ANARYU'S PROFILE

There's a fine line here:

1. It's really rude to deny games that people have poured their effort and time into, these people have tried hard in most cases, they just have a lot to learn and denying their game can really dampen that spirit and spit on their effort.

2. It's really rude to flood the site with games that hide the gems created by people who have spend years making games over and over and polishing their skills and gotten over that initial quality barrier.

The admins have to take that responsibility and make arbitrary decisions, while I'm sure it's harder for some than others, that's still not a fun position to be in I think.

I don't know if there really is a right answer; but RMN took a single stance "You have to be this tall to ride." and has stuck by it's guns for the most part, I think that's more fair and respectable than constant exceptions to the rules or 'it's up to every admin' roulette.

Double-plug!

I dunno, I feel like we're only catering to an old version of the community. Graphics aren't as absolutely impossible to make as before due to a higher number of artists who are willing to work on game projects or even make their own game projects. (And if graphics aren't such a big deal, why not stick to the RTP/free-sources if story really IS so much more important than graphics? Using pretty rips improves your game at no expense to the maker, and standard graphics would make the story quality that much more necessary...)

The art aspect has become a much stronger portion of the RM community with the newer makers and higher res graphics and the opening to other/custom engines that RMN provides as well as more powerful and easier graphics tools like Photoshop and SAI and more tutorials on how to use them.

I think the baselines established in this article: "It's ignored when people steal graphics and audio because the RM community isn't full of artists and composers" is falling apart as more artists and composers make RPGs - wouldn't it be just as fair to allow an artist, composer, or gameplay mechanics designer to steal a story since that isn't THEIR strong suit by comparison?

Maybe it's not the story the maker cares so much about, but the artistic concepts, or the gameplay ideas, or even showcasing their music, and story is just tacked on? You want to showcase your story, but maybe they want to showcase their music or art, and the story is just something they threw in to allow them to do so.

If we say "storywriters can steal graphics and music" then conversely why can't "artists steal story and music?" It's rather a double-standard that sounds mostly like "it's always been this way, and it's always gonna be this way, now get off my lawn!"

I always felt the anti-plagiarism rules/sentiment were against RMers stealing ideas directly from other RMers more than from a commercial source, mostly because we write off so many commercial inspirations and resources (especially in the 2K(3) area.)

Plagiarism is a bad thing, but how do we choose where the line is drawn? I remember one puzzle that had literally been lifted directly from a game (you could overlay the maps and they matched) - I think most could agree that's pretty over the top.

But what about the idea of a puzzle? For example the lifted puzzle was a sliding-ice-floor type; is using that 'type' of puzzle plagiarism? Not as strong, but it definitely is. Yet the industry itself allows for that theme to be used all over because of it's versatility, in these cases we use the actual implementation as the basis for the plagiarism; how close to the exact steps of the mechanics of this other puzzle was this one?

We can't really judge well without knowing the source and final material unless we have hard proof on what was lifted. To use the likely instigator of this article, To Arms! and the following blog entry from Brickroad, just what crossed the line?

Was it his copying names?
Was is how the plot was basically the same? How much would he have to change it before the plot became different "enough" to be okay in our eyes?

I don't agree with the action, or lifting anything directly, but sometimes I don't think the authors of material even realize how much they might be copying the source materials. They read a great book or see a great show, and think they're being inspired and create their game. They DO pour hours of work into creating something like a game versus, say, a college-paper (where you can copy/paste and be done) and I think most WANT that to be original, but can get wrapped up in the writing and work - the same way we all forget about the basic rules of a good story and characters and gameplay as we make our games.

I'd say it's really hard to draw that line, and if we did, it'd open doors to a whole community witch-hunt: "Hey, this guys game copied from here and here and here and here, and here's enough proof. Take it down!"

A well presented one-sided argument can make something you don't know seem worse than it is (the media uses this constantly) - if you present just one side well enough and the audience isn't familiar with the materials, only 10 minutes of a 40 hours project could be plagiarized but make it look like the entire series is completely stolen. Who could possibly manage all those claims?

So what CAN we do about it?

This is a basically user-maintained community; the staff and mods accept things, but whether a game is popular, how many reviews are made, comments, level/quality of feedback, etc: all comes from the users.

I honestly think the community itself manages people who try to copy things very well; look how quickly and completely To Arms! was ripped apart; if you look up it's postings on other RM sites you'll see links to the blog entry comparing it to the A Song of Fire and Ice series. The game and author were pretty widely rebuked for the action, the community uncovered and make it VERY public, so what's next?

On this topic, I do NOT agree with the way we steal music and graphics; I think it's kind of sick that we can write those off so easily. I know RPG Maker is, for most, a creative outlet for writing and game design, but games that pride themselves on amazing use of ripped graphics (versus a complex story or amazing gameplay) are just as at-fault as To Arms! aren't they? Their main attraction is something THEY didn't make, but used well, just like To Arms! didn't "make" the plot but did use it (no idea if it was used well though) - to me all the To Arms! original discussion was about the gameplay, which WASN'T plagiarized from ASOFAI as far as I can tell. :)

Considering this article didn't call for action (beyond: Plagiarism isn't good, so don't waste your time stealing your stories!), and it told those that don't already think plagiarism is bad that this it isn't worried about changing their minds, why wasn't this a forum discussion instead of an article?

The article felt to me like some kind of defensive post about recent actions or as a warning: "Plagiarism is bad, period. Watch yourself."

I'm capable of the XP, VX, and GM ones; sign me up for the RPG Maker XP one first (since almost no one else even uses that engine anymore.)