Lost-Pagoda

Finding My Comfy Place

I have thoughts to share, and...perhaps an audience? I'm a hopeful kinda guy. Working on artistic pursuits simultaneously more and less than I should.


They should be made legal: Full stop. Anything not being made for profit should not be held to the standards of copyright, or else a much more restricted version of it. Like, you can't make non-profit fan media until 20 years after said media has been published. But ideally, people should be able to upload whatever non-profit project they wish before then.

The current system that we've got stifles creativity. Fan content is done the large majority of time as a passionate endeavor, specifically because it's not being done for profit. Affording companies/creators total impunity in what they allow/don't allow is giving them too much power over other people's expression.


Sonic Robo Blast 2 has one of the best versions of Mario that I've ever played as. To the extent that at times it almost feels like it was made to be a Super Mario game rather than a Sonic one. Like, seriously. If you download the game, make sure that you also download this mod to go along with it.

...Oh, and if you want to download any mods for this game in general, you should always download from the SRB2 forums, so as to avoid potentially contracting malware and whatnot.


I really wish that less fan game projects were advertised as heavily as they are. It feels like a lot of the big ones start releasing trailers/blog posts several years before they're due to come out, which means that they're basically painting onto themselves giant targets for the IP holders to shoot at. The only way that this would make any sense to me is if someone is making a spiritual successor that is merely heavily inspired by an IP, not an unofficial installment to something that is held in copyright. If people insist on advertising their work well before it comes out, then for the love of all that is good in this world, please do not choose to do so regarding a project even tangentially related to Disney, Warner Bros., Square Enix, or Nintendo.

Frankly, because of how awful the current ecosystem is for fan games, I would just generally prefer it if more people elected to develop spiritual successors instead. It would make for far fewer legal headaches, and depending on how closely someone stuck to the source material, the project could still capture the spirit of whatever property that it is emulating. Unfortunately, it seems as though people are a lot less likely to volunteer their time toward original projects versus fan media. And while I can get why (people have an attachment to the properties that they actually know, and are therefore willing to work for practically nothing; they don't know anything about an original property, and therefore don't want to sacrifice their time for something that they don't have much attachment to), it's still disappointing in that it means so many fan efforts tend to get shot down before they get the chance to really spread their wings.


No, Nintendo does not have to take down fan games to maintain their trademarks. No company does, as a matter of fact. Let me just copy/paste this post that I left on Spacebattles:

"Whether or not people are fine with the existence of fan games or not is their own business. But I really wish that there were less defenders of Nintendo's take-downs who peddled erroneous lessons on how trademark law works. Or even more ridiculously, copyright itself.

Just to set the record straight: It wouldn't matter if Nintendo allowed 10,000 different Super Mario fan games to be produced; they would be in no danger of losing their trademark to this flagship franchise. As evidenced by the fact that there are literally thousands of such fan games in existence that have never been formally cease and desisted. Super Mario, as a brand, is in no danger of ever getting dissociated from Nintendo - the two are indelibly linked. The only way for that to change would be if they allowed various companies to create Super Mario games with none of the settings/characters relating to their own series of the same name. And copyright cannot be lost whatsoever until a specified time period has elapsed, which Nintendo is far from fulfilling.

The only two reasons that Nintendo takes down fan games is because they believe such endeavors cut into their profits and/or dilute their brands. It's not because they're obligated by law to do any of it."


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