Postby Emral » Wed Jan 12, 2022 6:14 am
Bit of a rant about an ongoing trend some others and I have observed.
As a fangame community, we've been generally pretty relaxed about taking content from other game and adapting it to aid our own personal creative growth as game designers, artists, storytellers. References and shortcuts are a great thing, and massively help a lot of people in getting better more quickly by erasing barriers. It helps that plenty of resources are provided without issue as long as credit is given or permission is granted. I'm not here to complain about any of those instances where things were taken and transformed while abiding by these procedures.
But historically we've been terrible at giving credit and asking for permission, and while it has certainly gotten better in recent years in some ways (credits lists are becoming more and more comprehensive, which is great to see), it's also become worse in others, where permission seems to take a back seat.
Let's consider for a moment the three states in which an asset can be in:
- An asset can be released for public use. This is signified by the asset being posted to the relevant place like the graphics or lunalua forums. Assets in those areas were posted with the intent of their re-use for anything made by anyone. Permission is implied unless otherwise stated, credit is a no-brainer.
- An asset can be released as part of something else. For example, something highly specialized can be used in a level, and that level can be posted publically. Content released like this, I'd argue, is released for purposes of entertainment moreso than dissection and re-use. Here, permission isn't implied and is generally explicitly stated (or in the case of things like the project "SMBX2", it's the only thing that makes sense due to the project's nature).
- An asset can be unreleased in any capacity. This is often the case when the creator is still working on it. This seems to me like a "no-go" zone with regards to any derivations, just out of respect to the creator.
What's been happening more often recently are violations in the latter two categories. Assets from levels and episodes such as SLAM, A Tiny World Episode and Subzero Heroes being taken without permission, and even isolated instances of people seeing a cool screenshot posted in the discord's "showcase" channel, who then just decide to remake that themselves without first asking the person posting it if that's fine to do. For creators, assuming they're even around to comment (MrCaves had their stuff used recently and isn't presently active to see that), the unanimous reaction I've seen is a hesitant "well, it would've been nice if you asked first..." And I can speak only for myself with this but it's made me less enthusiastic about releasing anything.
Perhaps even more egregious than taking assets might be the more elusive "aesthetic inspiration", which is an intangible concept that is often not credited at all. Say for instance I made a level set in a clock tower, and then two weeks later someone else makes a level using the same tileset, music and main mechanics. If there's such clear inspiration, I think it would be only fair to also give credit for those ideas. Of course it would be much better for everyone involved if people came up with their own ideas. But I get that it can be difficult not to be inspired by someone who's better at coming up with those ideas. Though I wish people would at the very least be creative enough to not copy others' music choices but instead choose music based on what the level needs, but I digress.
Rant over. I hope we can move toward a more considerate developing process, where permission doesn't take a back seat.
