As a wise man once said:

"Oh my god that guy.... That guy stealed my FF7 facesets. I'm so writing on the forums about this"  ​

What the hell? you say? It's all related to a little inspiration I had before:

It occured to me today that there could be some interesting (perhaps heated) debate regarding resources and their ownership. I was about to set up a new project in RM2000 to create a mini-game in a semi-futuristic setting and considering that there are a lot of those around the devil on my left shoulder says "Hell, why not just open someone else's project, delete the maps and start afresh without having to assign passage and priorities to all the goddam tiles". This is when the mental debate kicked in.

A lot of games that are knocking about are compiled rips of commercial games that people often claim ownership to (possibly because they ripped the graphics themselves). Is using someone else's rips plagiarism? Possibly more of a requisite to give credit where credit is due but thinking about it - do they have the right to claim credit for the graphical material, given that it isn't their own work? Furthermore, using the graphics from another indie project (Say I were to make my own game using Wilfred The Hero's graphics - a very custom game) is that any worse than using the graphics from a commercial game?

A commercial game is faceless. You don't know who made the graphics and they most likely don't know that you're using them which is why I guess it doesn't seem as bad but in reality taking graphics from a game commercial or not, isn't that the same?

I am very hungover and I'm sure you'll find many a flaw in my logic but that's what this article is for! Discuss away!

 

yah the RPGmaker scene in particular is so appauling with this it's beyond a joke. People are taking game's graphics, theire characters... and their systems and yet still get in a huff saying that other people are copying their game. The characters if not using Cloud's graphics are mostly Cloud in personality, then he'll most likely have a swordfight with silver haired badguy. I think someone said it best in the Big-Goku topic (though totally said it in defending virtually the same as what he's arguing against) that Plagiarism is  the worst thing you can do in the amature gaming community. This includes making fangames and essentialy copying official games. This includes stealing systems from games. This includes using other games graphics. This includes using other games characters but RENAMED.
People here want their games to be taken seriously, yet don't seem to put any serious effort into them, they just copy and steal from whatever and whereever they can. But hey the G&D crowd have the worst case of double standards ever. You can steal and use graphics from games people have worked hard over that earned money, but you can't from games which haven't earned money. You can claim ownership to graphics you ripped (with effectively no effort unless you're a retarded 10 year old bonobo with microsoft paint), yet you ignore the real ownership andshit.
It's totally pathetic, and I do wish GW would have a much firmer stance on the whole THE RPGMAKER SCENE IS FULL OF THIEVES AND LAZY UNORIGINAL TALENTLESS SHITS thing, because it's doing nothing to help our reputation. Like I dunno something simple like "you claim ownership to a rip, you get a major warn because you are a lying, thieving cunt".

Don't get me wrong, I can see that making sprites or composing music can be tricky... but making games to get respect of any real kind is hard work, and by removing the lazy ways out it'll force people to work together more, become a tighter community and help get more solid games done. Lots of members join here and say they wanna make games as a career... Here's a little bit of advice for ya buddy, making a FF7 fangame on a pirated program using graphics and music you ripped or (stole from some other thief) is gunna get you nowhere.
Basically guys you're digging yourself in a further grave by making crap with stolen goods. Do yourself a favour and try and make something yourself for a change. It's by practice that you get better, and you end up getting so much more control over what you're making because you get to rely on your imagination instead of what crap's come from the metaphorical broken shop window.

A lot of this has changed, though.  I don't want this to turn into a LOL CIRCLE JERK FORUM SUCKS topic, but the standards of G&D have gone up indefinitely in the past 2 years than they have ever before because game makers ARE taking the time to make custom resources and stuff.  My old game Homeland was praised for its original graphics and music and around that time other games like Rainbow Nightmare, Grave Spirit, Sunset over Imdahl, The Way (which still had some rips but mostly originals), and other projects were coming out that had original content.  Even with games that don't have original content like our star player Barkley Gaiden, the creators never claim that the resources are theirs like people in the past used to (such as Bob the Taco who specifically marked his name on every tileset he ripped).

N00bs call us "elitist" for our stand on ripped content but it has gotten much much much better than it used to be.  A lot of rippers from other communities would bitch about RPG Advocate "stealing" rips, removing the names from the sets, and then uploading them to his website free for download.  There were even some rippers that would encrypt their games but Advocate ended up hacking them and placing the rips anyways.  Seriously, encrypting ripped graphics.  How big of a fucking faggot can you get???

So yeah, we GW'ers have become pretty big assholes when it comes to games and the quality of them has improved immensely since then.  As far as using resources from OTHER people's projects, almost everyone who makes this stuff has said it's open content.  Theodore (the guy who made all those awesome modern tilesets) said his tiles are free of use, you don't even have to credit him, he just doesn't want the resources hosted on another site.  Teo has said that all of his graphics are 100% free of use.  TFT (I don't know if it was a joke or not) said in his topic that you could use any graphics from his game.  Hell, even I got 6 or 7 requests in the past year for someone else to use Homeland graphics and I'm like "don't care dude go wild" because it's honestly that big of a deal for me.  It's flattering that someone else enjoyed my work so much that they actually want to use my shit and I could care less that my name appears anywhere.

I think a "ripped by" credit would be okay, but definitely not "created by" or anything like that.  Yes, people take the time to rip graphics, and that does warrant some recognition.  But ripped graphics are NOT AT ALL copyrightable, not even fake copyrightable, whatever that means.  Therefor, it can't be called plagiarism.  A ripper cannot claim ownership of previously copyrighted material without written consent. 

The debate shouldn't be whether it's called plagiarism or not, but whether the ripper should get a "ripped by" credit.

I think crediting someone for ripping is pretty much like giving equal praise to the guys who made the original game and the guy who gave you a KEYGEN so you can play the game for free. Especially as the people will rarely credit the actual game the sprites came from.
I don't think ripping is in any way creditable. But edits of rips are, because even if the base material is stolen images, the edit in itself is a creative modification of it. (By edits I don't mean color swaps obviously)

But as its ever so likely that in the case of edits, the editor will be credited but not the creator of the actual sprite, id say fuck the editors too.

Now this is sort of a pointless debate in a sense because commercial game sprites are usually pretty recognizable, and people will simply assume that if they see a sprite in both a commercial game and an RPGmaker one, the former will be the original.

But as for ripping from other indie developers, the problem becomes real. If you stole images from say, Wilfred the hero, and your game became more popular than Wilfred, people could assume that YOU are the original creator of these images. Even if you never claim you have made them. The original author will be called a thief, and you will be praised for your great work. Thats where credit becomes crucial.

I think crediting someone for ripping is pretty much like giving equal praise to the guys who made the original game and the guy who gave you a KEYGEN so you can play the game for free. Especially as the people will rarely credit the actual game the sprites came from.
I don't think ripping is in any way creditable. But edits of rips are, because even if the base material is stolen images, the edit in itself is a creative modification of it. (By edits I don't mean color swaps obviously)

But as its ever so likely that in the case of edits, the editor will be credited but not the creator of the actual sprite, id say fuck the editors too.

Now this is sort of a pointless debate in a sense because commercial game sprites are usually pretty recognizable, and people will simply assume that if they see a sprite in both a commercial game and an RPGmaker one, the former will be the original.

Yeah, come to think of it, that's a good point. 

But as for ripping from other indie developers, the problem becomes real. If you stole images from say, Wilfred the hero, and your game became more popular than Wilfred, people could assume that YOU are the original creator of these images. Even if you never claim you have made them. The original author will be called a thief, and you will be praised for your great work. Thats where credit becomes crucial.

I've personally never seen this happen, but that really sucks for the actual creator.  In this case, the only person who deserves credit for the images is the original creator.  This is why you usually see credits on chipsets in rm2k games, and that's totally understandable. 

The only problem is that the indie developers really can't do much about it other than complain.  I'm only speaking of RPG Maker games here, but these games are free, so how can anything be enforced?

Well if the new character is so original and different that the base character it was made from isn't even recognizable anymore, there is never a problem to begin with.
But I don't think its really an important question here, I mean someone who is able to modify one of these characters to such a creative extent probably could make them from scratch just as well(if not better), so in this case choosing to modify an existing one instead is just being very lazy. I sort of doubt a simple editing can be as original as this though, most people only bother color swapping or mixing different heads with different bodies or whatever, which are both hardly creative enough to warrant credit.

These kinds of rules cant really be "enforced", since well, its an indie game community. No one is making money here, its just people making games together and showing them off to each other. Its more of a personal morals thing I guess?
I mean it could be enforced as far as community goes, like say people who steal art could be BANNED, but that wouldn't really help the community in the end, we would just lose people who would otherwise bring new creations to our ever-growing pool and just happen to not wish to take the time to draw all of their games' visuals, wishing to go straight to the design and implementation part of game creation.

We should simply encourage people who decide to give credit where it is due , and naturally encourage people to also try to do everything themselves, which usually makes very interesting results regardless of how talented they are at it.
Personally I think games where all resources are original are usually much more refreshing and interesting than games with the best ripped graphics. Even if the author isn't very talented yet as far as pixel art and music composing goes, the game will give nice stylistic vibes and also feel genuinely "indie". Also people who take the time to make all of their visuals and music WILL get much better at it eventually, and probably much faster than they'd think.

This is something that has been discussed before, and I'm familiar with it.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with using copyrighted or ripped resources for your indie game, for that simple reason; it's an indie game. I can't speak for anyone else, but I just make games as a hobby; it's a fun little diversion from the rigors of everyday life. Sure, I take it seriously enough where I want the product to be good, the plot to be engaging, and the game to be fun, but I don't have any moral qualms about using ripped material, because just like most other RPG Makers, I just make and play games for fun. It's not a professional endeavor or a serious attempt. If one feels that using a FF6 chipset or a Rudra character set will make their game more fun or appealing, by all means, they should go for it.