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Fair Use & Modding


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#21 anakinskysolo

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Posted 28 January 2009 - 12:10 AM

Technically, thanks to Lucas's senility, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are Star Wars. Doesn't change the fact that they aren't good Star Wars.


Well, that's in your opinion, I tend to disagree.

#22 feld

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Posted 28 January 2009 - 12:43 PM

Technically, thanks to Lucas's senility, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are Star Wars. Doesn't change the fact that they aren't good Star Wars.


Well, that's in your opinion, I tend to disagree.

Yeah...knew I was going to regret saying that...I agree with anakin here: once I got over my shock I liked Eps 1,2, and 3. It's just the GAMES that LA has released lately that don't IMHO have much to do with Star Wars.

#23 SpardaSon21

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Posted 28 January 2009 - 10:12 PM

I kinda overspoke too. Episode one sucked (blame the Gungans) but 2 and 3 were actually decent movies, although not as good as ESB or ANH.

Its the games that are pure garbage. Empire at War, Battlefront, etc. Although Dark Forces and Jedi Knight were some pretty good games, but then they were from the Golden Age of LucasArts.

#24 X4ldin

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Posted 28 January 2009 - 11:29 PM

Its the games that are pure garbage. Empire at War, Battlefront, etc. Although Dark Forces and Jedi Knight were some pretty good games, but then they were from the Golden Age of LucasArts.


Battlefront I and II were ok IMO, I liked the idea of being a frontline soldier rather then commanding.
The KOTOR series was good, although they had a million+ bugs, I got alot of enjoyment from them.
The Force Unleashed was amazing, you control a Force powerhouse who kills stormies and rebel scum, whats not to like?
And SW:Supremacy/Rebellion was brilliant, I wish they made a new version of it :p
Though they do churn out crap, occasionally you find some good stuff if you have paitience.

#25 SpardaSon21

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Posted 29 January 2009 - 09:40 AM

TIE Fighter. I dare anyone to say LucasArts has made better space combat than that.

And yeah, the KOTOR games were pretty good, preferred II here since it had a better conversation system (Influence and skill levels opened up dialogue options), you started as a Jedi, more skills/stats/weapon customization, and no level limit.. Although KOTOR I had some nice environments like the water planet with all those mercenaries in the bar, and Korriban with its Sith Enclave, Dantooine too with its Jedi enclave, the Star Forge, Rakata, etc., not to mention characters like Carth, Bastila, Mission, Zaalbar, as well as HK-47. The KOTOR games really wouldn't have been as fun if HK-47 wasn't calling everyone a meatbag.

Edited by SpardaSon21, 29 January 2009 - 09:46 AM.


#26 Pred the Penguin

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Posted 30 January 2009 - 04:28 AM

I liked KOTOR a lot.
Battlefront made me choke, but I did play it a lot, it was a decent shooter, juts not good Star Wars.

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#27 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 18 February 2009 - 11:14 PM

Okay, I split this topic from the Icon Thread, since it doesn't really belong there. Hopefully we can settle this debate once and for all.

I'm no lawyer, but I've been modding for a long time - long enough to remember when it was mostly an underground pursuit and companies (especially ones in the Lucas family) handed out cease and desist letters like nobody's business. (If you're worried in this climate, you're lucky you weren't around back then... unless you're a lawyer.) In the years after HL was released, the corporate world of gaming has generally come to realize that it's actually in their interest to support modding instead of trying to quash it, since you basically have a group of people who are willing to work for free to prolong the life (and sales) of your game.

What feld said about Fair Use is true, but the reality of it isn't black or white. Only a judge can decide if a specific use constitutes copyright infringement or not and obviously that only ever comes into play if you get sued. Before that would happen though, you'd be served with a cease and desist, which basically would tell you to stop what you're doing or someone's going to take you to court and (try to) make you stop. It's important to note that you can't get arrested for alleged copyright infringement - it's not a criminal offense, but a civil one.

The quote that Pred posted from that mod leader doesn't quite draw the right conclusion from why he got served. It's less about a mod being "serious competition" to a retail game and more about who stands to profit from the mod (with most copyright cases, it usually boils down to money). In his case, it would have been Digital Illusions CE / EA Games indirectly profiting from the Star Wars license.

As a general rule for modding, it's bad news to mix IPs like they did, although it's not always possible to avoid depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Personally, I try to go out of my way to keep my public SW mods on SW games. That's part of the reason why PR is on EaW. It would be very difficult to present a case that successfully argues that PR is stealing value from the license when the only ones who stand to profit from PR are Petroglyph and LucasArts, as with the original game. Had this been on SoaSE, that's another story.

In conclusion, copyright infringement is something that's always evaluated on a case-by-case basis, depends on how much of the original you're using (i.e., there's a distinction between blatantly copying something and claiming it's your own work and making something new out of someone else's work, especially with credit), and whether or not you're profiting from it and/or detracting from the value of the original IP. In my case, I believe PR constitutes "fair use" of copyright material because I make nothing off it's distribution, it promotes the sales of a PG/LA game, and all third-party content has been explicitly credited. The reality, though, is that you'll never know for certain if you're infringing copyright until a judge rules that you are, so just use common sense.

#28 bob345

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Posted 19 February 2009 - 01:57 AM

Thanks


Out of curiosity when did game designers start to no care about modding, and how did people find out?

#29 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 19 February 2009 - 05:34 PM

Some years after Half-Life, depending on how progressive the company was. Obviously Valve was really the first.

As to how people found out, I guess with lots of experimentation... and probably networking. As far as I know, there's never been a modding "manual" or anything of that sort.

#30 Ghostrider

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Posted 20 February 2009 - 11:55 AM

... it promotes the sales of a PG/LA game, and all third-party content has been explicitly credited.


Yup. PG/LA got my £10.00 just so I could get PR's mod.

Best £10.00 I spent in a while...

#31 A1Dasdfsdkli4r2

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Posted 20 February 2009 - 05:38 PM

I play Halo 3 whenever I'm not playin this, And I've found a few modded maps/gametypes/pics on there, and you can have your 360 account banned (Absolute worst case scenario) for having them. Have Consoles just not cought up to pc's in modding tolerance, or do they just not want another sega dreamcast incident?

#32 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 21 February 2009 - 05:45 PM

Have Consoles just not cought up to pc's in modding tolerance, or do they just not want another sega dreamcast incident?

I think the same things that make consoles attractive to certain developers also discourage modding. They're super-proprietary, so you're reliant on Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo for everything (that extra $10 in the price versus PC games goes straight to them), but that makes the games harder to pirate (and even if you can copy them, you still need the actual console to play it). Obviously if they were more open to facilitate modding, no one would have to pay the console manufacturer for the "privilege" of making a game for their console. A few of them are at least opening to indie developers though, so that's a good thing, but as far as being able to start with a finished game and modify it at will, I don't see that happening in the near future.

#33 bob345

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Posted 21 February 2009 - 06:53 PM

If developers have a problem with modding consoles why don't they still try to stop PC modding

#34 coinich

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Posted 21 February 2009 - 08:28 PM

Two completely different beasts. Consoles are a bit bigger for pvp play, as far as I thought, and modding becomes more of an issue with cheating and such. Halo mods to have jumping warthogs and such, vs PC mods, where you get partial/full conversions such as PR. In a sense, PC modding is already a lost cause; many games these days rely on .xml or .txt files to contain much of their data; its a simple matter of using notepad to change the health of a TIE Fighter from 50 to 500, for example.

For the record, since all PG files used are referenced from the mod team's xmls, which are created by themselves, and PR isn't distributing PG files, there should be no problem, as PR files can be distributed by whatever restrictions PR himself sets. I hope that helped some.

#35 bob345

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Posted 21 February 2009 - 10:02 PM

It helps

Thanks

I just wish I new what LucasArts, Petroglyph, Bioware and Obsidian think of modding the PC versions of their games

#36 coinich

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Posted 22 February 2009 - 03:00 AM

I'm certain Petroglyph doesn't care; PR has taken the mod to them before with no results. LucasArts won't/shouldn't care a bit; PR is simply recycling their own content on a game they licensed it to. Most companies that I've seen don't really care; some go out of their way to help modders.

Edited by coinich, 22 February 2009 - 03:01 AM.


#37 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 22 February 2009 - 07:43 AM

Two completely different beasts. Consoles are a bit bigger for pvp play, as far as I thought, and modding becomes more of an issue with cheating and such. Halo mods to have jumping warthogs and such, vs PC mods, where you get partial/full conversions such as PR.

I wouldn't describe myself as a "console gamer" - and certainly not one who plays online multiplayer with console games - but I know if you can do the kind of multiplayer version checking that happens on PC, then certainly it can be done for consoles as well. Not saying that it isn't actually the case, but if that's their only excuse for disallowing modding, then it's a pretty lame one.

I'm certain Petroglyph doesn't care; PR has taken the mod to them before with no results. LucasArts won't/shouldn't care a bit; PR is simply recycling their own content on a game they licensed it to.

Well, "no results" isn't entirely true - I know quite a bit of Petroglyph plays (or at least has played) PR - and I haven't met someone from PG yet who had anything but fantastic things to say about modders. I'm sure it's fascinating to see what other people can do with your work. No, PG is totally supportive of modders, even if LA or any given publisher doesn't allocate the funds for them to be so on a more official basis.

As for LucasArts, they have a CD with v1.0 on it somewhere. I'm not sure if they actually installed it or not, but no one (or no one's law firm) said anything negative.

#38 A1Dasdfsdkli4r2

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Posted 22 February 2009 - 11:00 AM

Consoles are a bit bigger for pvp play, as far as I thought, and modding becomes more of an issue with cheating and such. Halo mods to have jumping warthogs and such,


Not at all. There're Quite a few console exculsive Story-only Console games. But as for modding, most of the mods I come across are for pure entertainment purposes only. I have not personally heard of competitive multplayer mods (I'm not saying they aren't out there). Warthogs jumps and the like are glitches within the game! Hell, on Halo 3 you can create a clone of yourself without having to do anything special.

#39 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 22 February 2009 - 08:57 PM

That's why I've always frowned on players being punished for "exploiting" in MMOs and the like: it's the developers' fault that they're even there in the first place to exploit. It's as much a part of the game as anything else; the only difference is in intent, and that shouldn't be up to the player to decide.



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