S. F. LAVALLE'S PROFILE

It is pretty preachy, but I'm open to it as another perspective behind what drives the creation of new ideas.

I think what this article represents is a unique approach to developing a goal you want to achieve with games that you make. It's certainly not for everyone, but I don't think it's invalid.

There are a lot of interesting ideas here, even if they don't tie together very well. I know this is the wrong article, but I agree with cho on the games as art front; for games to be considered art, a game's interactivity must satisfy any twisted definition of art, and not the resources that give visual or aural support and which are themselves art.

The idea that people actually take off their mask when they go online isn't wrong I think, but it's skewed heavily by defining what's real. Online, some people are who they really want to be, and in real life social situations, they might not be able to be that person, hence the mask in real life. Ironically, this is the same as putting a mask on in real life; the condition of anonymity grants you the ability to act upon what is right for you, and not under the influence of public opinion. This simply does not apply to some people, who are so comfortable with who they are in real life and/or online that they haven't even considered masking who they are.

He's also right that people do take on responsibilities when playing games. The difference is semantic; in tone (perhaps also by definition, I'm too lazy to look), 'responsibility' infers that one can and does act or perform duties in such a manner as to meet the expectation or need of oneself or others. Basically, putting needs before wants, and semantically we take this to mean we do things we don't enjoy (work) because we must. I think it can be applied more generally in this instance, something along the lines of 'act of perform duties that are conditional to achieving a goal.' In life, the goal is to earn money to pay bills, and the conditions to achieve that is work. In games, the goal is victory or some other reward the player finds worth working for, and the gameplay is the condition.

Note this is mostly applied to single-player games. This very debate has been around since single-player games were first created. People didn't truly understand why they existed, or how they would ever be popular without the competitive nature of games as defined up to that point. These are not contests of skill between two players, where the goal and elation for reaching it are obvious. Single-player games are a complex balance of responsibility and reward, in that the pleasure of reaching the goal has to justify the amount of responsibility the player asked of the player.

While games aren't work (most of the time), they still compel people to accept responsibilities in addition to those that they already bear in real life, and I think that's powerful, and important to understand. While I think it's a stretch to have a game philosophy designed around empowering people to take more initiative in their personal lives, I will leave you with this: sometimes when I'm in a rut and simply don't feel like working, I screw around on the internet, yak with people, what have you (I'm doing it now). If I happen to open up Angry Birds, which is usually on a hard level I had to stop working on, I will keep playing the level over and over until eventually, I win. I emit a victory fist-pump, never in public view, and triumphantly put my phone back in my pocket and get to work.

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Posting about this is constructive. The majority of the RM community is filled with talentless hacks and thieves. Trying to better it seems quite constructive in my mind.

Remember kids, recreating Metroid and remaking Lys games are a noble pursuits!

Correct. They helped in the development of the ika Game Library =) Also a prime example of learning by copying the masters (which, before it's laid into, is different than copying for the intent of passing it off as your own work).

I was quite sure the topic was spent after a day went by without any posts (/win topic, had it in the bag).

Anyway, sorry that we're boring you by actually discussing the article where the article is supposed to be discussed. I'm sure there are plenty of fresh topics to reply to in the Moronic forum.

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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 made a comment, either here or somewhere else, that says pretty much this. Yes; if a music writer or graphics designer wants to make a game to showcase those talents, and does so by stealing some other story, then in my opinion that falls under this (completely artificial) curtain of acceptable plagiarism.

Flik presented this from the perspective of stolen story, but the theme was that if you're going to steal work, do it so that you showcase SOME sort of creative thought. Don't just steal everything, else that would defeat the purpose.