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I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

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Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#311

Post by Jarwain »

Never before has the HN hive mind bubble been so clear to me as in this comment thread, and I find it kinda fascinating.

What I find really interesting, though, are parallels to complaints I've heard from artsy friends about Lensa (which is trending on social media for being a stable diffusion (variant?) model used for generating portraits of a person in various styles).

Essentially, the problem is that the model was trained on a bunch of copyrighted art scraped off the internet.

Essentially, the same problem with github's copilot being trained on open source copy left code.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#312

Post by cobertos »

Jarwain wrote: post #292
lelanthran wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He mentions that there were only five people actually on the actual dev team _at launch_? How would he know? From his own account, he was nothing more than a contract supplier who supplied one single thing. He claims that they were friends, but his own account of the whole mess shows that that isn't true.

It was reasonably public knowledge at the time, iirc. The dev team was not very big at launch. That said, I'm kinda curious about what roles the other ~25 staff had in such a small team. HR and legal and such I guess?

I'm super curious on this too. I imagine at least a couple community managers and a PR person. So much of game dev is your community. Maybe a branding artist. Web dev for the website/java applet integration. It sounds like they were pretty well structured capital wise so definitely someone in payroll/accounting. But that's _still_ not 25.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#313

Post by erklik »

operator-name wrote: post #204
FamosoRandom wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really interesting to compare both general opinion on HN and on this subreddit. On HN, a place probably filled with technical guys, people are generaly putting themselves in dev shoes. They are accusing the author of feeling entitled to more money because he felt like he was part of the team and that he think his work is equaly important as the work of everyone else. Devs being devs generaly know that coding…

It's a bit sad because I think many here are missing the lesson to be learnt - artists want to be treated as artists (with emotion rather than rationality). When you treat them as cold hearted rational contractors, this kind of mess occurs. I'm reminded of a similar event with the Doom soundtrack https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-d...

> artists want to be treated as artists (with emotion rather than rationality).

That doesn't make any sense. When you treat people with "emotions" ... this is the issue. Emotions are unclear, confusing and are different for everyone. Treating people based on emotions and feelings just results in inequality and confusion for everyone. This the perfect example where if treated it as a rational and business transaction, he would have come out on top. It's his emotions, and the fact that he created some sort of friendship for which he accepted "less" money is his fault. If he treated the issue rationally and sent it to this agent, he would be far happier today.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#314

Post by djur »

salawat wrote: post #288
Karellen wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? Because they believed (erroneously or not) that they already had paid for the thing the contract was about, and were offering a "peppercorn" payment for the signature itself to make the exchange complete. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)

...and people wonder why I think contract law is as damn close to a poson pill as you can have in something brazenly referred to as a justice system.

What's objectionable about this specific example of contract law? If the law didn't require contracts to have some consideration they would have offered $0. No real difference.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#315

Post by bambax »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

That last quote is damning. The game works well without an ending poem -- or an ending, for that matter.

I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set.

That said, the rant, while much too long is interesting and explains well the misunderstanding between business people and artists. Some artists are good at business (Picasso) but most aren't because they speak a different language, and because, like this guy, they cultivate and probably enjoy ambiguity, or the protection and shadows it brings.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#316

Post by mananaysiempre »

Gigachad wrote: post #223
nmfisher wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my reaction too, 20,000 (euros) seems quite decent for a tiny freelance engagement, and just skimming the contract, that all seems bog-standard, too. If he didn't think the money was fair, he shouldn't have accepted it. I expect Mojang would have simply pulled the plug and gone with someone else if he had done so. This really just smacks of sour grapes that Mojang was sold for squillions and the author feels…

Yeah looking at the contract, it seems exactly like the kind of thing you’d want to have for content in a game. It removes all complexities as you may need to edit or do whatever to it years later. Imagine if all the developers expected to both be paid to write code and still own the rights to the code.

> Imagine if all the developers expected to both be paid to write code and still own the rights to the code.

Developers are accustomed to giving up all artistic agency and authorship, and those who can’t bring themselves to do so give up on being developers. (I’m partly in the latter category.) Thankfully, that isn’t (yet?) as ubiquitous among writers.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#317

Post by sgu999 »

larsnystrom wrote: post #177

This is a bit of tangent, but I see this: > Let a thousand flowers bloom. This phrase is sorely misunderstood. This was a way to lure out opponents of Mao Zedong, by opening up for public criticism of his rule. Then, when he knew who opposed him, he could brutally suppress and/or execute them. I don't think that is what the author of the this article wants to convey. Or maybe it is, and his next step will be to launc…

Tangent to your tangent, I had Adam Curtis' voice in my head while reading this post.

"... and Julian Gough found himself there, at the corner of the 21st century, thinking he had made a friend while his emotions were crushed by limitless capital growth"

Curtis, whose coverage of the cultural revolution is a work of art.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#319

Post by account-5 »

wikfwikf wrote: post #244
account-5 wrote: post #214

I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout other people who worked on the game got after the buy out. Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would. But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to…

a) Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? Clearly, the success of these products is largely correlated with the success of the game rather than the importance of what he wrote. b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any di…

a) I'm not the author so can't comment on what they really expect. But since they released the work under CC I'd suggest nothing, other than recognition, and based on the post after they finally realised their true reason for being hurt, I think it was also about being treated correctly and with respect.

b) INAL, but in the UK: "you automatically get copyright protection when you create: original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography original non-literary written work... ". Assuming it's similar around the world there's nothing dubious about their claim, they didn't sign it away.

Regardless of your opinion of the person or their motives it seems they are within their rights to do what they've done.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#320

Post by ChrisRR »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #41

That's a lot of anger, negativity and bitterness, and entitlement (one of the game's creators for writing the ending text?). Reminds me of the kid on the cover of the Nevermind album and other people that are kinda tangentially connected to something massively successful, but not connected enough to benefit materially, and they let that define who they are and ruin their lives. Could have been a neat personal story,…

I feel like the Bayonetta voice actress has really brought this kind of behaviour to light recently. People who have minor contributions to large franchises and then think that their part was way more influential than it was.
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