The thin red line, creativity in action or stealing?
Just a general question. Where does one draw the line between the creative process and just plain stealing an idea? As a newbie game developer I was just wondering about this. Is it ok to take an idea from someone in a forum like this and use/expand or modify it ? I am not talking about making an exact clone.
Comments
As an example, Pixel Boy is highly inspired by Diablo and Smash TV however when you look at the game you wouldn't consider it to be a Diablo clone. We did take the levelling up system and creature loot dropping ideas from Diablo however we added enough unique art and gameplay elements that people wouldn't consider us a clone. This is also due to the "aspirin" effect, this refers to when something has been used often enough and by as many people that it becomes considered to be owned by public domain, for example the idea of an RPG levelling system or an FPS camera perspective aren't thought to be stealing from D&D or Wolfenstein/Doom respectively but rather just things that "everyone" can use.
If you look at COD and Battlefield, they are practically the same game (in terms of mechanics and setting) however the depth of both games and subtle differences make them "unique" products).
However the simpler a game is the more difficult it becomes to mirror mechanics and still make your game seem unique, for example it would be very different to make a platformer which takes many elements from Super Meat Boy and make it feel entirely unique.
So this leaves you with the some questions :)
Which idea for this forum do you want to "take" ;)
How much do you plan on changing said idea?
Do you believe you can really improve the idea? or do you simple want to recreate it in your own vision (imitation is the most sincere form of flattery)
Hope that helped.
EDIT: SORRY!
1) Have you openly talked about the idea that was "inspired" by the other person?
2) To that person who inspired you?
2) If you haven't, why not?
3) Do you feel like you're copying or creating?
This all comes down to how you feel about it yourself, at the end of the day. Of course if you're talking about legalities and such, well, then it's even more imperative to be open about it from the get-go.
And if you're not (open about it from the get-go) and you're wandering if you're gonna get sued, then you probably should get sued. I believe that people know intrinsically what could be construed as right or wrong. The rest is about fighting it or not.
Watch Everything Is A Remix here, you won't be disappointed: http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
My take:
There's no such thing as an original idea any more, no matter how much one's brain tries to be in denial about that. Everything is an iteration of something else. Some ancient person probably saw a rock rolling down a hill and a few iterations of that idea later, she invented the wheel.
Sometimes the iteration can be a bit too close to the things that you are drawing inspiration from, and then we're sliding into infringement territory, but as Tuism said it's for you to decide how you feel about it.
All 'n all, clones do not bother me too much, unless it's a blatant and obvious cash-grab, like those companies that rip off whatever Vlambeer does. Definitely be open about what inspired an idea though. My current side-project is very heavily inspired by a game I used to like, and recently I also discovered that it was preceded by another similar game I hadn't heard of.
What bugs me is mis-attributing. When people accuse games of being Minecraft-clones, when in fact Minecraft drew inspiration from Infiniminer. Or MMOs are being called WoW-clones, when WoW very heavily used the Everquest formula. And every single time a new space sim is announced, at least one commenter will call it an EVE rip-off, when the genre actually goes back as far as the late 1970s.
Another botherment of mine is when companies like EA/Bioware file patents for things like the Mass Effect dialogue wheel. Seriously?
1. If your only design activity is to directly copy what someone else did in (what you presume is) that situation, you're missing an opportunity to innovate and thus aren't creating new work.
2. If you wouldn't show off your project if someone who worked on what inspired it was in the room, you're copying, not creating.
Copying is fine for learning, but if you're selling something you copied, that's not cool.
I'm also not big on the "there are no new ideas" argument, that's patently false. Even if the new thought is just a way to arrange other ideas together differently, that's still a new thought. Yes, it might well be dangerous to assume without evidence that any specific thought you may have is necessarily novel to the entire planet (because you have no idea what other people have or haven't thought), but it's still new, even if only to you... And maybe it is indeed novel after all, except loads of people will start to try and figure out the sequence of thought that created it to make it explainable and thus, somehow, no longer novel.
I often see this argument used to justify avoiding attempts to be creative. That road leads to horrible practices like cloning (which I define as financially predatory copying in order to try and prevent an originator from accessing a specific market) and plagiarism (which is about claiming credit for an invention copied from someone else). We're pretty bad at talking about copying and inspiration as an industry, the number of really poor arguments due to terms being pressed into service in multiple ways annoys the crap out of me.
But, suffice to say: Even though we know all the words, we haven't written all the stories. And sometimes a new word is needed, it's the same with ideas. People just assume that a game is just one megalithic idea, I have no idea why.
The idea of that new order, that new story, that's a new idea in itself. There's this weird habit that people have around ideas - they keep thinking that an idea has to be all-encompassing, that an incremental change isn't an idea, only paradigm-shifting mega-events are valid ideas.
I think that's the core of what the "there are no new ideas" concept is actually about: Combating that specific misconception right when postmodernism first appeared. People were getting stuck not creating things because they couldn't come up with guaranteed paradigm shifts anymore, that had been eroded by the spread of information and the globalisation of art. So "there are no new ideas" comes along to make people not care that much - it's saying "look, don't worry about paradigm shifts, just make stuff!" and it's totally right in that.
It's just that these days it gets trotted out more often than not to justify a complete LACK of ideas (incremental or not) and make it okay just straight up copy everything. I mean, there are NO new ideas, right? Everything's already been thought of, so why bother? There's a big difference in how that concept impacts people depending on when they hear it in their creative career: Too early and it invalidates creativity and emphasises market capitalism; Later on it frees creatives from having to prove themselves with big ideas. I'm pretty certain we should stop leading with it ;)
I also find it interesting that the whole concept of incremental ideas isn't "legitimate" somehow. It's almost as though the incremental changes that processes like scientific discovery or evolution or experiential learning rely on are being systematically undermined in western culture by meme complexes that have vested interests in preventing coherent understanding of the world... Or something.
I think we all dislike clones, and I think we all know what's cloning and what's a synthesis of ideas.
Even those who do it, know. They just chose to do it anyway.
Where the phrase is being tossed around to excuse a lack of originality, I'm totally with you in that it's BS. There's no excuse for it; be creative or go home. But I do think the phrase can also be used to combat people who take that previous example - a novel use of old ideas - and pick them down to their bare components and say 'you're not being original'. I see it a lot; a game has elements of another game and despite being unique and creative in its own right, someone will call it on being a copycat using other people's ideas and will harp on about 'why can't you people just come up with something new?' not realising, or choosing to ignore, the fact that the concept they're commenting on is pretty novel itself. In that case, I think it IS a matter of 'it's how you tell the story'. Which again comes back to semantics - the story's either a new use of old ideas, or a new idea in itself because of the way it combines old ideas - and they're both the same thing.
I find it helps to just say "Oh, yeah, that story was just a new idea on how to combine a bunch of other ideas in a novel way, you're right, creativity is dead" and then make them pay for lunch.