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One thing that I've noticed is that GW is popping up lots of little part-time stores in small-medium sized towns that aren't already catered for. They run rather nonstandard hours, though - 12-4ish. I'd have expected them to roll their hours round to 1-9, run an event every evening as a showpiece and sell bucketloads of plastic fitin' mens to the people who come. They must have a good reason. 
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Jan 19, 2014 15:01
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I'd say that while GW is still the single biggest wargames company in the UK by a long way, certainly with the kids, it has lost a lot of groupnd on the older gamers who aren't as enthused with new armies, use ebay a lot, and who are willing to try new things. With clubs more important in the meta than stores in the UK then it is whatever you can guarantee a pick up game of at your local club that will do best. But also Jervis is right when he says most miniatures that get sold never see a tabletop. If people don't game with them and simply collect and paint an army, then it doesn't matter what the local scene is like.
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Jan 19, 2014 15:02
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I think GW's problems are pretty self-inflicted, and not in the "they treat vets badly" sort of way. The primary issue is their seeming inability to take people's money in exchange for product. Even excluding the specialist games and bits (the latter which I'm not sure made them much money) just the "core" GW stuff (40K & WFB boxed sets) are getting harder for shops to get. Basic plastic kits like Kroot (a common part of Tau armies) and Wave Serpents (a common Eldar troop transport), and all finecast after the initial wave are now not part of the standard stocking plan. What this means is that a) the margin for an FLGS is lower on this stuff, and b) when it does arrive it's in an ugly nondescript box with a small label in the corner, making it an eyesore on the shelf. Hell, the Kroot just now come in a plastic bag. And it doesn't even force people into GW's shops, because that stuff isn't there and supposedly you can't special order from a GW shop anymore (can't test this since there's no local GW to me) It's like they're actively trying to not sell parts of their lines, which makes zero sense to me-- if these things had to be designed it would be one thing, but they had these boxes up until a few months to a year ago, and these products didn't change after their books where released (i.e. same models same counts since they were created) The box art doesn't match the new stuff GW is putting out, but neither does the blank white box, so there's no difference there. If you're selling something that's as visual as a miniature, doesn't putting a picture on the box make sense, especially since the design work has already been done and the money spent on it? Actively trying to not sell certain boxes is something that makes zero sense to me, and can't be good for their bottom line. The squatting (cancellation) of a couple of WFB lines (Bretts, Khemri, Beastmen) is rumored and sucks, but at least that means you're cutting out lines that don't sell, vice not selling half the line you already have in production.
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Jan 19, 2014 16:35
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thespaceinvader posted:Buy a starter set. Warmahordes is all over the place at my FLGS along with Mantic stuff.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:32
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Kerbtree posted:They run rather nonstandard hours, though - 12-4ish. I'd have expected them to roll their hours round to 1-9, run an event every evening as a showpiece and sell bucketloads of plastic fitin' mens to the people who come. I typically assume they are primarily making money online, running the business as a hobby, buying their personal figures or magic cards wholesale, bad at business, or some combination of those things. Once in a while you get a "dad bought me a store and I helped plan it!" place, and that's kind of the worst.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:54
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moths posted:I typically assume they are primarily making money online, running the business as a hobby, buying their personal figures or magic cards wholesale, bad at business, or some combination of those things.
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Jan 19, 2014 18:34
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FMguru posted:Ohhh, those places. Yeah, they're just storefronts so the owner can barely meet the requirements for being allowed to order at wholesale prices for his personal collection/friends in his club. This is a direct policy from the top of GW though- to spread out their presence as much as possible with one-employee shops, and, well, mostly irregular hours. You've got GW shops in towns that really can't support one, and making no effort to provide anything but presence because they are allergic to any sort of rational policy when it comes to other shops selling their products. There usually one overworked employee, responsible for everything, and without the ability to engage customers or attempt to run demonstrations or events or anything. When he's talking about these awful shops, we're talking official GW stores opened up by the management in Nottingham, not some nerd who is just bad at business.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:19
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Gravy Train Robber posted:This is a direct policy from the top of GW though- to spread out their presence as much as possible with one-employee shops, and, well, mostly irregular hours. You've got GW shops in towns that really can't support one, and making no effort to provide anything but presence because they are allergic to any sort of rational policy when it comes to other shops selling their products. There usually one overworked employee, responsible for everything, and without the ability to engage customers or attempt to run demonstrations or events or anything. Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper at that point to buy poster and TV ads if all they want is presence? It's not like the game stores stock half the poo poo in the catalogue or take special orders as-is.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:23
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper at that point to buy poster and TV ads if all they want is presence? It's not like the game stores stock half the poo poo in the catalogue or take special orders as-is. ...Yes. Yes it would.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:33
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If they've been doing that on a large scale in the UK, it could account for the loss of profitability all by itself. The startup cost of opening a storefront is not trivial and if they're not returning sales from doing so, that's a big loss maker.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:36
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That was apparently mentioned by GW's management. They were apparently expecting some degree of slow-down due to the changes in their distribution. They expect it to pick up again now that they've made the changes. We'll see how true that is.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:42
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Hell, here's a thing that completely wrecks GW's attempts to seek presence: they banned independent game stores from using GW models and photos in their own advertising, including using posters and things in a storefront. Even the lone FLGS in Iceland had to take down half their posters and part of their window display. They have a Warhammer display cabinet they're not allowed to label with the names of models or the name of the company that makes them. The only logos allowed in the store are the ones on the paint rack (fast being eclipsed by alternatives like Vallejo) and the ones on the actual boxes, and the trade deal changes every single year. GW has their cake and eats it too. Games Day is now a for-profit operation, which has killed it anywhere that isn't in the US or the UK (and when Games Day has zero tables for games to be played and all the models sold there are at retail price and are available just as easily through the online store on any other day without paying a fifty pound attendance fee to get in line, something is deeply off). The stores are opened to increase GW presence but are expected to hit sales targets across the board while not being allowed to stock half the GW catalogue and the stores are open at irregular hours and are under part-time management by people who are treated as eminently disposable units. Will this even shake this arrangement up? Who knows. e: Oh yeah and then there are the rumors that Fantasy is going to lose armies. I doubt it: They apparently have new sculpts for at least one of them and want to recoup costs (Wood Elves), so I think it's more likely that the armies on the "chopping block" (Wood Elves, Bretonnians, Beastmen) will see a new type of release from GW: All three armies in one book, all at once, with few actually NEW models for the line. And that will be the state of things going forward: much fewer new sculpts and models, but more concentrated releases. Cutting them entirely doesn't make sense to me at all, same as with the rumors that finecast is out. They'll instead try to leverage the models and sculpts they already have for all they're worth. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 19:52
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thespaceinvader posted:Buy a starter set. This is ... not my experience in the UK. My experience on the other hand is firstly that GW has more dedicated stores than the entire rest of the tabletop market (and I'll throw in both the roleplayers and the model railway buffs) combined. But no one over 18 goes in them because they are pitched to kids, and because they sell their games at RRP. On the other hand White Dwarf is normally on supermarket newsstands - and I can't say that for any other hobby mag. My second experience is that GW is the D20 of the tabletop gaming world. It's not very good. Everyone knows it's not very good. But it's what everyone knows. So ... just about any two middle class nerds in the UK have played some version of GW games at some point so they can settle on GW games as the lowest common denominator with a dose of the Sunk Costs Fallacy. Smart gaming stores are normally in the odd position of making the bulk of their money from GW games - but trying to subtly steer people to Other Stuff, whether Warmahordes, Flames of War, Malifaux, Dropzone Commander, or something else. Mostly because they don't want to be anything like as dependent on GW as they are especially when GW has a habit of saying "We have modified the contract. Pray we don't modify it further." (See the "No internet sales to Australia" a year or two back as well as other cases mentioned like "No using GW stuff to advertise"). RPGs? Unless you're Leisure Games (Angus Abranson was running Leisure Games while he founded Cubicle 7) or Orc's Nest (who are the only RPG store I'm aware of in central London) RPGs are a fundamentally low turnover piece of stock with low profit customers. They therefore normally get tucked into one small corner of the store where they don't take up a whole lot of floorspace because they are books. (Of course the sort of FLGS that's actually a gaming club taking advantages of a depressed economy and very low ground rents - as the one nearest where I live is - may be an exception. But they don't have much stock anyway).
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Jan 20, 2014 00:14
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Rulebook Heavily posted:e: Oh yeah and then there are the rumors that Fantasy is going to lose armies. I doubt it: They apparently have new sculpts for at least one of them and want to recoup costs (Wood Elves), so I think it's more likely that the armies on the "chopping block" (Wood Elves, Bretonnians, Beastmen) will see a new type of release from GW: All three armies in one book, all at once, with few actually NEW models for the line. And that will be the state of things going forward: much fewer new sculpts and models, but more concentrated releases. Cutting them entirely doesn't make sense to me at all, same as with the rumors that finecast is out. They'll instead try to leverage the models and sculpts they already have for all they're worth. I've heard this rumor too. Apparently Fantasy did pretty badly last year, so there might be some armies chopped off, or maybe merged with others. I know that one of my friends is dying for a new Bretonnian book, but he points out the problem is that there are very few Cool New Things you could add to an army that consists of knights and peasants. No real Big Expensive Model that might fit with them, and such. Another problem was Finecast: It was a horrible resin, prone to leaving holes in the models, very expensive, and it seems to have backfired badly on them. I believe there is no new Finecast stuff coming? I do believe that there are also more new games coming up and biting on GW's heels, especially given things such as Kickstarter. However, it's also been pointed out to me that people like using those miniatures as proxies/commanders in their armies and such. I can understand that! I certainly would like my Deadzone Marauder Rippers to sit in as meganobz for my 40k army. But while this is (or might be) true to a lot of people, its also giving other games exposure, and all it takes is somebody suggesting a game and seeing how people like it. Infinity, for example, has taken pretty well here, in the place where we play Warhammer the most.
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Jan 20, 2014 19:23
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Could someone point me to some pictures of these weird 1-person GW operations? I haven't set foot in a GW store since the 90s and I'd be really interested to see what they look like before they're all boarded up  e: vvv Well that sounds kind of neat and a lot less like the newspaper kiosk I was imagining. IrvingWashington fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jan 21, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 01:46
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IrvingWashington posted:Could someone point me to some pictures of these weird 1-person GW operations? I haven't set foot in a GW store since the 90s and I'd be really interested to see what they look like before they're all boarded up Just imagine a shelf of GW products that wraps around a rather small storefront. There's a table for painting, a table displaying the current starter sets (40k/Fantasy/LotR), and then 2 tables to play on. I actually like mine a lot because I work with the son of the manager and he's always doing his own projects. For the Tyranid release, he made his own version of Space Hulk, complete with magnetic doors on rooms that you could kick down with your fingers.
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Jan 21, 2014 02:01
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On the topic of wargames, how many out there don't have the painting aspect? I know there's HeroClix, but...well, putting models together and painting them is something that is really time-consuming and I'm not very good at it, but I want to be able to play some wargames, too. This feels like a market niche that just is not fulfilled right now.
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Jan 21, 2014 02:12
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IrvingWashington posted:Could someone point me to some pictures of these weird 1-person GW operations? I haven't set foot in a GW store since the 90s and I'd be really interested to see what they look like before they're all boarded up Here is the one in Altamonte Springs, FL - https://www.facebook.com/GWRenaissanceCentre You can kind of make out the layout in this picture - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=152603918147471&set=pb.147315565342973.-2207520000.1390267976.&type=3&theater It's kind of sad to see facebook updates about how the shop will be closed 2-3 for lunch or that they'll be closed on a random day due to only having one employee
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Jan 21, 2014 02:35
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Mors Rattus posted:On the topic of wargames, how many out there don't have the painting aspect? I know there's HeroClix, but...well, putting models together and painting them is something that is really time-consuming and I'm not very good at it, but I want to be able to play some wargames, too. This feels like a market niche that just is not fulfilled right now. The X-Wing game as well as Star Wars Attack Wing. Of these games X-Wing is the only one where the minis look halfway decent. All of the prepainted games are relatively light in comparison to their hobby counterparts though.
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Jan 21, 2014 02:40
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darkspider42 posted:Here is the one in Altamonte Springs, FL - https://www.facebook.com/GWRenaissanceCentre That's bigger than I thought it would be - kinda reminds me of the old GW in Hammersmith before they moved.
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Jan 21, 2014 02:40
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Mors Rattus posted:On the topic of wargames, how many out there don't have the painting aspect? I know there's HeroClix, but...well, putting models together and painting them is something that is really time-consuming and I'm not very good at it, but I want to be able to play some wargames, too. This feels like a market niche that just is not fulfilled right now. Along this line, how do people react to proxies in casual play?
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Jan 21, 2014 14:35
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BrainParasite posted:Along this line, how do people react to proxies in casual play? I haven't been to a gaming club where proxies are a problem at general games. In our club we tend not to allow too weird proxies (plain empty bases, elf riders for Chaos knights) at our tournaments though, as it's too easy to forget what your opponent is fielding, and you don't have the time to carefully go through your entire list. But using a bunch of Ogres because you don't own any Trolls should not be a problem unless you play against assholes, and then your problem is that you are playing assholes in the first place. As for unpainted wargames and staying on the topic of TG as an industry, paper miniatures are making somewhat of a come-back (Citadel Journal and White Dwarf used to have them in the olden days!), with several companies churning out new ranges all the time. These also happen to be a convenient way to proxy stuff to try them out before buying more minis: http://cardboard-warriors.proboards.com/
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Jan 21, 2014 15:31
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Regarding proxies, I've seen people deploy mostly square papers as armies + a few minis. Papercraft is a thing. I have no idea how you keep track of that tho.
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Jan 21, 2014 15:47
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Kerzoro posted:Regarding proxies, I've seen people deploy mostly square papers as armies + a few minis. Papercraft is a thing. I have no idea how you keep track of that tho. Just make squares on the paper with a ruler, and cross them off as your troops die off. It makes changing formations difficult though. For smaller scales, like 6mm and 15mm with several miniatures on each base, I just write the name of the troop type on the base if I'm proxying.
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Jan 21, 2014 15:49
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Eons ago I was doing a lot of 6mm Civil War and to make huge loving square formations easier to deal with and speed up set up we had cardbord square proxies.
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Jan 21, 2014 17:20
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For 15MM I use pieces from RISK sets glued to cardstock.
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Jan 21, 2014 19:14
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I played a game of Warhammer Fantasy with goon Oxford Comma where he wanted to try out the Empire army instead of his usual skaven. So we took a bunch of our movement trays and drew grids on them using wet erase markers. Easy to mark off casualties, and a change in formation just meant swapping out a different-shaped movement tray. It worked out fine. In friendly games, nobody cares if you do some proxying. We tend to proxy terrain a lot too (I like to use Lego). For games in a store, I can understand if they want you to mostly have painted models, because part of the reason they want you playing there is to show off the game to other customers, so it should be somewhat attractive to look at, and be an advertisement for products that they're selling. That said, I've only played at an actual Games Workshop once; at other game stores, nobody even bothered to come over and see what our armies looked like, much less comment on proxying, so I imagine it really depends on the particular store and their policies. Games at home, I'm fine and happy to use any stand in, even for an entire army or system, and I only play cool people who would never dream of having a problem with that. The one caveat is, I don't play 40k. In Warhammer Fantasy, or Epic, your army is composed of maybe up to a dozen formations, which isn't too hard to keep track of or remember. But in 40k, every model's exact equipment can be important (and can vary) so I could see it getting more unweildy if you're trying to play with like 50 tokens on each side and every token has to be uniquely tracked to keep track of their kit. Line of sight is also harder to approximate, if things like "is this guy tall enough to see over that wall" matter. Even in that kind of circumstance I think two friendly gamers can work something out, though. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jan 21, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 19:50
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In the kickstarter thread, prompted by a KS for a game that is "inspired by" the Miyazaki films and Studio Ghibli, I posted that the wording of the KS implied the game was heavily "trading on" the trademarks of Miyazaki/Ghibli and that that might be trademark violation. Alien Rope Burn posted: Alien Rope Burn posted:What are RPGs but a constant litany of literary theft? And I wanted to reply, but I think it belongs here. So... yes, RPGs constantly borrow from literature. But, that's OK, because literature constantly borrows from literature. Copyright says you can't just duplicate someone else's text or artwork, but copyright explicitly does not protect "ideas." So, you can't just copy a chapter of Lord of the Rings, but you absolutely can copy the idea of a fantasy world filled with orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, etc. Trademark protects the names and identifying symbols/logos used to market and sell products, services, and companies. Unlike copyright, you must register a trademark in order to own and protect it, and you must vigilantly protect your trademarks in order to retain them. So, it's completely OK to make a game that is inspired by the Miyazaki films, and it's also legal to make your own, original artwork, that duplicates the style of some other artist (although, legality aside, many artists regard that as a form of plagiarism: more on that in a moment). What is not OK is to mark or sell your product using someone else's trademarks. Of course there are permitted uses of other people's trademarks. For example, it's fine for me to advertise my cola product by saying "it tastes better than CokeTM!" Where the line is drawn by courts in the US, generally, is that uses of someone else's trademark that are likely to, or can be proven to, confuse customers as to the maker or origin of the product (that is, they might think the product is actually made or sold by the TM owner), or which "dilute" the TM owner's brand (by making it harder for customers to be sure when they buy a product that it comes from the TM owner), are considered infringement. Courts also consider things like intent, actual (provable) damages (like, did I sell 80,000 copies of a competing product under my competitors TM, and in the same quarter, my competitor shows a loss of sales approaching 80,000 units), and of course the validity of the original trademark (is my competitor's TM actually invalid because it's a copy of some other previous trademark, which the TM office missed). Sometimes IP disputes involve both copyright infringement and trademark infringement, and that can be a complex court case. But leaving aside the legal issues (which I think this game KS may or may not escape), there is an ethical issue which I think Alien Rope Burn is also getting at. Even if one is entirely within the law, surely it's wrong to just rip off someone else's hard work and profit off of it? Is it OK to draw a comic strip using Bill Watterson's artistic style, even if absolutely no connection to Calvin & Hobbes is otherwise being made, and the strip is indisputably legal? Is it OK to make a product whose attraction to the marketplace is plainly entirely due to someone else's works? Well, first, we should understand that copyright is, in principle at least, a "takings" from the commons. That is, the fundamental idea is that when humans create things, those things "belong" to everyone... but, in order to encourage people to create, copyright law reserves exclusive rights to the creator for a limited time, so that they can profit by their works. But the important thing is that everyone gets to have, and make use of, the ideas enshrined by those works: and that includes the inspiration, the fantasy, the life that artistic works inspire in us. There's also a concept of idea vs. expression, and it's critical to understand. Unique, original expressions of ideas are protected; but the ideas themselves are, and are supposed to be, free for everyone to use. I believe that this is a good thing. Tolkien's Middle Earth is a unique expression of an idea of a fantasy world with fantastic intelligent races in conflict; I think it's good that, from Tolkien, we've all been able to enjoy countless other artists' conceptions of fantasy worlds with intelligent races in conflict, provided each is a unique expression of that idea. If I want to write a story about elves, I'm not restricted - by law or by ethics - I just have to make sure that I'm not copying anyone else's unique expression of the idea of an elf. That said, there's a lot of uninspired, derivative crap out there. Frankly, elves are tired as gently caress. I'm far more interested in a fantasy world that has entirely new, novel kinds of intelligent beings in it, or maybe one with only humans, or maybe one with no humans at all. It's hard to completely escape the fantasy tropes and archetypes we're familiar with, because it's easy and convenient shorthand: dwarves aren't just short, their dour and hardy and they're good blacksmiths, and if that's a useful archetype for my story, I don't have to go too far out of my way to introduce them to my audience. As soon as they read the word "dwarf" they're going to start to get the idea. But, on the other hand, it's possible to be very creative with those archetypes. Dwarf Fortress's dwarves tunnel and work iron, but they have a unique character to them that is very different from the dwarves in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. So these familiar fantasy archetypes can be done, differently and well, if the artist exercises some creativity and is willing to do the work. I think an artist is on much rougher ground, when they target especially-different, unique work by some other artist, and then base their own work mostly or entirely on that other artist's ideas. Sometimes it can be OK, if they're adding in a new or unique element: "Cthulhu, but in Space!" is more OK with me, than just another unliscensed Cthulhu-based game that is entirely set within Lovecraft's original works. Hell, even while Lovecraft was writing, his contemporary (and long-time pen pal) Robert E. Howard was writing the Conan stories, and Lovecraft's influence led Howard to incorporate the ideas of crawling, betentacled monsters from beyond time, whose very sight can drive men insane. But there's a difference between having an idea inspired by someone else's idea, like Howard did, and what I'd call unlicensed fanfiction. I can write space stories and be inspired somewhat by Star Trek... but if I just take Rodenberry's characters and write a story about them doing a thing on the Enterprise, that's just theft. Even if nobody goes after me for it, even if there's a whole community of other people doing the same thing, and even if my unique expression of the "idea of Star Trek" might stand up in court... I think it stinks. It's evidence of a lack of creativity (make up your own drat characters) and bandwagoning (you're not reading it because it's good, you're reading it because it's Star Trek and you like Star Trek and want more Star Trek). So to get back to the games... I don't think that Miyazaki-inspired game is really the same as a Star Trek fanfic. Based on the summary provided, it's just a story game with childlike and mythical elements. Frankly it sounds extremely generic and simple to me, so it doesn't interest me anyway, but the real problem for me is the namedropping. Everyone loves Miyazaki films! Would this game be at all interesting, if the author didn't namedrop Studio Ghibli? What percentage of the backers or customers are coming to it because of the name? It'll be impossible to say for sure, but if I was Studio Ghibli, even if I didn't feel inclined to send a C&D, I'd feel like The Whispering Road was pretty clearly just someone trying to make money on the strength of my own brand. That sucks. We see this a lot in the gaming industry though, don't we? In the past year or two, I've seen several kickstarted games that included "not-Firefly" miniatures, Dr. Who police boxes, blatant substitutes for Games Workshop warhammer figures, and all manner of generic-Tolkien-fantasy games with absolutely no effort put in to making new or unique expressions of the ideas of elves and dwarves and hobbits. In a few cases my gut tells me it's kind of OK, and in a lot of cases my gut tells me it's really really bad. What do you guys think? Should we be holding more game makers accountable, making it more clear that, even if it's within the legal bounds of copyright and trademark law, their blatant ripping-off of other people's ideas is not acceptable to us? Or is that just a fool's errand, given how much appetite the market seems to have for products that reference (or outright duplicate) their favorite characters and settings?
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Jan 22, 2014 20:18
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Well you can make a painting 'inspired by Picasso' and sell it as 'inspired by Picasso' completely legally as long as you don't claim it is a 'Picasso'.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:35
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All of my games are inspired by 'games that are actually good' so...
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Jan 22, 2014 20:40
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Error 404 posted:All of my games are inspired by 'games that are actually good' so... Pfft, I publish proudly on the cover of my games "Inspired by Amber Diceless and Fatal"
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Jan 22, 2014 20:42
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To be clear, I think originality can be awfully overrated. It's valuable, but it's a tool, not a necessity. That being said, saying "This is the X game.", realizing you don't have the license, and instead saying "This is the X-inspired game." strikes me as  It's a lazy way to present your game, I think.If you're going to say, doing a wizarding school game, you can just outline that and it'll be clear what you're drawing from. I think the key is just be willing to do your own thing. I ran a superhero game a number of years back with a setting that had clear analogues for certain comic characters, but I never straight-up copied anything. To me, if you're going to do an "inspired" game, you're going to end up with something different. I think as long as you're not actually copy-pasting, things are fine. Projects like Rivet Wars, though, where they're doing direct lifts and literally just scratching out the name... that's a problem, both intellectually and morally. There's probably no way to stop or really discourage it as long as it drags in backers, save to inform the copyright holders. But, boy, it's really tiresome, particularly in the miniatures market.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:52
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In regards to the specific inspired-by-Miyazaki/Ghibli: this is, y'know, a handy guideline to the tone. Like, there is a tone associated with Studio Ghibli works. Describing your game as inspired by Miyazaki and Ghibli and trying to emulate Ghibli films makes it clear what tone you're going for, that would not be clear by just presenting an anime game without explanation on the inspiration. Anime's a wide spectrum, and a Miyazaki-inspired anime game is going to be worlds different than, say, a Gen Urobochi-inspired one or a Go Nagai-inspired one or a Gainax-inspired one.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:56
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Golden Sky Stories somehow managed to convey what it was about without ever using the names 'Ghibli' or 'Totoro'.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:19
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Barudak posted:Pfft, I publish proudly on the cover of my games "Inspired by Amber Diceless and Fatal" So instead of rolling for dick length and circumference you have to have an auction with the other players at the beginning of the game to determine whose character has the biggest dick?
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Jan 22, 2014 21:21
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inklesspen posted:Golden Sky Stories somehow managed to convey what it was about without ever using the names 'Ghibli' or 'Totoro'. Same with Ryuutama.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:21
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I would have jumped on a game that had 'Ghibli-inspired' on it in a heartbeat. I almost didn't get into GSS because it didn't.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:28
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Mr. Maltose posted:Same with Ryuutama. Ryuutama used the term "Hayao Miyazaki's Oregon Trail", but second-hand. Sefer posted:So instead of rolling for dick length and circumference you have to have an auction with the other players at the beginning of the game to determine whose character has the biggest dick? It's a game where the if you roll a big dick the GM is instructed to make you feel impotent.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:28
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So what exactly was rivet wars ripping off? It's not that I don't believe you, I just am not up to speed on it.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:24
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Mors Rattus posted:In regards to the specific inspired-by-Miyazaki/Ghibli: this is, y'know, a handy guideline to the tone. Like, there is a tone associated with Studio Ghibli works. Describing your game as inspired by Miyazaki and Ghibli and trying to emulate Ghibli films makes it clear what tone you're going for, that would not be clear by just presenting an anime game without explanation on the inspiration. Anime's a wide spectrum, and a Miyazaki-inspired anime game is going to be worlds different than, say, a Gen Urobochi-inspired one or a Go Nagai-inspired one or a Gainax-inspired one. inklesspen posted:Golden Sky Stories somehow managed to convey what it was about without ever using the names 'Ghibli' or 'Totoro'. Humbug Scoolbus posted:I would have jumped on a game that had 'Ghibli-inspired' on it in a heartbeat. I almost didn't get into GSS because it didn't. OK, I can see that there's definitely a market of people who want a Ghibli-inspired game. The question I'm raising, though, is: is it ethical for just anyone to make that game? Or shouldn't it be up to the owners of Studio Ghibli, to decide whether or not they want their name on an RPG, and if so, which game? It's also probably not unethical to suggest that there are specific influences on your works, of course. It ought to be OK to say "our game is inspired by Ghibli" if it's a new game and that's a true factual statement. But isn't there a difference between mentioning that somewhere, and putting into the title of the game, or repeating it a bunch throughout the introduction? And keep in mind that, because of modern search engine functionality, if you're the only one putting on your game that it's "Ghibli-inspired", anyone searching for 'Studio Ghibli Game' is going to find your game, and only your game. Is that fair to Studio Ghibli, to have their trademarked name be associated in that way to your game? What if they don't have a game now, but might want to license one in a few years... shouldn't they be able to reserve that association for themselves? e. In case it's not clear, I don't think there's necessarily a right answer here, but I think when we discuss problems in the TG industry, the fact that a huge number of them are inspired-by, licensed-for, or just ripoffs-of, other people's recognizable copyrighted and/or trademarked IP, is maybe worth considering. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 22:28
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