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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.'"
Something like the BFG9000?
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
I was thinking more like counter strike handled it.
Instead of a desert eagle, they had a deagle, instead of a Arctic Warfare Magmun, they had the AWP. Stuff like that.
I think the BFG is far enough from real weapons to avoid licensing costs.
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.
Just call it something else and don't pay.
For gods sake man, spoonfeed them some examples or we'll never see it happen. Like
Not to mention the all time classic:
Verisimilitude.
If you're going to make a game set in WW2, you model real WW2 weapons.
If your game is set anywhere from 1990 to 2050, and you're trying to model real-world combat situations (with varying degrees of accuracy), then you'll have to model real world firearms. Due to the durability of firearms and the essentially mature technology, you could expect current technology and models to be used for decades. Consider the 1911 pistol for example: that's not a just a model number, that's the year it was introduced. It's also the most common handgun used by serious competitors today.
Savvy gamers today just aren't going to buy it if their High Intensity Combat Operative character in the game is deploying with Generic Intermediate Caliber Select Fire Rifle firing the combat tested 5.44x40mm Solid Lead to Ashcanistan to fight the nefarious Ethnically and Ideologically Unidentifiable Terrorist Organization. They want their DEVGRU to drop out of a Lockheed C-130J into Timbuktu carrying a Colt M-4 Carbine with a Trijicon ACOG on top so they can put a 5.56mm NATO round into the tuches of a Al Qaeda splinter group that's trying to destroy a UN World Heritage site. (Licensing fees paid for all those trademarks.)
If you want to make stuff up, you've got to set your story a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, or some other equivalent narrative technique to put distance between what the player knows and the game-world contains. You can fake medieval weapons. You can't fake modern fire-arms in present-day settings.
I would imagine that this situation exists for games featuring cars, airplanes, or any other product that has a corporate brand identity. But a headline decrying "Video Games Fund the Automotive Industry" just doesn't have any punch.
Actually most of the products you can identify in movies have either had the rights paid for by the movie company or if the movie is a big name flick will often get money from the company in return for showing their product in a favorable light. Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement.
So its not like you haven't been seeing the same thing in hollywood for years, with the smaller movies paying a fee for licensing while the big names get the product for free or even get a check for showing it, its common practice. Watch the horribly bad movie "Jack & Jill" sometime which rumor has it even though it bombed Sandler and pals actually came out ahead thanks to how much product placement was in that movie. they might as well have called it "Jack and Jill, sponsored by *" for all the products from dunkin donuts to Sony electronics you see on the screen. i honestly don't think there is 4 minutes in the whole movie where a logo isn't visible, its THAT obvious.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.