Slashdot Mirror
How Videogames Help Fund the Arms Industry
FhnuZoag writes "Eurogamer has an expose of the shady world of games developers licensing guns. From the article: '"We must be paid a royalty fee — either a one-time payment or a percentage of sales, all negotiable. Typically, a licensee pays between 5 per cent to 10 per cent retail price for the agreement. [...] We want to know explicitly how the rifle is to be used, ensuring that we are shown in a positive light... Such as the 'good guys' using the rifle," says [Barett Rifles'] Vaughn.'"
Why would you bother calling it by its real world name?
Just call it something else and don't pay.
So there's a copyrighted look, a trademarked name, and a patented design. Players demand real brand-name stuff in their games, so developers deliver by licensing real brand-name stuff in their games. To do this legally means getting a license.
What's so shady about that?
More Twoson than Cupertino
Who didn't already know this?
I don't understand what is shady about licensing product names, or why someone playing a FPS would care.
love is just extroverted narcissism
How is this shady? Isn't this exactly how licensing usually works?
Screw that, I'd just change the name.
That's not an AK, that's a BK. There's also a 1/10 chance it fires a hamburger.
I'm guessing Borderlands doesn't have this issue.
That they're licensing a company's depictions of a legal product? Can you explain how this would be different than licensing cars, planes, soft drinks, sports teams, comic book characters or anything else that goes into a video game? What exactly is new about this story that isn't already well known?
This article is pure flamebait. Slashdot should be better than this, but I guess the website traffic must be trending down.
Guns are the only thing that will make us safe from people with guns, so we should feel good about funding the arms industry. Good law-abiding citizens should be spending 7-12% of their income on guns. Use the holidays, Valnetine's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, the first day of school, and Veterans Day as reminders to buy firearms. Have a little extra money and feel in a giving mood? There are plenty of needy families that could use more weapons.
Prepare for the epic derp-fest of anti-corporate leftist dweebs *shocked* that games would license rights from the evil arms companies.
All while DL COD/MW from mega...
Good for the gun makers, every little bit of profit helps them survive.
Gun runners? Are you implying that companies like Colt, FN, and Barrett are smuggling illicit firearms to drug cartels and African warlords? They sell almost exclusively to the US government...which is far worse.
How racing game developers support the shady world of automobile manufacturers. How EA supports the shady world of the NFL...
How many gamers gained interest in weapons by playing video games? (I did) Why isn't it the other way around, gun manufacturers paying the game developers a fee to promote their gun?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Not all firearms manufacturers are in the gun running business, certainly not any reputable branded firearms makers,
They also sell to private gun shops, which the federal government orders to purposely sell to Mexican drug runners and their straw purchasers.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yes. A relative of mine works for a company that wanted to do a racing sim and they eventually gave up because of the nightmare that was trying to get permission to use real cars like Porsche or Corvette.
I agree with the above posters that licensing the right to use a the title is a fair practice. What is not fair is the restrictions placed on how the item can be used in the game. You are licensing the right to use the name of a real world weapon, and end up signing away the rights of how a gun can be used and who could use them in a game. How is that a fair depiction of the real world? It's like paying to be an advertiser for the gun company..
So there's a copyrighted look, a trademarked name, and a patented design. Players demand real brand-name stuff in their games, so developers deliver by licensing real brand-name stuff in their games. To do this legally means getting a license.
What's so shady about that?
As the article stated, Gun manufactures are given full disclosure of how their weapons are demonstrated to the public, therefore allowing them some control in how the game is made. Meaning, developers are just middle men and not originators of the game. This is way deeper than some brand name look, this goes into conditioning. Gun manufactures have influence in game dialogue, character development and game design and marketing of it. Conditioning includes the idea good guy and bad guy which can skew the perception of those playing it 12hour on and off.
Of this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342272/
Guns are bad, and if you look at a gun, you're bad. Mmkay?
(one of those circumstances where you realize the Left can be just as irrational as the Right)
In other words, part of their deal with existing game makers is that they shut out new game makers.
So the government botched a sting operation called Fast and Furious and you're going to frame them as if it's standard operating procedure?
It's not. The people involved were trying to create a mountain of evidence such the the prosecutors could act on it, and they failed, utterly. I am not defending their competence, but their goal was to shutdown this loophole, not to widen it.
As for gun companies getting in on trademark licensing. This barely feels like news to me.
After reading the article it seems the gun manufacturers should pay the game companies for advertising if the developer shows the gun in a good light. Based on the article gun sales can be significantly higher when they are featured in a game.
...to influence the reputation of the weapon.
"Are you giving us the free licence to depict an AK-47 the way we want to or would you prefer a shitty AKA-47 in the game?"
The use of real items in a fictional context is a very gray area in Law. The idea that any manufactured item requires a license when it appears in a film, book or game is plainly a nonsense. Consider an urban scene in a movie. Within seconds, tens of thousands of manufactured items are visible, each with a product name and a company that produced them. Do you REALLY think the fact that these items are onscreen requires the produces to seek permission, or gain licenses?
Does this situation even change just because the character in the movies says "do you want a Coke?", or "I'm going to use the Hoover?" (and I'm not talking about product placement, which would be the OTHER reason to mention brand names).
Dirty, corrupt Hollywood lawyers have worked over the years to leverage an artificially created 'uncertainty', and now shill sites like this with the idea that anything 'real' used in a film or game must be paid for (with lawyers taking a VERY nice slice of the pie). The truth is the opposite, except under very rare circumstances.
In a game, where the gameplay involves the use of modern weapons, there is absolutely no reason why the people that produce the game need permission from the real life weapon manufacturers. If the weapon were shown in a bad light (say, by malfunctioning, or having sub-standard performance), the manufacturing MIGHT be able to take legal action, but even in this case success in the courts would be most uncertain.
The fantasy of mandatory license requirements was built by said Hollywood lawyers in a very crafty way. Most countries pervert their legal system to allow 'sponsorship' of sporting events. Corrupt politicians create obscene exceptions for the people that run major sports (the Olympics and F1 Motor racing are particularly egregious examples).
Now, many computer games from the second wave of consoles were 'sports' games, and pretty quickly these 'sports' games moved from the generic (play football, play basketball, etc) to the specific (play official FIFA football, play official NBA basketball, etc). Official sports are covered by exclusive licenses permitted by exceptions to the Law made possible by the actions of corrupt politicians.
However, it was with RACING games where all this came to a head. Official racing commonly involves certain models of car. But what if a computer game didn't pay for an official license, but still used the same model of car? The 'Hollywood' lawyers spotted an opportunity, and suggested to the car companies that their product could ONLY appear in a game if they gave permission (got paid). This represents a MASSIVE distortion of the law. Even if a game mentions the name of a car, there is no mechanism in law suggesting the game producers should have to pay to use the car in their game.
Manufactured goods are NOT works of art, or protected IP when it comes to their visual portrayal in media. The Law actually makes this point clear in most nations of the world. However, the biggest game companies pay large amounts of money to buy the rights to many events, so they tend to see the perversion of licensing as a weapon against would-be competitors.
Most game companies now feel obliged to produce generic versions of items representative of manufactured goods, and to name these items with fictional product names. If the REAL names and shapes are used, the game company feels obliged to form a relationship with the manufacturer (which may actually involve money, goods or services flowing toward the publishers- emulating sports sponsorship). The computer game "Battlefield 3" (a putrid sequel to a once class IP) actually chose to be a propaganda storefront for Obama's wars of aggression, and got into trouble because of its close link with weapons companies actively promoting violence across the planet in real life.
Computer games don't FUND the arms industry, but they do PROMOTE the military industrial complex of the West. The recent attack on a gas facility in a remote Saharan desert location within Algeria could have
Auto racing games pay licensing fees to auto manufacturers and aftermarket parts companies!!! Isn't that shady?!? Also, there's a rumor that EA Sports pays licensing fees to NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, etc... to use real teams names and logos in their games! Oooohh, so scandalous!!! ... The anti-second amendment bias is mind-boggling. I know that /. is consistantly slanted against certain things e.g. Microsoft, but do they have to be anti-human rights?
Gun companies doing this crap is to be expected, given the wild cash and prizes that have been thrown at professional sports and car manufacturers over the years. The thing where cars can't take damage is due to that too.
Gamepro commented on it (or I think it was EGM) back in the day where they interviewed RARE. In that interview they talked about the naming of the guns, etc. and RARE explicitly stated that it was because of licensing issues and how every game out there since mid-1990s required to pay licensing fees to use the real names of guns.
Eurogamer sucks at journalism.
I guess it's good to know and all, but if I am running around shooting people in an FPS, I'm apparently not very much against guns anyway. I mean, I know it isn't the same thing as real weapons, but you use weapons to kill people and they cause misery. If you aren't aware of that already, a video game isn't going to teach you about it. You're never going to get that same feeling of realism of the costs of weapons use from even the most "realistic" game.
And I didn't need a video game to convince me that terrorists are bad. I play video games to shoot terrorists because I disliked terrorists before I played video games. When it comes down to it, these games don't create mistaken impressions, they merely take real life situations and turn them into arcade games. If I was face to face with a terrorist, I'd be perfectly happy to shoot him if he represented a threat to me or mine.
I'm not seeing how this is shady. Or at least not any shadier than any other product placement. Fortunately, the actual article doesn't use that term.
But I also don't really see the connection with marketing cigarettes to kids. The worry about marketing cigarettes to kids is not that they will think "I can't wait to turn 18 so I can try that". The worry is that they will start smoking while still kids (i.e. the concern is that kids will start an addictive behavior at an age when we know decision-making is not so good). I'm not sure that same concern exists for marketing a .50-caliber sniper rifle.
Also, what exactly is a "shoulder-mounted" rifle?
Bushmaster's parent company, Cerberus Capital, has decided to divest itself of Bushmaster and the other arms companies under the Freedom Group umbrella. This was ostensibly done in response to the Newtown shooting, i.e. on account the illegal actions undertaken by a deranged boy, and not even one of their customers, with the use of one of their products. Certain segments of the public blame the company itself.
Imagine for a moment that the same company had knowingly allowed its products to be used in video games for nefarious purposes. Imagine the game was like Carmageddon from the nineties and you could get extra points for shooting hookers. Or, more likely, you could use the gun when acting as terrorists in some C-Strike like bombing scenario. And then that same gun with the same brand was used in real life to do harm to innocents. What would the repercussions be then? Some will say that the requirement the gun only be used by the 'good guys' is PR or propaganda, and they're partly right. But there's another side to this. A company who can be blamed for the misuse of its products has to try all the harder to defend itself and its image from association with that misuse.
This is deeper than license, it's conditioning. "I guess it's good to know and all, but if I am running around shooting people in an FPS, I'm apparently not very much against guns anyway. I mean, I know it isn't the same thing as real weapons, but you use weapons to kill people and they cause misery. If you aren't aware of that already, a video game isn't going to teach you about it. You're never going to get that same feeling of realism of the costs of weapons use from even the most "realistic" game. And I didn't need a video game to convince me that terrorists are bad. I play video games to shoot terrorists because I disliked terrorists ---Ask yourself, what is a terrorist, the one they condition you into believing with a face on it?--- before I played video games. When it comes down to it, these games don't create mistaken impressions, they merely take real life ---You just stated that the game isnt realistic because it doesnt give a view of the misery it causes.---- situations and turn them into arcade games. If I was face to face with a terrorist, I'd be perfectly happy to shoot him if he represented a threat to me or mine." ---What do you consider a threat, physical or mental? or maybe both, because obviously there is conditioning involved in your beliefs of what is terrorism and realistic.---
since certain powers that be want to continue to slander the fire arms industry as well as anything related to it including first person shooters. This is just another part of the coordinated attempt to continue to put assault rifles in a negative light in an effort to push to take our (Americans) rights away. Non of the recent tragic incidents did any of the murders even us an rifle, only pistols and shotguns. Who is shady now? Could it be the accusers? --The only thing keeping the US government from completely disregarding what the public thinks is that we can legitimately fight back, you take the Americans public ability to hold their own, then we will loose what little influence we have left and China and other interest will have more say in Washington than our self and the whole world would be a little dimmer. What ever happened to personal responsibility, discipline and parenting?
I believe the Resident Evil series uses more generic names (or at least it used to). Goldeneye 007 (N64) is a good example of a game that uses similar-sounding names, such as PP7 instead of PPK.
Resident Evil is set in a Sci Fi universe, it is not trying to portray an actual historical setting.
Video games(especially console ones) have pretty well accepted standardized prices for new releases. If the guns are made up and EA saves some cash do you really think that savings is going to be passed along to me? Pay to license guns or not, I will end up paying the same price in the end.
The Arms Industry helps game makers by letting them, for a price, use the name of their product.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I seem to recall a rumour that they got rid of the damage in the Need For Speed series because the can manufacturers didn't like seeing their cars dented up and performing poorly after a crash. I haven't played the games recently, but the last one I played and liked was NFS IV, because it had real damage, and you didn't have the computer cars sideswiping you to run you off the track, because their car would get damaged as well. It was really fun to play a racing game where you would almost garaunteed end up losing if you crashed.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
How can you "expose" something that no one was trying to hide? Players like having real gun names in games. Game designers like making players happy. Gun manufacturers require a license if you want to use their trademarks in your game. There's nothing seedy or malicious going on at all.
The difference between this and car licensing is way more people are killed by cars each year in the USA than by guns. Something like 50k to 10k...not even close.
But if guns don't kill people do, then only people can be seen in a good light not guns.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You do realize that the NRA is not participating in the video games industry, don't you? The NRA is not an industry group - it is a group of gun owners. The Industry group is the NSSF.
It's pretty funny to watch how bought and sold the press is... All this shit about guns in the news and articles like this that make no sense what-so-ever... Trying to tie real guns to games or something... it's just ridiculous at its face. I wonder who paid for the article.
I'm glad our kids are learning about guns from video games. Lord knows that most kids don't get gun education from their parents, teachers, or law enforcement. It's always the same old stupid ineffective strategy of 'just say no'
This article is also very biased. To say this nation has 'lax gun laws' is a stretch. I live in Texas and I can't even walk around downtown with a colt 45 in my holster. I have to beg the government for a 'concealed carry license' and even then, I can only carry around a weapon if it's concealed. Land of the Free my ass.
Of course they are. The knowingly sell to countries who have a marked reputation for allowing criminals get guns.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I thought parody was fair use?
Seriously though... If DICE is paying license fees to arms dealers then I quit. Sci Fi shooters here I come.
"The arms industry restricts the creative potential of game developers, because getting paid for receiving product placement isn't enough for them."
He doesn't have enough time units!
I've played all the more recent NFS games, but haven't enjoyed any of them as much as High Stakes or Porche Power. If you crash your car it gets damaged and you can't drive it as fast, that's just the way life is...
I also remember that you couldn't use Ferraris for any of the outrun-the-police races in that game either because of the license.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
How is this any different than using coke or budweisers name in a movie?
If it were me I wouldnt spend anything on licensing a name for a gun, its completely useless and a waste. I have never played a game and thought "wow Im actually shooting a mp5. If it were called a m61 the whole fantasy of being an elite soldier killing dozens of guys at a time would be complety ruined for me and I would not have bought this game!"
Whats next? "How paramount pictutes encourages alcoholism!" and then story goes on to say that a paramount movie featured jack daniels bottles sitting on a shelf in a bar scene and that they paid jack daniels royalties to feature it and this are encouraging everyone to become an drunk?
I'm not going to shoot someone who is not planning to shoot or blow me or someone else up. So, I don't see myself shooting anyone over mental issues.
There are differing definitions of terrorist, but I am only concerned with the ones trying to attack non-combatants for political aims counter to the rules of war.
Too many people are overthinking what terrorism is. A "freedom fighter" is still a terrorist if they terrorize a population. I'm not sure how conditioning plays into anything there. There's no justification for intentionally shooting civilians for political aims. Of course, there's little justification for shooting anyone except to defend themselves or someone else.
An anti-gun editorial about America written by a British guy? Certainly the irony is not lost on these people. They're the reason we wrote the 2nd amendment!
Oh, you want people to stop having guns? Here's an idea, stop trampling on their rights! That goes for the US government more than ever. There is more of a reason, as stipulated in good old #2, to own a gun now than there has been since 1812. Whose fault is that?
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
Pistol, Rifle, Machine gun, none of those terms are trademarked, they are common nouns.
Just use things like that.
> People who use that type of 'logic' are when is wrong with people today.
Perhaps you accidentally?
You do realize that the NRA is not participating in the video games industry, don't you? The NRA is not an industry group - it is a group of gun owners. The Industry group is the NSSF.
Then why did the NRA release a game about shooting for iOS?
That sounds like it was written by someone who thinks guns have evil spirits in them !
Or maybe thinks they can convince others of that. 8-)
Imagine that you just found out that Slashdot licenses the Your Rights Online logo from StarForce
Dammit. You just got the music from Tecmo's Star Force in my head.
If computer games were focused on verisimilitude, they'd more accurately reflect the other parts of the kill chain. For example, AFRICOM JSOC liaising with French and Malian forces to ensure that they were aware of the intended SF action in Timbuktu as their regulars push further north.
I don't see why having a specific firearm is so relevant to verisimilitude. Particularly as the key differences, such as accuracy, ergonomics, weight and size are so poorly reflected in FPS games. The emphasis should be on the game play, not on having a dozen or so "assault" or "sniper" rifles that vary only on scope, fire mode and magazine size.
I intend to extend the argument and combine it with one from the "gun lobby".
We should, therefore, carefully scrutinize, regulate or eliminate car racing games that feature licensed, real life cars. Cars are an inherently dangerous / deadly product advertised towards an adolescent target audience.
Actually, NRA has a video game of its own now called NRA: Practice Range. It is available on iOS. It has in-app purchases for different types of weapons, so yes, NRA is participating in the video games industry.