Forum - View topicNEWS: Nintendo Blocks Fan Remake of Super Mario 64
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
|
|||||||||
Alright, cool it Ayn Rand. Yes, this is not especially at odds with how businesses usually act. I just happen to be of the (apparently controversial) opinion that normative questions aren't magically suspended just because we happen to be talking about a business. Nor are they just because something is "standard practice". I've long since given up arguing with people who think they are though so think what you want. |
||||||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||
He could, as long as everything whose appearance and name are copyrighted by Nintendo are changed such that they are unmistakably different. However, that might not still be enough, as the stage layout would still be identical. The Great Giana Sisters copied Super Mario Bros. 1-1 one-for-one (no pun intended) back in the late 80's, and Nintendo sued the company that made Giana right out of business. It's an interesting case for me because the IP did not die with that game--other companies have picked up the rights and have since made Giana Sisters DS and Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, and Nintendo never took any legal action because the stage design was wholly original. (Heck, Giana Sisters DS, as the title indicates, is on a Nintendo system, meaning Nintendo approved of it.)
The point about Elvis Presley Enterprises is that heavy-handed copyright enforcement is a pretty common thing in any entertainment business, and you used Elvis as an example of loose enforcement. The idea behind this activity is to preserve the image of the company or person, and in some cases, to prevent genericisation of particular concepts. (Disney, for instance, has spent ridiculous amounts of money lobbying to revise copyright laws to become stricter every few years to prevent Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain.) It's also pretty clear you have some sort of grudge against Nintendo, and this would cloud your judgment of what is the correct action to do. In any case, a fanbase can only sustain you so much. However, fans, being experienced users of a particular thing, have pretty different desires than the ordinary consumer. Fans make up a minority of people, so for any business, the wisest decision, if the intent is to remain in business, is to please people outside of the fanbase. And since the fanbase is the minority, if a company had to pick between one or the other, the right thing to do is to pick the mainstream. Listen to the fans too much, and all you'll produce are Funzos. Apple is a company that pisses off its fans constantly, and yet each time it does so, it grows ever larger. This is because it's a company based around innovation and reinvention. Each time you change something, you're going to annoy some of your fans. Apple, however, ignores them each time to make something that the casual consumer would like, and their clout gets bigger and bigger. Another example: What do you think the people who liked eating noodles from Samsung Corporation thought when World War II happened and they transitioned to making electronics, like TVs? Or how about people who liked going to Warner Bros. movie theaters before United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. happened and they decided to make movies instead of screening them? Xerox was a company with some very gifted engineers, collectively the Palo Alto Research Center. These guys came up with the GUI (the graphical user interface, an icon-based way of using computers that most consumer computers use nowadays), the computer mouse, the desktop computer, and the prototype of the Internet. When these engineers pitched the ideas to the top brass at Xerox, they were all turned down--Xerox's fans were happy with it being strictly a company that does photocopying. The PARC engineers sold their ideas to Microsoft and Apple, at that time new upstarts, and the military, and Xerox's future was henceforth stunted big time. Even the Internet itself is an entity that would've been stunted by its fans. If the initial fans had their way and blocked Eternal September from happening, it would still be niche, nearly inaccessible (and perhaps made intentionally that way), and incredibly specialized in its usefulness. All in all, fanbases tend to support the status quo (that is, the idea that the company they're a fan of is great the way it is and does not need changing), but the status quo is a dangerous thing in business, as it leads to stagnation and sets you up to be overcome by competitors who are not afraid to change things up in big ways. |
||||||||||
gloverrandal
Posts: 406 Location: Oita |
|
|||||||||
On the doujinshi comparison, you can't really compare doujinshi to fan remakes of games. Doujinshi are original creations with original art and stories. You can not read a doujinshi for Naruto and get the story of the actual series in it. With a remake of a game, you do get the actual experience of playing the game. In this case, the creator admitted he used models and assets from official Nintendo games to recreate the exact level of one of the games. Companies don't go after doujinshi because they are not competitive to their series, but a remake of Mario 64 when Nintendo offers Mario 64 on various platforms is a competition to their business.
|
||||||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||
You have a point there--the equivalent would've been if a doujinshi artist took the first chapter of Dragon Ball and re-drew it digitally, and perhaps colored it all in by hand, then distributed the raw files for free. I think.
Super Smash Flash would be the closest analogue I can think of to doujinshi--it's a fan-made reimagining of one of Nintendo's franchises, and it goes in a pretty different direction than the official stuff--and so far, Nintendo has made no legal action against it. |
||||||||||
Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
|
|||||||||
The internet really was a better place back then. |
||||||||||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group