Itagaki Criticizes Dead Or Alive Hackers 32
Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with Tecmo's Tomonobu Itagaki, creator of the Dead Or Alive series and the forthcoming Ninja Gaiden for Xbox. Itagaki is asked about the more creative, non-nude unofficial character model hacking currently being done for Dead Or Alive, and says "First of all I think that those hackers should spend their time on something more productive. I'm not talking about a rights issue or an OS issue or whatever, but if they have time to hack into something that other people have made, why don't they make something of their own?" When it's suggested that many games want to be modded by their fans, he adds: "Of course the creators of DOOM and Half-Life - that was their intention. That's how they want the users to enjoy playing their game, and I have no problem with that."
That explains it. (Score:1, Insightful)
Clearly he doesn't want people to have fun playing his games then as evidenced by the sheer lack of in depth gameplay in DOAXBV, at least now he admits it.
I feel a smell of hypocrisia in the air... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the intention of Tecmo was all but exploiting the nudity of pornstar lookalike videogame characters.
If I had a teen daugther (or even in her thirties, I suppose) I would never let her go out dressed like a DOA girl...
Not in my backyard (Score:5, Insightful)
Would Half-Life be nearly as popular without Counterstrike? My friend Zoid started CTF in Quake. You can't shake a stick at a FPS game without seeing some version of it already included as a standard feature. There have been plenty of hacks and mods added to videogames that all have either extended the life of the game, enhanced the gameplay or added more entertainment to playing. (Note: I'm not including wallhacks, cheats or aimbots here.) Some mods take a life of their own and even extend over to other games.
As long as the hackers don't violate any intellectual property, copyright laws or try to sell their mods for profit, developers shouldn't complain. Many times these mods are better than what developers can put out. To suggest that these people go out and make their own game... what? And make more competition for your game in the marketplace. Be happy that these mods are being done to your game and thereby increasing that fat bonus check.
Everything derives value from something else. (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like someone who thinks that their ideas are original, like they didn't get ideas from anyone else. There are plenty of people who spend a lot of time developing something but a lot of them recognize that their work is just like everyone else's--their work is fodder for the next incremental advance in expression. There's nothing new under the sun, as Shakespeare said; no idea comes from nothing and you have no legitimate sole claim to the expressions of your ideas. You benefit from a leaky copyright system--fair use helps preserve freedom of speech. Copyright power is supposed to be limited.
Second, you cannot understand how ideas work by thinking in terms of "IP" (intellectual property [gnu.org]). That phrase is prejudicial and a mish-mash of laws that can sometimes conflict with one another. What we're talking about in this thread primarily concerns copyright policy and the anti-social idea that copyright is property (which even the law doesn't completely agree with), so call it by its name.
Ironically, Itagaki's concern would seem out of place in other areas of life, maybe even an outright affront to people's right of expression--nobody would balk at you modifying a recipe to suit your needs (even a recipe from a copyrighted recipe book published commercially), adding a room on to your house, or changing the brake pads on your car without going to the manufacturer's garage. Nor would they balk at helping other people do any of these things by distributing information or kits on how to do it. But modify a videogame? Maybe we should take the lessons from the dojinshi market [redherring.com] more seriously. According to the Dojinshi article, artists (who I'm sure "have a financial and emotional investment" in their work) all effectively share with each other and cultivate a comic book market that consumers apparently enjoy.