Plagiarism in Bioshock?
Not sure if this article is entirely serious, but I’m fascniated by plagiarism and excited to hear it’s hit the game world (if indeed these accusations are real)… I mean anything to drive the game form a bit more towards more legitimate forms of expression, right?
Them jokes. This article comes to me by the always courageous, and come Saturday: a year older… Teo Fernandez. PC Zone Blog
You must be tired today Charles, because there is no way that article is serious. Unfortunately, thematic parallels don’t constitute plagiarism. If they did, Joseph Campbell should be cited as having discovered that every story, through out human history, essentially plagiaries the same basic theme(s).
If anything, Bioshock, is like a time-capsule anachronistic version of Atlas Shrugged, in theme (distopic), philosophy (objectivism) and style (art deco). In some ways, its almost satirical, since all that is offered is the absurdity of Andrew Ryan’s objectivism, and nothing contrary.
I also thought is was like a prettier, more cleaver version of Deus Ex, minus a plot.
Great game though!
A) It’s Charley, not Charles, in case you thought Charles Pratt wrote that.
B) You’re right, that article was not serious, it was only drawing fun parallels. I’m sorry you didn’t recognize the same facetiousness in my post.
c) Hal, are you a computer? Because if so you’re plagiarizing 2001!!!
Plagiarism in games: http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/17/scrabulous-under-fire-from-hasbro-mattel/
I’m very interested in the whole Scrabulous incident actually. Hasbro/Mattel are claiming that it violates their intellectual property, but in what way I wonder? As far as I know game mechanics do not fall under the definition of IP (though they can be patented I believe). Scrabulous is clearly a knock-off, but is it being sued because it looks the same and has a similar name, or because it WORKS the same? The latter could have serious implications for the entire industry.
To Charley:
I did miss the facetiousness in your post. I’m really bad at detecting human humor over the internet. Apologies for confusing you with Charles, but you kind of are plagiarizing his name…
To Charles:
I was wondering the same thing. If they are claiming it has to do with the use of tiles with letters, being placed on the a board, won’t Sorry! be plagiarizing Monopoly then, by the same logic? Hell, won’t The Game of Life be the biggest rip off Monopoly ever?
They could be going after similarity in the “rules” though.
Rules are actually the crux of matter. Right now you cannot copyright rules, you can patent them from what I’ve heard, but that’s a bit extreme for most. My guess is that they’ll argue that it’s similar enough to dilute their brand and not that the rules are a rip-off. But if they did, and they won, it would seriously change the face of the industry, in my opinion.