opposed to "using game maker/rpg maker/pre-existing-engine-of-choice" that is even easier) that exist nowadays allow one single person to do the whole weight of a game with minimal effort, even without too much of an artistic talent. One can be coder and director with ease.
Oh GODS! Namco can loose their copyright if they don't C&D right now!!! Oh wait that is just for trademarks, you know like making a "zerox" instead of "copy machine copy" or whatever you call it. And just for the sake of argument lets assume you are not a complete moron, and are right about having to defend your copy rights or loose them. Namco could of chosen not to be complete douche-nozzles and given the students limited permission to use the copyrighted material. So what really APPEARS to have happened here is you got your Rand all mixed up in your fanboyism. Sorry I cant help you with that. That's how to troll, noob.