I really hope they won't get sued ...

There's a new Adventure game in the works, it is called the "Han Solo Adventures", and the makers claim it to be about 20% done now.

http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Wars-Bra...assischem-SCUMM-Interface-auf-dem-Weg-767025/

There is a video as well.

I just hope they won't get sued, because this is exactly the kind of game I've been dreaming of for about 15 years !

Alrik

As long as they don't charge any money for it, I don't think that there will be many problems.

The problem is that in certain countries, the US for example, the trademark holder MUST react to protect his trademark if he knows about an unlicensed use of it. Otherwise he risks losing the trademark.

So they are in danger of receiving a C&D sooner or later.

Gorath said:

The problem is that in certain countries, the US for example, the trademark holder MUST react to protect his trademark if he knows about an unlicensed use of it. Otherwise he risks losing the trademark.

So they are in danger of receiving a C&D sooner or later.

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It didn't stop any other fan made Star Wars projects to be created.

Same for Battle Tech.

Well, there hasn't been ANY fan-made Star Wars game yet.

Not that I know of.

There probably has been. It's actually kinda muddled, as there are thousands, of fan-made media (games, music, even film) based on various franchises, and made without the holder's consent. There is also the Fair Use act, which may cover a freeware game/remake of a game. I'm not a lawyer however; but there is tons of precedent for fan games to be acceptable.

http://www.sonicfangameshq.com/games.html

I remembered this site from back when I was first getting on the internet, and it took two hours to download those crappy, 3mb flash games. Nothing but fan-made games (of poor quality, but still), and no license.

I really do not understand it. What's with peoples needs to write their story in some other authors setting. I can understand fan remakes of games such as Lazarus and U6P. The need for creating fanfiction however is something i really don't "get" or approve of. Creating something inspired by a particular setting like Arx Fatalis is by Ultima Underworld or The Dark Mod is by Thief is as far as it should ever go in my opinion. I fully share the view of the author of "A Song of Ice and Fire", George R. R. Martin, who has posted a few articles on his blog about that same topic.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/151914.html
http://grrm.livejournal.com/152340.html

Well, a point is, if I feel inspired by some things (other novels, universes etc.) and i want to tell a story using these elements, one could easily sue me of "stealing" things.

Whixh means i can't use these things anymore, but if I till insist on telly *my* story with *these* elements ... even if I break them down to there most core basics, then EVERYONE will clearly call me an "unoriginal" writer" and *my* story a "ripoff".

George R.R. Martin, however, is at the top position of successful writers, which might entitle him to say whatever he wants. He just has power. Nobody would cre if he would destroy a starting junior story writer, who just *begins* at developing his or her own story ... and world.

In fact I'd rather expect fans o him to rather agree with "yeah right" and "harken the word of the mighty, ogh o powerful fantasy writer of George R.R. Martin !"

Nobody would complain that it would be ... without decency to destruct the wiorks of a young writer, for example. Because everyone would agree that suxch a writer with such a high esteem like him would have the "right" to destruct works of other writers. Everyone would see him so powerful, that almost everyone would nod and just agree.

Criticism against Noobs is easy, but not at all against Giants. And everyone rather flees the Crushing Blow of a Giant that to protect the Noob from it.

Creating an own world is imho hard, hard work, and it's - like anything - far more easy to destroy it.

It's easy for a Giant to say someone just made "rubbish". and no-one would try to tell the Giant that he had no right whatsoever to call someone else's work just "rubbish". There sould instead things like "respect" be involved.

You should have at least read the article before starting with your "destroying the young author" nonsense. I think the first blog post i linked is perhaps the most thoughtful piece i've ever read on the issue. GRRM says that at one point before he was a writer he himself has written plenty of so called fanfic:

quote:

One of the things I mislike about fan fiction is its NAME. Truth is, I wrote fan fiction myself. That was how I began, when I was a kid in high school writing for the dittoed comic fanzines of the early 1960s. In those days, however, the term did not mean "fiction set in someone else's universe using someone else's characters." It simply meant "stories written by fans for fans, amateur fiction published in fanzines." Comic fandom was in its infancy then, and most of us who started it were kids... some of whom did make the mistake of publishing amateur fan-written stories about Batman or the Fantastic Four in their 'zines. National (what we called DC back then) and Marvel shut those down pretty quickly.

The rest of us knew better. Including me. I was a fan, an amateur, writing stories out of love just like today's fan fictioneers... but it never dawned on me to write about the JLA or the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, much as I loved them. I invented my own characters, and wrote about those. Garizan, the Mechanical Warrior. Manta Ray. The White Raider. When Howard Keltner, one of the editors and publishers of STAR-STUDDED COMICS, the leading fanzine of its day, invited me to write about two of his creations, Powerman and Dr. Weird, I leapt at the chance... but only with Howard's express invitation and permission.

So that's the sort of fan fiction I wrote. How and when the term began to be used for what is called fan fiction today, I don't know. I wish there was another term for that, though I confess I cannot think of one that isn't either cumbersome, vague, or prejorative. But it does bother me that people hear I wrote fan fiction, and take that to mean I wrote stories about characters taken from the work of other writers without their consent.

Consent, for me, is the heart of this issue. If a writer wants to allow or even encourage others to use their worlds and characters, that's fine. Their call. If a writer would prefer not to allow that... well, I think their wishes should be respected.

Myself, I think the writers who allow fan fiction are making a mistake. I am not saying here that the people who write fan fiction are evil or immoral or untrustworthy. The vast majority of them are honest and sincere and passionate about whatever work they chose to base their fictions on, and have only the best of intentions for the original author. But (1) there are always a few, in any group, who are perhaps less wonderful, and (2) this door, once opened, can be very difficult to close again.

Actually Alrik, in the US at least there is a limit on what you can and cannot copyright. So while you could not sell a story using the names and setting of any specific author's work, you could easily write a book and sell it, using a similar setting and even similar characters to a point. It would be derided as highly derivative, unoriginal, and either end up failing utterly or being Twilight.

Proof in point is the unending piles of standard Elf-Dwarf-Human fantasy, which almost invariably has Elves as an ancient declining race, Dwarves as stout, hardworking drunks, and humans as random, insane, and generally evil save a few good ones.

It's nearly impossible to create a truly original world anymore; as there as so many works of fiction out there.

Of course, using similar elements in a setting is wholly different from modern fan fiction, as posted by tolknaz. Modern fan fiction is taking the characters and setting from someone else's work, and writing your own stories using them. To me this makes no sense; if you can write using someone else's stuff, you should be creative enough to make your own. It's not particularly hard (making your own stuff that is good on the other hand...).

I believe that certain things can only be expressed within a certain context.

I need a different context to do so.

If I was - for example - inclined to talk about the moral choices of a Jedi - a philosophy treating about what's acually LIght and Dark sides of the Force and whatnot, then I would only be able to tell this in the ontect of Jedi; that is, because I know of no other setting that has something like Dark and Light sides of something called "the force" (of whatever) in it.

And that would be so-called "fan fiction".

If I was to tell this story OUTSIDE the "Star Wars" context, THEN I'd have to make up a world in which EXACTLY these elements are included.

And that would be a clear rip-off.

So, now, no matter how I'm douing it, I do it wrong. Because Fan-Fiction is officially frowned upon by LucasFilm, and rip-offs are not only frowned-upon by LucasFilm, but by the Fans also.

Which means : I'm doomed anyway.

I indeed have this problem. I have once written kind of a love story within this JEdi/Star Wars context, which I regard as one of my personal best works ever.
BUT, I'll have to rewrite it, because I'll NEVER be able to publish it anywhere (except the TFN Archive, maybe, but I never got into it, anyway).

But because of the LOSS of the context in the course of rewriting it, I cnnot say how much of it (the original emotional content) will be preserved. It will never be the same thing, no matter how cunning I was.

To me, it is - compared to the *original* layout/outfit - something like cutting things away, "un-beautify" it, making it more ugly, in order to be able to publish it at all. And this is my purely artistic view on that.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

If I was - for example - inclined to talk about the moral choices of a Jedi - a philosophy treating about what's acually LIght and Dark sides of the Force and whatnot, then I would only be able to tell this in the ontect of Jedi; that is, because I know of no other setting that has something like Dark and Light sides of something called "the force" (of whatever) in it.

Click to expand...

IMHO this would only mean that you don't have enough imagination to discuss these concepts in a context defined by you.

By the way the dark side/white side / force concept is highly generic, it is nothing else than the concept of black magic versus white magic.

Well, the Force is but a different thing than magic.
To me it is like … well, Qi or so.

Besides, a friend of mine posted this in another forum I'm in : http://helloquizzy.okcupid.com/tests/which-fantasy-writer-are-you

It always seemed to me a form of psychokinesis. The "light side/dark side" was simply over-simplifying the actual aspects of it; that the Force was a tool, and as all tools is only as good or evil as the user.

azraelck said:

It always seemed to me a form of psychokinesis. The "light side/dark side" was simply over-simplifying the actual aspects of it; that the Force was a tool, and as all tools is only as good or evil as the user.

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On the most general sense that is the general moral, yes.

But there are more specific issues, e. g. that the force used for selfish reasons corrupts the user even more and even changes, how he looks etc. That is exactly the theme in medieval / oriental fairy tales about black and white magic. There are certain persons, who have the ability to use magic and they have to decide, how to use it. And people who use it for selfish goals get corrupted and more and more evil.

That is why I don't think that there are original philosophical or ethical questions in the Star Wars universe. Note that this is not an attack against Star Wars, because Star Wars has never wanted to be anything else but a tongue-in-cheek fairy-tale-translated-to-space. (Once upon a time far far away....)

bkrueger said:

On the most general sense that is the general moral, yes.

But there are more specific issues, e. g. that the force used for selfish reasons corrupts the user even more and even changes, how he looks etc. That is exactly the theme in medieval / oriental fairy tales about black and white magic. There are certain persons, who have the ability to use magic and they have to decide, how to use it. And people who use it for selfish goals get corrupted and more and more evil.

That is why I don't think that there are original philosophical or ethical questions in the Star Wars universe. Note that this is not an attack against Star Wars, because Star Wars has never wanted to be anything else but a tongue-in-cheek fairy-tale-translated-to-space. (Once upon a time far far away….)

Click to expand...

Ah, but is it the magic, or Force, which is corrupting the "Dark Side" users, or an already corrupt and evil user becoming more enamored of the power they possess, growing more corrupted because of that power. It can be argued that Darth Maul was already evil and corrupt, prior to ever being trained as a sith. Certainly Anakin was not an innocent, prior to being Darth Vader. He was willing to let his emotions control his actions; which as a student of various martial arts is a foolish thing, but very easy to do.

Did the Force make them evil? Or did the power they gained through it give them an all too tempting path into evil?

At one point I had developed my own philosophy; it was based on hate and love.

Hate as being the core of the Dark Side
Love as being the core of the Light Side

With all consequences.


Edit : Not passionate love, of course, in my concepts, but anyway passionate love is still love. As long as it is held up by both sides ( = both partners in it).

And hate … well, this can be passionate, too. A rather "un-passionate form" of hate almost doesn't exist. Or so I see it. At least ot in the Star Wars universe.

azraelck said:

Ah, but is it the magic, or Force, which is corrupting the "Dark Side" users, or an already corrupt and evil user becoming more enamored of the power they possess, growing more corrupted because of that power. It can be argued that Darth Maul was already evil and corrupt, prior to ever being trained as a sith. Certainly Anakin was not an innocent, prior to being Darth Vader. He was willing to let his emotions control his actions; which as a student of various martial arts is a foolish thing, but very easy to do.

Did the Force make them evil? Or did the power they gained through it give them an all too tempting path into evil?

Click to expand...

But that is the way corruption works. It is a two sided process. E. g. Anakin fell to the dark side because he tried too hard to protect his wife.
I did't say that black magic would corrupt an ideal innocent person. But it corrupts people who start with small "sins" and makes them go into the direction of bigger sins. Which is exactly what you say.

By the way I believe that this philosophy is nonsense, even letting all magic/force aside. Because no human is completely innocent.

And the Jedi rules are inhuman, e. g. real love (and real love IS passionate love - if it isn't passionate it is something like sympathy, but not love) is forbidden for Jedi.

But anyway my main point was that there is nothing really new in the Star-Wars-Philosophy and so Alrik's point is invalid that some thoughts can only be described using that universe.

If somebody wants to write important things and is not able to write them in his own words, he is simply a bad writer. Which is no problem, since there are enough good writers in the world.

I believe that every writer develops his or her own "style" of writing, over the course of the years.

It is with anthing so, I believe, from music to carpentry etc. . At one point the person just looses him- or herself from the static, learned formulae, and begins to experiment, developing something new.

Also in terms of language, and writing style, I assume.