Wish I’d Thought of That: An Examination of Gamers and Copyright Law

I think I could be sued for putting this logo here. Really! Click the picture if you don't believe me.

Today’s post is going to be less composed of material cribbed from other sites and more of me directing you to visit John Vanderhoef’s excellent, excellent blog Press Start to Drink, where he approaches issues in the games industry from an academic perspective and generally presents extremely interesting reading material. 

The post I’m concerned with today is his entry Cease and Desist: Games Culture and Copyright Laws, in which Vanderhoef examines the rocky relationship that has developed between fans and developers in our age of game mods and vicious copyright law.  The post illustrates its point by examining three separate reactions game developers took to fans interacting with and expanding upon their products–one consisting of putting together a make-it-yourself toy of Marcus Fenix of Gear of War, one a game mod of SNES classic Chrono Trigger, and the last recreating the entirety of the original Half-Life with Valve’s publicly available Source engine. 

The only one of these not to end with the threat of a lawsuit looming over the offending fan was, perhaps predictably, the one involving Valve, the same company sensitive enough to its fans to make community-generated memes part of the gameplay in Team Fortress 2 (to say nothing of the phenomenon of Counter-Strike). The tragedy of the situation, as cited by Vanderhoef, is the fact that creativity is stifled in an environment where inventiveness has to be looked over by lawyers. 

There’s a reason why gamers get angry when they read stories about the actions of companies like Square-Enix and Epic Games–it seems like there’s a betrayal in arbitrarily limiting the enjoyment of the people who bought their product. My personal favorite game of all time is Baldur’s Gate II, which is approaching its ten-year birthday and is woefully out of date by modern standards.  It remains my favorite title because of the massive modding community behind it that remains active to this day. While the “vanilla” storyline is incredibly expansive and the choices offered within varied enough to encourage multiple playthroughs, the modding community only broadens the title’s horizons with new gameplay options, companions, and entire campaigns.

I *have* to take Minsc with me every time, though. Not because it's necessary, but because he's awesome.

 

Neverwinter Nights, meanwhile, took a route similar to Valve and was packaged with modding tools, effectively encouraging players to play with the game itself and increasing the title’s shelf life dramatically. The resulting examples of user-generated content was often hailed as being superior to the original campaign. Unsurprisingly, both of my examples are based off of Dungeons and Dragons, a series of products where users only ever need to buy the basic rulebooks and derive the rest of the fun by creating antagonists and adventures themselves. 

At the same time, it seems like these companies are only allowing their customers to play with their product on their own terms. Valve and BioWare explicitly released the tools used to tamper with their product to their audience. And as for Baldur’s Gate II, while it’s certainly possible that large mods existed during the height of the franchise’s popularity, most of what you can find out there today was created after Black Isle (the title’s developing company) was disbanded, likely making legal action tricky.

Sega on Germany Release of Aliens vs. Predator: “Not Worth It”

Warning: Intense German

Sega has disclosed that it will not bother to try and release its upcoming title Aliens vs. Predator in Germany due to the country’s stringent ratings system, according to PC Games Hardware.

Riemann Link, the article’s author, says that the press release he was working from made it clear that Sega did not expect the country’s rating board, the USK, to approve the title due to the intense violence that comes as a part of the gameplay experience.  Sega is also unwilling to let the title’s content be compromised at the behest of the ratings board, and therefore fit its ideas of proper entertainment, due to the fact that the game “has been designed in coherence with the Alien and Predator brands–gameplay, graphics, and story all meet a mature theme.”  Ultimately, Link writes, the combination of the costs involved in translating the game and altering its content would not be compensated in Germany due to the significantly smaller available audience allowed to buy it due to its lack of official rating.

The story was picked up by The Escapist as well, which predicts that the game will be submitted for approval in the similarly conservative Australia due to the fact that no language barrier needs to be overcome before it can be released.

The USK has a history of refusing to classify many titles released elsewhere in the world, Australia included, a habit which it has attracted criticism for in the past.  In the linked article, the head of EA’s Germany branch advocates the adoption of the PEGI ratings system, which bears more similarity to the ESRB of all of North America and several other countries in the western hemisphere.  Curiously, USK head Marek Brunner says that his organization is not the true culprit behind what EA is calling censorship–that would be the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, or the BPjM, which defines what is and what is not considered offensive or damaging content in German media.

At least one Internet writer hopes that some good will come out of this latest ban, believing that if Germany can’t be motivated to reassess its ratings system due to public outcry, maybe the “videogame-shaped hole” in its economy will.

Modern Warfare 2: Staying Classy

If you’ve been following gaming news at all this past week, there’s little doubt that you’ve heard about the latest fiasco surrounding the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 due to a video released by Infinity Ward that slipped in the phrase “fags.”  If you are somehow unfamiliar with it (and, incidentally, how did you end up here of all places?) basically every major gaming site has covered it already.  And if you’re a college student with a campus newspaper that covers gaming culture, like I am, chances are somebody covered it there too.

There isn’t much left to be said about the subject now, so this post is dedicated to letting you, the reader, actually see what all the hubbub is about.  Infinity Ward has taken down the video from their own YouTube account and has been forcing other users to do the same with copies.  Below is one of the few still active as of the writing of this post, though IGN has so far retained the advertisement in a different format.

Leaked “Modern Warfare 2″ Footage Causes Demand for Rating Re-Evaluation

The leaked footage from Activision’s upcoming title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has prompted an Australian watchdog organization to call for a review of the game’s current MA15+ rating, according to GamePolitics.

The Australian Council on Children and the Media, which refers to itself as a “national community organization” dedicated to the well-being of the country’s children, made the demand in response to the graphic nature of the footage recorded.  The videos, which GamePolitics have stated are being scoured from the web by the game’s publisher Activision, depict the player character and his four companions gunning down defenseless civilians in a crowded airport in an act of terrorism.

The only easily found site that still carries the footage is this page from Online Gaming Europe, and even then only the top video still works.  The gameplay shown has the player character open fire on a line of people with an assault rifle alongside four other men, all of whom are wearing body armor over civilian clothes.  The group then moves through the rest of the airport, with highlights including one of the AI companions coolly shooting through a window to his side and the player gunning down one man dragging another incapacitated man to safety.

What makes this particular story outstanding among Australia’s other anti-gaming reactions is the fact that the gaming community can see where they’re coming from this time.  A significant contributing factor to the footage’s disturbing aspect is the fact that it is made up of actual gameplay as opposed to a cutscene–all of the violence perpetrated by the viewpoint character was done by the player’s input.  Making the massacre part of the player’s interaction with the game undoubtedly provokes a greater (and much more deeply disturbing) emotional response to what’s playing out on screen, which has been tried before in other games.  At the finale the Cold War-set Metal Gear Solid 3, for instance–a series famous for having an extremely unbalanced gameplay-to-cutscene ratio–the player character defeats his mentor, who has defected from the USA to Russia for apparently ideological reasons and is ordered by her to kill her with her own gun.  Rather than have the protagonist shoot her during the course of the cutscene, the view pans out and the letterboxing recedes, at which point the player recognizes–to his extreme discomfort–that the game is going to make you pull the trigger yourself.

Of course, not all of Australia views the ACCM’s outcry in entirely black-or-white terms.  As noted in the first article, Electronic Frontiers Australia lobbyist Nicholas Suzor sees the controversy surrounding the game as even more evidence that the country needs to modify their ratings system, saying that, “We may make an argument that these sorts of topics are not suitable for children, but I don’t at all accept that it is unsuitable for adults.”

Quantic Dream Gearing Up to Engage in Self-Censorship

Coming hot on the heels of my last post on Quantic Dream’s upcoming adventure title Heavy Rain is this interview with executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumiere, wherein he plays through a few previously unseen scenes from the game for the audience and also possibly contradicts what I said on Saturday.

The comments in question occur at about the 5 minute and 7:40 mark, where Guillaume breaks from talking about the game features and instead addresses its content, saying that the title revolves around serious and disturbing events and yet the company “didn’t want to create a game that would shock audiences, but we wanted to tell a story for adults.”

What this entails comes to light near the end of the video, where Guillaume reveals that the title will be “slightly adapted” for releases around the world (with specific mention of the Japanese version due to the audience being addressed in the interview).

“I don’t think the changes make a big difference, those are really marginal things.  We felt the need to adapt the content to the culture,” Guillaume says, before going on to back up Saturday’s post and say that Heavy Rain could continue to battle against the public perception of video games as merely toys instead of a serious medium of expression.

Exactly what these changes will be are not addressed or even hinted at, but this bit of self-censorship could be motivated both by events like the Australian Left 4 Dead 2 debacle as well as a way to appease Sony’s attempts to appeal to a wider audience.  The issue Sony had with the title several months ago concerned a sex scene that occurs over the course of the story, which game writer David Cage stubbornly refused to compromise.

Activision Forces Removal of Guitar Hero Cobain Vid

The likeness of Kurt Cobain used in Guitar Hero 5

A fan video of Guitar Hero 5 that showed the likeness of deceased Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain performing the works of other artists has been scoured from the face of YouTube, according to Kotaku.com.

The video in question–which appears to have vanished from the internet at large–was a compilation that displayed a virtual likeness of Cobain performing songs by artists including Megadeth, Bush, Bon Jovi, and Flavor Flav alongside  XBox Live avatars and duplicates of himself.  While the trailer that introduced his appearance in Guitar Hero 5 (posted below) elicited uneasy feelings by itself, the issue actually being tackled is the idea that it’s disrespectful to the musician’s memory to have him singing songs by other artists.

The solution to this problem, proposed by the attorney of Cobain’s widow Courtney Love back in September, was to make it impossible for the avatar to sing non-Nirvana songs.  The statement reprinted at Videogames Republic arguing in favor of this course of action says that, while Activision is allowed to make a Cobain avatar for use in its game, it “doesn’t grant them the right to use his name and likeness to denigrate his image.”  Love and her lawyer are not alone in this stance, given commentators around the internet and the commentary of posters spreading the video.  Given that at least one other artist wasn’t crazy about being put in a similar situation while alive has likely only added weight to this argument.

According to Kotaku, the original poster of the video has had the account he made it under permanently disabled, which he believes was done under pressure applied by Activision.  His current account, made under the handle corporalgregg3, contains only three uploads of Rock Band 2 videos at the time of this writing.

Disturbing PS3 Ads Disowned

The offending print advertisement, courtesy of Joystiq.com

The baffling pair of print advertisements that caused such a fuss last week have since been disowned by both Sony and the advertising company that created them, according to Kotaku.com.

BBDO Chile, the advertising company that made the ads (whose name is apparently an acronym of its founder’s last names) released a statement saying, “This creative design did not involve and was never approved of by Sony Computer Entertainment or Sony.  This “mock campaign” was developed by BBDO Chile staff and was submitted to various creative competition/festivals without prior notification or approval from SCE/Sony, and it is not representative of the views or advertising policies of SCE/Sony.  BBDO Chile apologizes for using this creative concept without authorization or prior approval, and for its misrepresentation of the PlayStation brand and its values.”  The statement was signed by Cristián Lehuedé, Executive President of BBDO Chile.

The detail that the ads were “not representative of the views… of SCE/Sony” are likely the most important clause of the release, given that the most offensive of the pair, pictured above, shows a young man–Sony’s target demographic–giving blood to Nazi field marshal Erwin Rommel.  What is implied by the advertisement, if anything, has not been stated by either BBDO or Sony, but a lot of unsavory conclusions can be drawn by if you’re willing to use your imagination (gamers are Nazi sympathizers?  Sony calling Godwin’s Law on itself?  An attempt at vindicating a relatively humane member of an otherwise monstrous military force?).  The second ad, depicting another individual participating in a heart transplant with Joan D’Arc, has been relatively ignored.

Courtesy of Joystiq.com

What is also unclear are the names and dates of the creative competitions and festivals mentioned in Mr. Lehuedé’s quote, from which the advertisements were supposedly leaked onto the internet from.

As pointed out in this article, Sony has something of a history when it comes to bizarre advertisements and campaigns.  Apparently, the company draws the line at Nazi imagery.