Last week Our Zach Alexander pulled the still-warm corpse of the last round of !!CLONING scandal!! discussions from our collective freezer and got me thinking about it all over again. Channelling Mattie Brice as if by séance from earlier in the year, he discussed the ugly head-rearing of the double standards we often encounter when the contentious topic of cloning is raised. Both Alexander and Brice are quick to identify that decrying something as a clone is a heavily subjective act, and that how one approaches the debate and frames their standpoint within it is highly reflective of their ideals both politically and humanistically. I’d like to take their sentiments and step back just a little, if I may, and try to unpack the contradictions surrounding why it’s often, but by no means always, seen as damnable to wear inspiration on one’s sleeve.
The
examples of Flappy Bird and Threes! put forward by Alexander and
Brice are apt because they call into focus the two most contested areas of the
industry; namely hobbyist/ individual operations and the smaller-end of indie
development. It’s here where we encounter the incensed cries of “cloning!” most
readily and forcefully. With regard to Flappy
Bird, accused of nicking them pipes from Mario (and by extension all of our
childhoods), Brice notes that sole developer Dong Nguyen’s game didn’t stand a
chance against our collective outrage because, well, he’s foreign and his game
was perceived to be, like most “mobile [and] casual games, mostly just looking
to grab people’s money.” It mattered not that Nguyen had simply incorporated a
well-known visual motif from one genre into an entirely different one: he was
labelled as scum, so no one needed to listen any further.
Threes!, on the other hand, was the victim of a heavily
publicised ‘cloning saga’, and its predicament was treated very differently
than the outright dismissal levelled against Flappy Bird. As Alexander says, by virtue of it being “the product
of a Software Company, where the employees followed formal processes [developer
Sirvo] got to defend itself using their own design documents, in their own
voice, and on their own site.” Yes, they were the aggrieved party in this case,
but as Brice intimates throughout her piece (and states explicitly a couple of
times), they can also be considered a part of the publisher-driven big-budget
ecosystem of games “because they don’t threaten how big business works;
instead, they merge right in with it”, so were conspicuously given a lot more
scope to discuss the matter publicly. I’m not in a hundred per cent agreement
here, especially with the forcefulness of her assertion, but I do think the
general sentiment stands: developers at different positions within the industry
are perceived and therefore treated differently, creating a hugely unfair
spectrum of possible responses, rather than a uniform means of discussing
wrongdoing.
Examples of
this skewed vision of propriety can most readily be seen when we look to the
Triple-A space. Here mechanics are lifted wholesale from games and transplanted
unaltered into new products without
huge uproar and angry protest. Speaking in exclusively contemporary terms, many
popular/successful mechanical innovations of the last decade have been widely
appropriated by other developers and transposed onto an ever-expanding roster
of increasingly familiar-feeling titles. Cover mechanics
in third person shooters; time-rewinding in
driving games; experience-based
levelling in multiplayer shooters; Arkham
Asylum-style
fisticuffs;
meaningless or out of place RPG levelling and skill-trees in literally everything: there’s nary a marquee
feature of a financially successful Triple-A that hasn’t found its way into
other would-be financially successful Triple-As.
This
practice has created a cycle of good and/or novel ideas being introduced,
exploited, overused and then eventually - generally once revenues dip, rather
than when artistic fervour dissipates - discarded. These practices act not only
as examples of cheeky opportunism and profiteering, but also - in the long run
at least - as stiflers of genuine progress. This is also the case for those
series of games which endeavour to be annualised or at least long-running
franchises, but without the gameplay diversity/advancements to justify it and
prevent audience fatigue. In these situations it could be said that developers are in effect cloning their own game, which I reckon could easily be painted in
much the same - if not worse - light as a third party doing the plagiarising. These
common practices are, however, usually only met with jaded cynicism or snarky
passive-aggressiveness, if in fact they are viewed negatively at all. They are
certainly not widely met with the levels of anger that greet those
developers and games associated with genuine
(whatever that may mean) cloning.
I'd suggest that a lot of
this is a product of the amorphous nature of Triple-A development. While we may
well be aware of a few of the most celebrated individuals within it,
grand-scale video game production is largely a faceless endeavour - oftentimes
even for the employees themselves. This creates an environment where no one
is visibly accountable for anything, meaning instances of pilfering within this
stratum of the industry are left largely ignored by commentators. By this same logic, no individual is seen to suffer when
ideas get nicked; simply a development studio or publisher en-masse, so I think
this is widely perceived as a victimless crime, again justifying it being
ignored.
Take the perennial favourite dairy-booze, Baileys, as an example. Some mornings - the
ones where I'm up early enough for work, ALWAYS of a weekend - I have a coffee
with a shot of Irish cream in it. While Baileys is the oldest of such liqueurs
it now shares the shelves of British supermarkets with a load of knockoffs,
with some retailers selling two
ownbrand versions. I personally go for Lidl's
Dundalgan Irish Country Cream, because it's a third of the price and means
I can have a bottle in my fridge at all times and not just for special
occasions. Where’s the uproar here? The good people at Diageo spent (according
to Wikipedia) three (!) years developing the stuff, and now we’re happy to
stand by and let their creamy drunken-stupor-inducing
profits go to comestible highwaymen? The problem is, just like with video game
mechanics, there’s no solid legal precedent with which to protect a mixture of
milk and tangentially Irish spirits. Also, Diageo is a MASSIVE corporation so no one really gets hurt when their ideas get ripped off. We do, however,
get all caring and sharing when a baker
puts Marmite into a bun and then someone else does it a few years later
‘cos, like, she’s just one person so she needs our help.
The cake lady is, if you
hadn’t guessed, essentially the indie studio or solo developer in this story.
While one still mightn't know the name of every individual working within an
indie studio, their small size carries with it connotations of approachability,
honesty and a little more vulnerability. Furthermore, aspects of a game are
more directly attributable in the context of an individual or small team of
creators, so we actually have a tangible victim when something is pilfered.
This provides us with faces and lives to emotionally connect with; we can visualise these people as being like ourselves and so we empathise with them, unlike the great swathes of faceless desks
when thinking about larger developers. This added visibility works both ways,
of course, and in my estimation largely explains why most of the accused
perpetrators of thievery also come from
the smaller end of development. Again, it’s easier to single out a small group
or an individual for wrongdoing than simply pointing in the general direction
of a two hundred-strong team.
It’s unfair,
then, that mainstream video game communities - both those ensconced within the
media and the consumers of its various fruits - are quick to cry plagiarism
when it suits, while at the same time largely ignore mass-homogeneity in the
blockbuster space simply because it’s easier to defend - and pursue - the ‘little guys’. The imitation,
refinement, distillation, extenuation, homage and/or satirisation of works of
art has, and will continue to occur across the breadth of artistic mediums.
That critics and consumers have conspicuously, and often militantly, shown
their distaste for these practices only, in my opinion, highlights the relative
infancy of the medium. Likewise, the vitriolic backlash against individuals and
their creations once they are tarred with the brush of impropriety shows how
limited the vernacular is with regard to identifying and discussing any and all
cases of (mis)appropriation, whether they be warranted or not.
Ripping off games wholesale is
unacceptable to be sure, but at the same time the willing blinkeredness of many
commentators and consumers is also grossly unfair. Almost nothing about
mainstream video games is original at this point; where mechanics, settings,
basic narrative arcs and stylistic flourishes are routinely cribbed from
well-received games and then propagated throughout entire genres and beyond. Crucially,
though, this is largely the case for all
forms of modern, profit-focused, mass-market entertainment. The
unwillingness to address this aspect of video games makes it very difficult to
have any form of serious debate about the wide spectrum of issues that arise
from plagiarism in all its guises. As Brice said in February, “for money not to
affect design and coverage anymore would completely change the landscape of games,
both how we interact with and speak about them.” We can’t pardon one part of
the industry for the same crimes we put another to death for simply because
they are too large to be accountable. If we’re content with rehashed big-budget
then we surely must pardon the
transgressions of rogue operators and opportunists, regardless of their size or
the severity of their crimes. Doing otherwise would be hypocritical and
disingenuous, whether that sits easily with us or not. The only people who
suffer in this situation, however, are the individuals or small teams whose
livelihoods depend upon the sale of games our gluttony for mass-produced entertainment
won’t permit us to protect.
Until we get to a point where we’re finally unhappy with our annual splurge of reheated
Triple-A terrine we’re all just pigs in muck, suffering and savouring in equal
measure. We must either decide that mechanics, ideas and creativity in general
are like the three-point seatbelt - that is, owned by no one for the benefit of
everyone - or, that they are sacred and protected - morally, if not legally -
and belong entirely to their creators. While this wouldn’t preclude anything
from the borrowing of ideas to the thievery of whole games, it would at least allow us a level playing field
on which to discuss any and all forms of ‘cloning’. As long as the cost of
creating Triple-A games continues to rise, though, this will never happen of
course. Budgets of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars prevent much
risk-taking, so we’re essentially at an impasse until there’s a fundamental
change in consumer tastes. All that is left for us, then, is to calm the
effing-jeff down until the rare occasions where something genuinely filthy occurs, because there’s dirt everywhere at the
minute: we’re just not very willing to look at it most of the time.
If you
don’t want to force me into a life of nicking games and flogging ‘em down
Walthamstow market, maybe consider reading the rest of this paragraph. I’ve set
up one of them Patreon pages wot a lot of other writers have got themselves
these days. If you like my thought process and fancy helping me legitimise my
type of video game criticism to a terribly unsupportive girlfriend and the
wider world, then please consider a small donation to my peerlessly altruistic
cause. It resides here: patreon.com/ashouses.
Chrz.
