Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#51

Post by glomph » Thu, May 23, 2013, 2:22 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #49

thenomad wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who also happen to be the people putting the most time and effort into producing entertaining, watchable Let's Plays, and generally are the people who have the biggest audience. I've seen the chilling effects of this sort of thing before, in the Machinima world, and you'd be amazed how much damage removing or limiting the top creators in the chain can do.

It's analogous to Girl Talk having to clear samples of other artists' work to produce his records. Yeah, there are artists who don't clear samples, but those records are released as white label (for fear of legal action), or, they remix the samples such they they are unrecognizable (by mechanical means). This is just the sampling argument all over again. I don't see why it should be different. The real question here…

You talk like the whole world agreed that having to clear samples was a good thing for the music industry.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#52

Post by jakerocheleau » Thu, May 23, 2013, 2:22 PM UTC

criley wrote: post #46

jakerocheleau wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was such a solid analysis through-and-through. I feel that so many companies are getting real antsy and feel the need to grab for complete 100% ownership over all creative rights for everything with no leeway whatsoever. We, the people who actually pay for & consume these games, have no right to redesign or modify or record or promote anything without their consent - which would probably be denied most of the ti…

>From my point of view, it's just very difficult to continue supporting the video game industry anymore. Don't judge an industry by it's rotting old guard. Nintendo has been making blunder after blunder for quite some time and does not represent gaming as a whole. Reddit has helped built a list[1] of studios and publishers who have given permissions for LPers to make videos, and the list is pretty comprehensive. Tons…

Certainly a valid argument, and thanks for the link I will check it out.

I haven't played many games since the early 2000s and I feel a bit like an old geezer stuck in the mentality of "back in my day..."

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#53

Post by DanBC » Thu, May 23, 2013, 3:30 PM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #38

DanBC wrote: post #10

It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. People aren't going to go to the trouble of recording Let's Plays without getting any kind of ad revenue from it. So people aren't going to bother recording Nintendo games anymore. And they can just delete all the Nintendo videos they already have up. So now Nintendo doesn't have anyone promoting their games (for free to Nintendo) and…

> Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. Maybe the reasoning is that this is not very beneficial to Nintendo, since most of their games are visually at most a "Meh".

...but that's even more reason to view someone actually playing the game rather than just looking at screenshots.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#54

Post by fhd2 » Thu, May 23, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #22

fhd2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Definitely not nice, but stupid? I'm not sure about that. I have some doubts that Nintendo (being usually very good at not making their community angry IIRC) would do this without reason. Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up? I can't imagine they wanted a PA article on this though.

>Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up? Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken dow…

> Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken down entirely.

Maybe someone thought it'll make folks take their LPs down themselves without making much of a fuzz? But I admit it's not a very likely scenario.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#55

Post by LanceH » Thu, May 23, 2013, 6:23 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #47

LanceH wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original work is an interactive piece of software. The videos in question are people showing what can be done with something which is copyrighted. They videos don't provide any ability to play the game. The games are only being played by a single person. There is no copy of the game being made. A running commentary of a single played instance of a game is entirely different than sitting down with a controller in…

The audio/visual aspect is kept. Interactive gameplay is simulated. The person watching gets to see the story unfold. It's clearly a derivative work, the question is where does the line stand and does making a LP cross it? And that's a huge problem with copyright law, it's so grey in so many areas. If the exact situation hasn't been defended in court, it's unclear whether or nothing something is legal.

The story playing out is one thing that makes it a tough call where the line could be drawn.

What if it isn't a RPG? What if we're talking about a video of mario kart?

If I bought a physical Nintendo chess set, I don't think anyone would claim a video of my gameplay would be Nintendo's property. By extension, a video of me playing a virtual nintendo chess game with my commentary should still be mine, after all, the story is being written by the players. I think that's fairly analogous to a commentary of a mario kart game.

Now it gets interesting with a role playing game like zelda perhaps. I certainly have a right to produce a gameplay from it. Do I have a right to record it? Why not? How is it really any different that recording a play with a physical object, something which is done every day. Nintendo may have the storyline, but they didn't create the actual play. That is a result of an authorized use of the game. Player runs over here, picks up a sword -- that's something the player did, not Nintendo.

I think in the end it boils down to what the lawyers can convince a judge is true, rather than what can be proven or what is the law.