Video Game Movies "Not Creative Expression" 134
GamePolitics is one of many that is reporting on the impending removal of video game movies from the video hosting site Vimeo. While they have agreed to leave machinima alone, all walk-throughs, strategy videos, pvp battles, raids, etc, will be deleted on September 1st. "The Vimeo staff does not feel that videos which are direct captures of video game play truly constitute 'creative expression.' Further, such videos may expose Vimeo to liability from the game creator(s), as we have already seen action from popular video game companies against videos such as these... Gaming videos are by nature significantly larger and longer than any other genre on Vimeo ..."
Leeeeroy Jenkins! (Score:5, Funny)
Just sayin'.
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The "not creative" part doesn't jibe for me, either. I've seen some raid videos set to music that are at least as creative as the latest spewage on TV.
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--
Freedoms Forums - Libertarian leaning political discussion forum [freedomsforums.com]
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How in the world could they feel that game companies would be opposed to sharing of game videos in any way? At my current company, we have occasionally sent around links among ourselves to some of the better videos our fans have created. The companies I've worked for are always happy with (and actively encourage) any sort of fan-produced publicity they can get.
There's something else going on here, I think. Maybe too much bandwidth was being consumed by game videos? Besides which, I have to admit I hadn'
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I think that counts as machinima. It was entirely staged for comedic effect, poking fun at guilds that over plan and strategize.
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Re:Leeeeroy Jenkins! (Score:5, Funny)
I always wondered about those shifty World Wildlife Fund people...it always seemed too good to be true, and now I know it was.
Re:Leeeeroy Jenkins! (Score:5, Funny)
What, you think pandas are real? C'mon, man. Everybody knows a black bear dipped in bleach when they see one. That stuff is faaaaaaake, dude!
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Re:Leeeeroy Jenkins! (Score:5, Insightful)
What about Red vs. Blue?
Also, I'm thinking of personal feats like speedrunning. I mean, sure, it's creative expression see how you ride your bike and do a sommersault etc., but it's not when you do an amazing feat in your favorite videogame (specially modded games, like Mario Frustration)?
These guys just gotta be kidding.
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What about Red vs. Blue?
...
FYI (Score:3, Informative)
PS: If you don't know what a word means try wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima) And yes that is a picture of Rev Vs. Blue on the freaking page with a nice caption "A scene from the popular machinima series Red vs. Blue."
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Another good example would be those self-playing Super Mario World levels. They're nothing but gameplay, but obviously qualify [youtube.com] as "creative expression".
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Now THAT was worth seeing. Art indeed.
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Re:Leeeeroy Jenkins! (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not shooting themselves in the foot if this avoids lawsuits. It'd take an awful lot of ad views to make up for the costs of litigation.
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Seriously. Just once I'd love to see someone contrast the many ways to play X while recording with Y, with the many ways to code W and Z. (for example) There's bad ways to play a game that get you stomped, just like there's bad ways to code that get you fired. There's good too, of course, but my point is it would be counter-productive for the o
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Vimeo may ultimately disagree, but the Leeroy Jenkins video is certainly machinima.
It sounds like Vimeo is getting rid of all the general game-related videos. The writeup here lists pvp battles, raids, strategic stuff, etc.
Good Point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rent console games before you buy them. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because if gamers saw the actualy game play from the absolute garbage developers are putting out, they'd never buy games.
This is why I rent console games. If it sucks, I'm out a rental fee. If I like it, I'll send back the rental copy and buy one of my own. Of course, you don't have that option for Wintendo games, but that's not my problem. :)
Re:Rent console games before you buy them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blockbuster should institute something where if you rent a game and like it, you can apply the rental price to the purchase price, although I don't know if that would cut too much into their margins. It would make me much more likely to rent a game from Blockbuster though before purchasing it.
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Don't they already do that? Wasn't it a few years ago that the instituted a "you keep it, you buy it" policy on all of their rentals? (Of course they disguised it as "no over-due fees ever!" but the end result was the same.)
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I use GameFly, which works on a Netflix-style model. They have plans where, for a monthly fee, you can have one to four games out at a time. If you like a game, and it's listed as for sale, you can keep buy it used from GameFly. They'll send you the case and the manual. I've done this with Mass Effect and Soul Nomad and the World Eaters (it's Ogre Battle on crack).
The turn-around time is about five days, in my experience, and once in a while GameFly will send a disk that's had the everloving hell scratched
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Agreed.
You can really only learn so much from screenshots, reviews, and such.
Got to see something in action before making a choice, right?
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I think that's the same reasoning people use to defend stealing movies and music. Apparently, everything is garbage nowadays. Music, games, movies, television, everything sucks ass. Is there anything in existence that you do like?
It's not that people steal what they don't like. It's the idea of "try before you buy" that motivates a lot of people to download a copy first. It's not that everything is crap really. It's that you can't trust the publishers or reviewers out there, cause they're in a symbiotic relationship with the goal of selling as much as possible. Things like this ban of user-created gameplay footage just makes things worse. The tendency of many console gamers to buy whatever happens to be on the cover of a magazi
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Let 'em (Score:2)
Let 'em, I say. There are other sites which are better suited for such things, such as YouTube or Revver.
Hell, folks could even make money on Revver!
It's their site. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's their site. (Score:5, Insightful)
Vimeo owns the site; they can do what they want with it.
And they can also be criticized if they make decisions that their users don't like.
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So then what exactly was your point?
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Yeah, actually, you did, though implicitly, I guess so you could have deniability later in order to extend your trolling effort?
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Re:It's their site. (Score:5, Funny)
Careful, CNN and the other "news" channels will copy this as an excuse to stop reporting on stories they think you're not interested in (which it's hard to show an interest in stories they don't run...)
I can see it now:
"In foreign news: nothing. All countries did their own thing, mind your own damn buisness! Here's the latest haircut Brittney got!"
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I don't think anyone's arguing otherwise. Honestly, I think the only hubbub is over the whole "Not creative expression" bit. I think that they are much more concerned with dealing with copyright issues and the fact that these game videos tend to be quite long. They should have kept it at that, and left out the perceived slight to gamers.
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I have to respond to this... I could see this as creative expression, and I think that it is clear that is can be. It may not always be but I'm pretty sure that it can be.
I personally think that they realized that they are typically large video files and realized that it wasn't cost effective to host them for nothing. I think they then tried to make this seem a bit more moralistic (is that even a word?) by claiming they were interested in protecting themselves from lawsuits.
However, and here's the rub, crea
"Vimeo"? Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never heard of them. Wake me up when significant sites like YouTube start doing things like this...
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Never heard of them. Wake me up when significant sites like YouTube start doing things like this...
Cue "First they came for the jews" letter.
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Cue "First they came for the jews" letter.
A video game thread that wasn't about Wolfenstien just got Godwin'd...
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Much, much too early in the discussion to summon Godwin.
Re:"Vimeo"? Who? (Score:5, Funny)
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Can I at least link him to my armour(sic) for a stat boost?
Yes, but Godwin is Epic so it has to a full Tier 6 set and only provides protection from Shadow Magic.
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Armour is spelled correctly, you ignorant American. Armor and armour are both legitimate ways to spell the same word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#-our.2C_-or [wikipedia.org]
Breath in... and out.
I'm an ignorant Brit. living in Canada so you can bite my hairy Hobbit ass you pedant.
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Then one would think you would at least know the correct Canadian spelling of "armour".
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Then one would think you would at least know the correct Canadian spelling of "armour".
I'm lexdisic you heartless bastard! *weeps*
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Then why would you (sic) a correctly spelled word?
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After seeing my post spawning threads like this, I'm starting to wish for a "-1, crapspawning" mod.
Re:"Vimeo"? Who? (Score:4, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly. I read the summary and here's what I got:
"Irrelevant 2-bit video hosting site decides to become even more irrelevant by removing some of their small collection of videos."
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Re:"Vimeo"? Who? (Score:4, Insightful)
Server admin: We're running our of disk space.
PHB: Just delete a bunch of videos.
Re:"Vimeo"? Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Vimeo is the only video service on the web that can do HD video worth a damn. I tried Veoh and other related sites, and they flagged my video as containing copyrighted material (ironic because all of it was material I had worked ~3 months to create from scratch), had problems with uploads not appearing or processing, or were grainy low-resolution trash like YouTube. I know a lot of people are using it for game mod videos, for example.
They're hardly irrelevant.
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Do you care about online video? Does quality mean anything to you?
If the answer is yes to either question, you oughta check out Vimeo, because in a sea of competition the quality of their product really stands out.
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If you know what you're doing, you can get a decent quality video on YouTube as well. Not to mention the fact that they're in the process of rolling out high-res video as we speak. It's undergoing testing, and some videos are already available in high quality. My first video I ever uploaded had a high-res version made available on the first day they went public with it.
The real question is, do you want to have to give everyone a special link directly to your video in order for them to see it. If your video
Re: Video Game Movies "Not Creative Expression" (Score:5, Funny)
I can't be the only one who read the title and expected a story about Uwe Boll...
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Just lost respect for Vimeo... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called a takedown notice. That should shield you from any liability -- if the creators care, they send you a notice, and you make the video go away. Problem solved.
Of course, the real reason is:
Gaming videos are by nature significantly larger and longer than any other genre on Vimeo ...
Really? Have they not seen Wormtooth Nation?
But there you go -- they're not really afraid of litigation. They're afraid of file size...
The real reason (Score:3, Interesting)
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They just don't want to come out and say "The only reason is that we're afraid of getting sued by the game companies and we're a bunch of poor pussies who can't afford lawyers. So please stop investing in us now that you know we're too poor to withstand even a small lawsuit."
From the Vimeo staff blog, quoted IN THE SUMMARY.
Further, such videos may expose Vimeo to liability from the game creator(s), as we have already seen action from popular video game companies against videos such as these.
Dreadful job (Score:5, Funny)
Where's the outrage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Video capture of gameplay for the sake of the gameplay is about as creative as live capture of a sports event for the sake of the sports event.
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Video capture of gameplay for the sake of the gameplay is about as creative as live capture of a sports event for the sake of the sports event.
So they need a disclaimer at the end of video games. This one in WoW's case:
"Rebroadcasting, or any other pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game, without Blizzard's express written consent, is strictly prohibited."
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So they need a disclaimer at the end of video games. This one in WoW's case:
So, in WoW's case, you'd never see the warning. :-)
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It may as well be the athlete uploading the video. It's not artistic expression if you're displaying a product, which is what gameplay videos are. For your argument to work, everything that "you're doing yourself" would qualify as artistic expression. That wouldn't really work.
"Creative Expression" (Score:2)
If they are creative expression then they're unlicensed derivative works. You lose either way.
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How can you be on slashdot and not know about fair use. I'm going to go put my head in the oven now.
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If I buy a copy of Batman, draw a mustache on all the faces and then upload it, that's not fair use. It's a derivative work.
We're not talking about a few screenshots and 10-second video clips; we're talking about folks who have recorded playing the entire game from start to finish, performing virtually the entire work. And then uploaded it. No court in the nation would agree that's fair use.
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Fair use of one copy of the work. Just as recording a game session for your own later perusal would very likely be fair use of a derivative work.
The Betamax case never came close to saying that making copies of the taped shows and giving those copies to your 10,000 closest friends was fair use.
Social Networking - Real Life (Score:1)
Vimeo was touted by many as the "New Youtube" (Score:5, Insightful)
With better resolutions, less BS moderation, and a 'better' community.
So far I really haven't seen anything more than the potential of better resolutions. They are just as free as Flikr or Youtube in "Eww, I don't like that, delete" button useage, and frankly I haven't really seen anything being hosted by them that wasn't already everywhere else. Other than a few 'name' players like Improve Everywhere using it to host their videos, there hasn't been much of a drive for me to visit it.
I wish them luck, but I have a feeling they are going to suddenly discover starting out tough on content really isn't going to help them gain market share.
Research Indicates's Tresspasser (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
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How would this reasoning apply to people who put up videos of *themselves* while they are playing the game, such as DDR? That's something that I and many others do -- upload videos of ourselves dancing to the steps of DDR, or our finger movement in Guitar Hero. It's not a copy of the game (although some people, for reasons I can't discern, simply upload the screen feed! Yeah, REAL exciting to see a bunch of arrows scroll up and disappear, which could just be a script...) -- it's a person showing how he do
THIS VIDEO WILL BE FLAGGED (Score:2)
In a way, they are promoting creative expression with more intensity seeing you will be watching "videos with a twist" more than other stuff.
You mean stuff like THIS FAN GAME VIDEO WILL BE FLAGGED [youtube.com]?
Must be a slow news day... (Score:1)
Internal Insight (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm posting as anonymous since I am a Connected Ventures employee and I am in the same office as Vimeo. Connected Ventures owns College Humor, Vimeo (sort of), and Busted Tees.
The major push for this came down from the legal department. Within the past few months Vimeo has received a hand full of orders from the likes of EA and other industry giants to take down videos of their games. Video sharing sites in general have a hard time turning a profit, e.g. YouTube, and Vimeo is no exception. At this point
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Cease and Desist orders or DMCA takedown notices?
Fire your lawyer.
Define 'creative expression' please. (Score:2)
Besides that, there are some awesome (short) movies on there, and it's been a great site for me to randomly browse and discover some gems (on a whole other level than the amusement of a general YouTube video brings me).
More on topic: What's the deciding factor when watching a game's video that
technical communication is very creative (Score:2)
As a Technical Writer I can say confidently that writing instructional material like game walkthroughs takes a lot of creativity and talent. Furthermore, playing a game in a formulaic fashion suitable for publishing as a no-frills walkthrough takes a lot of discipline and trial-and-error.
Technical communication is a skill to be learned and perfected, but it also takes talent and creativity to identify your audience and communicate effectively. For instance, you'd use a different literary
Wrong (Score:2)
If the user has any control of a character on the screen, he's performing a creative expression. Contrast this with, say, recording an in-game video sequence -- that's not at all creative on the user's behalf.
Simple Solution (Score:1, Funny)
Go with open source games and eliminate our addiction to non-free games. Then there would not be any issues with video game movies at all.
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You've never seen a nethack ttyrec? (I know, it's not truly a movie.)
GameVee.com (Score:1)
They're getting bad legal advice... (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that /. story a few weeks ago "Your Mashup is Probably Legal [slashdot.org]?" It talked of a group of copyright experts who issued Fair Use guidelines [centerforsocialmedia.org] for the use of copyrighted material in videos. In it, they issued 6 guidelines. Quoting:
FOUR: REPRODUCING, REPOSTING, OR QUOTING IN ORDER TO MEMORIALIZE, PRESERVE, OR RESCUE AN EXPERIENCE, AN EVENT, OR A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
DESCRIPTION: Repurposed copyrighted material is central to this kind of video. For instance, someone may record their favorite performance or document their own presence at a rock concert. Someone may post a controversial or notorious moment from broadcast television or a public event (a Stephen Colbert speech, a presidential address, a celebrity blooper). Someone may reproduce portions of a work that has been taken out of circulation, unjustly in their opinion. Gamers may record their performances. (emphasis mine)
PRINCIPLE: Video makers are using new technology to accomplish culturally positive functions that are widely acceptedâ"or even celebratedâ"in the analog information environment. In other media and platforms, creators regularly recollect, describe, catalog, and preserve cultural expression for public memory. Written memoirs for instance are valued for the specificity and accuracy of their recollections; collectors of ephemeral material are valued for creating archives for future users. Such memorializing transforms the original in various waysâ"perhaps by putting the original work in a different context, perhaps by putting it in juxtaposition with other such works, perhaps by preserving it. This use also does not impair the legitimate market for the original work.
LIMITATION: Fair use reaches its limits when the entertainment content is reproduced in amounts that are disproportionate to purposes of documentation, or in the case of archiving, when the material is readily available from authorized sources.
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Some companies like having game play videos on the Internet. For example, Blizzard is very clear that not only are they are okay with videos from their games on sites like Vimeo and YouTube, but they encourage it: http://www.blizzard.com/us/legalfaq.html [blizzard.com]
And who are these game publishers that are so retarded they want gameplay videos taken down? It's free publicity! People who might have never heard of the game otherwise may end up making a purchase due to a cool gameplay video they saw.
Connected Ventures in Annoying Legal Advice (Score:1, Funny)
Connected Ventures, the company behind vimeo, made another significant change on one of their sites this week that I can only attribute to some sort of legal advice. Collegehumor.com removed the "R-rated" category on their pictures index page, and it took me a full two days to find an obscure link to the "R-rated" section in the footer of their homepage. I missed out on self submitted college coed 'boobies' pictures for at least 48 hours. I barely made it.
This is entirely reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
1: direct capture videos of games (that aren't Machinima) aren't particularly creative.
2: Hosting such videos constitutes a possible legal liability.
3: Such videos tend to be longer and take up more space than average.
#3 is almost certainly true. #2 is apparently true, i'm willing to take their word that they've had to deal with legal action already, and that regardless of how it would turn out in court they don't feel like dealing with the hassle. And you know what? In my experience #1 is true too. I've seen a lot of direct capture videos, and although there are some exceptions for the most part they are often interesting and often informative, but they are very rarely creative. "That's cool" does not automatically equate to "that's creative."
If you've taken a direct capture video but you've also added your own content on top to make some kind of social commentary or make a joke or tell a story, or used the engine in unusual ways to do the same, then congratulations, your video is creative and you can probably get it in as Machinima or a music video or some other category. But if all you've got is a capture of some people playing a game as it's meant to be played then that's not very creative at all.
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That's true, but also entirely beside the point. No one would complain if a magazine for creative writing refused to publish a straight up journalism article because it wasn't creative, and no one would complain if the Wall Street Journal refused to publish a piece of fiction because it wasn't journalism.
If Vimeo has the stated goal of inspiring creativity t