Fan-made games and video-sharing services: A form of respect or copyright infringement?
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness,”
According to that most quotable of writers, Oscar Wilde.
In modern life, particularly modern digital life, we see imitation everywhere. The internet is, in some senses, practically incapable of allowing original material to flourish under its own terms.
With its unfathomable bank of content, open-source code programming, and methods of duplication and theft that almost everyone is aware of, the world wide web is rife with copycat memes and gifs that amuse for a short while before quickly infiltrating social media all too deeply. The decline from original thought to monotonous brain worm is a steep, rapid graph. Nothing goes stale as rapidly as old content.
Uncontrolled frenzy
But none of this deters millions of amateur digital creators, of course, who continue to pump stuff out there in an uncontrolled frenzy of trial-and-error.
By way of example, somewhere out there on the worldwide web, there is (or was), a game catering for a very particular niche of customers. It was what we might term an “adult-themed game”, distributed online and for free, that blatantly was a massive breach of copyright since it duplicated a number of popular characters from the Nintendo games.
And after a protracted battle between this highly unofficial spin-off game’s makers and Nintendo itself, the game, “Peach’s Untold Tale, was taken down. The central character of the game is Princess Peach, and you can probably deduce that Peach was not waiting in a castle for Mario to save her from Bowser, nor indeed was she piloting a car around a go-kart track.
Now, you may well know about the sub-culture of erotic video games. Or (perhaps more likely) you may not. It’s a tradition that goes way back to the early 1980s in Japan, where the word “eroge” now denotes any kind of video game in which characters commonly find themselves in sexualized situations.
No one’s in it for the gameplay
As Gamebyte notes about the game in question, Peach’s Untold Tale, “there is some platformer gameplay sandwiched between the sexy scenes, but let’s face it, no-one’s playing this for its gameplay.” In other words, it’s not my cup of tea, probably not yours — but there is a market for this stuff.
However, Nintendo, acting in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, has now ordered the game be removed from internet servers immediately. The mystery is why it took the gaming giant eight years to issue this order, given it usually acts swiftly to clamp down on such activity.
The inference can only be drawn that at some point towards the end of those eight years an individual came on board who had a less philanthropic view around internet sharing compared to previous personnel in the Nintendo hierarchy. The company’s actions did not go down well with the gaming community.
A CCN editorial was scathing in its assessment, noting: “It’s fair to say Nintendo hasn’t always treated its fans any more than starving customers at times. If they’re not maliciously taking down ROM sites [gaming platforms that offer non-official versions of popular titles], they’re shutting down fan projects.” Clearly, all companies have a right to protect their brand identities, their original creations, and their intellectual property.
But sometimes it’s possible to go too far, building an image of draconian intolerance that, counter-intuitively, can damage brand reputation. It’s a balancing act. One cannot totally ignore people who persistently boot-leg your material, especially when there is evidence they’re making money out of their activities, but when amateurs are merely paying tribute to your work it’s probably a good idea to let them continue.
Sport and the problems with owned media
The issue of rights-protected video content owned by sports media distributors is a vexed one. When social media was in its infancy, rights-holders were largely able to protect their highlights and live streams. Now it is harder to do so. By and large, if you want to see a match of some sort, you can find a way to do so, and the more popular the event the easier it is to pick up a pirated stream.
How about a sport that happened a year, or even a decade ago? Much of this is technically copyright material but it increasingly gets shared by amateur enthusiasts for nostalgia lovers and researchers alike to enjoy.
Should companies go around taking these videos down? Or is it actually counter-productive? There is a strong argument to say many new fans require video content to become attracted to a sport, particularly one — say horse racing — that is struggling to captivate the youth.
After all, how much commercial value does grainy footage of Grand Nationals from the 1970s or Breeders’ Cup races from the 1990s actually have?
Best to turn a blind eye
It’s important to strike the right balance, and understand that by turning a blind eye, rights-holders are often giving fans the opportunity to build new markets or keep existing followers entertained.
People no longer visit libraries to read about the history of the sport, they share videos online. Let them do it.
Mobile gaming start-up SuperOne has incredible scope for rapid growth because of its unique attributes. Not only does it offer an extraordinarily generous business-partner program, with so many different income strands, it is also delivering a mobile gaming product that is on course to be a market leader in the trivia sector.
In both aspects, SuperOne can expect to see other companies or individuals mimicking, cloning, or downright copying what it does. But something tells us that it’s probably wiser to go back to the original quote and remember that imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery and retains the moral high ground.
After all, did McDonald’s go under when Burger King appeared? Did Coca-Cola lose the plot when Pepsi arrived?
No. They very much did not.