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YIIK: A Postmodern RPG' includes text lifted straight from Haruki Murakami work and other sources [Dev responds, see threadmarks]
- Thread starter Zero-ELEC
- Start date
YIIK is the epitome of the game made by EarthBound fans that so desperately want to make a new EarthBound, and yet so clearly and completely misunderstood every facet of EarthBound.
I have shorter battles when I play Grandia II and spend way more time than necessary painstakingly planning out every move to try for flawless victories.
The doors, man. I dreaded the fucking doors. Time to level up!
*Mind Dungeon theme lodges in your brain*
For the uninitiated, to level up in Yiik, you go through doors. You assign a stat to a door, then go through it. Repeat 4 times for each floor.
You want to see the last scene in new game+? 70 floors. 280 doors. From scratch.
How could someone bear one battle, let alone an entire game of this is beyond me
No, after watching that Golden Alpaca boss fight I 100% believe you
I saw the Golden Alpaca boss fight as well. How could I possibly not believe you?
Amazingly the player is using the most time efficient method which is using the panda to stop attacks so you don't have to play the dodge attack mini game.
Fair use is fine when you properly attribute your appropriately-sized sample in a way that highlights its source as being not yourself.
This is flat out plagiarism. Which is what talentless hacks with little to say do.
This is flat out plagiarism. Which is what talentless hacks with little to say do.
Given the ham-fisted nature of the rest of the game, I'd be more than willing to give 'em the benefit of the doubt here and assume that it was just an extremely clumsy attempt at referencing/paying homage rather than a blatant attempt to try and pass off someone else's work as their own.
But boy am I glad I didn't buy this game, whew.
But boy am I glad I didn't buy this game, whew.
Isn't the very first requirement for that red pill ending to be on NG+? Makes sense no one found it yet then.
Kotaku reports, developer responds
Seems that Allanson is trotting out the good ol' fail-proof "It's homage, not plagiarism" card.
https://kotaku.com/indie-developer-accused-of-plagiarism-says-it-was-an-in-1834902499
https://kotaku.com/indie-developer-accused-of-plagiarism-says-it-was-an-in-1834902499
Stealing someone's work and trying to get away with it is not "homage," it's plagiarism. The character could say "Murakami once wrote..." and then launch into this bit of text, maybe, and you could call that a homage, but not just stealing shit with no credit.
Yeah, the result is plagiarism, but I can believe he wrongly sees it as an homage. Especially considering everything else that surfaced from this game.
It doesn't excuse it, but I don't think there was malice is what I mean.
Update: Ackk Studios claims it was intended as homage, but they're taking the extra step of patching in a "Works Cited" section into the game's credits:
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/yi...sm-says-its-a-tribute-but-will-update-credits
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/yi...sm-says-its-a-tribute-but-will-update-credits
Yeah, it would have saved them at least some of the headaches.
It wouldn't have made the game actually any more fun to play or erase the weirdness of the director's Dick Show appearance and the secret (sort of there?) red pill ending, but at least no one would jump on them for plagiarism.
I wish I could patch a works cited page into my college essays!
This is not enough. You "cite works" in an academic paper, you don't do it in a work of fiction unless you're crediting it within the fiction, or there's some artistic reason for it being there.
"I liked this book so I copied some of it" does not really cover artistic reason.
If you copy the first line of a novel that means you want everyone to know where you copied it from.
If you copy the second line of a novel that means you're trying to hide it.
If you copy the second line of a novel that means you're trying to hide it.
What?
No, seriously, what?
I couldn't stand watching the video of what i assume is a normal random battle(particularly the photo attack) and now you tell me levelling up is done like that, did the YIIK developers never play any RPG before?
They must have noticed the battles took too long and that the game requires a serious amount of grind just to assign stats and apparently see stuff, or is this some meta commentary about how pointless battles are or whatever and their artistic way of saying that is by making battles and stats boring?
Nope, it doesn't. This is about as effective as adding the works cited page to a college essay two months after you turned it in and got penalized for not including it.
Here's combat lobsters video opening doors for 51 minutes in ng+.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3b4aamJh20
There's a bunch of bad stuff in this game, but I think referencing a novel is pretty mild. It's not like they were trying to pass off the story of the book as the story of the game, it's just some text. I don't see how this is all that different from art or music that features pieces of other works.
Ideally they should have attributed it of course, but I don't see this as some wildly unethical thing.
Ideally they should have attributed it of course, but I don't see this as some wildly unethical thing.
Why have a level up screen. When you can instead:
Talk to an NPC to spend EXP to level up.
Interact with a door.
Pick a stat.
Interact with the same door.
Increase the stat.
Repeat three times.
He didn't reference a novel, he copied passages from it. That's not the same.
He had a character speak passages from the novel. He didn't present passages from the novel as the story of the game.
The funniest thing of all is that the game is (mostly) supposed to be set in the 90s, isn't it? The book's from '04 -- and wasn't in English until like '07.
You do realize that plagiarism doesn't mean stealing plots, it means stealing words?
That's kind of part of the plot. Realities merging together and stuff, causing anachronisms for the time period.
The game is full of weird time nonsense like this. Alex (a twenty-year-old) refers to games like Chrono Trigger (1995) and Secret of Mana (1993) as being part of his childhood.
You know after all of this I don't really think the developer is malicious in their actions, it's just obvious that they're wildly incompetent and don't understand how homage or visuals or gameplay or words work.
This is what happens when you really like Persona, Mother and Final Fantasy games and take all the wrong lessons from them.
Clearly no-one at Ackk Studios has ever written an academic essay in a reputable college or university.
I couldn't watch everything, look, i like RPG's, i don't mind turn-based games or anything like that, but dear God, looking at how long a random battle takes without the broken OP move that was apparently an accident and the level up mechanics, it makes me wonder if the developer was serious when he said that people not liking this game is proof that gamers have trash taste.
I mean, they do know that RPG's aren't entirely about story, right?
Yes, i have seen some RPG fans comment on one entry being better than all the others in the franchise for having a better story while saying everything else is worse, but they aren't all fans, RPG's still have an actual game to play, they have a world to explore, music to listen to, lots of little details that can make or break a RPG regardless of the quality of the story.
And from what i can tell, the battles and the level up mechanics are a boring mess that by themselves should make many people hate the game even if the story was amazing, but it seems many people don't think it is.
At some point, you should wonder if you have bad taste and not the audience.
Was the red pill ending ever really revealed? Last I saw, it involves a cameo from some MRA podcast or something, right?
This question came up before, but as far as I'm aware, the ending isn't actually in the game. Just some content that would serve as the bridge to the ending were the game ever updated to include it.
Huh. So they'll be putting the putting the campaign for the extra ending DLC on Freestartr?
He had a character speak passages from the novel without referencing the novel (and no, a post-release patch adding a mention in the credits doesn't count as referencing) or even referencing the fact that it wasn't his work. That's the definition of plagiarism, and you'd likely get reprimanded to hell and back if you were to pull that shit in a more strict environment like academia or AAA gaming.
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Future generations will finally comprehend the artistic masterpiece this game was and laugh at the plebeians who couldn't fathom it.