Talking Point Are Nintendo's Legal "Ninjas" Stifling The Creativity Of Tomorrow's Game Makers?

Can’t be much creativity if they gotta sue or takedown these “game makers”.

Nintendo is a patent troll, and if this continues then it'll be interesting to see if they run into monopoly issues as eventually they'll be the only ones able to make certain type of games if software patents is allowed to continue.

Nintendo going after this stuff in most cases is quite bad, don't get me wrong.

But... "stifling creativity"? The main thing they go after is a direct use of their IP and more importantly profiting off of their IP. How is it stifling your creativity to not let you make money off of stuff you didn't make?

Even Palworld is probably as much of a target as it is because of the blatant plagiarism, with the patents being a means to an end rather than the actual thing they're upset about.

You can be upset about what Nintendo is doing without telling ghost stories to kids where Nintendo goes after every single game that has even the slightest similarity to any game they've ever made (even the majority of fan games don't get any attention from them).

Why do people call them "ninjas," anyway? They're not cool dudes that strike from the shadows, they're just a bunch of overprotective lawyers.

On one hand, I get the sentiment. Being afraid of a developer taking action against another developer can leave some concerns as to whether or not the next generation will have the creative freedom they want when it comes to making games.

On other hand, however, if Nintendo feels like a game is being successful by copying their own strategy, they have every right to take action. In addition (and more importantly), I think the best approach to this is to not simply take one of Nintendos ideas to use in your game, but instead give it your own spin. If all you do with your creative freedom is continuously use concepts used time and time again by other developers instead of actually making something truly unique, you won't make something that will truly stand the test of time.

That's my two cents, anyway.

@Sketcz The article is about someone giving a talk about legal precedents who is then quoted as having said that Nintendo "will literally sue you for anything these days", despite that being pretty blatantly untrue.

This kind of news can be, and often is, presented as something Nintendo does constantly, and at a maximum level of harshness. Sure feels like a fitting metaphor to me.

Edit: I did not realize that you are said "someone", so apologies for that. Otherwise I don't really have anything to change about my statement.

@N00BiSH
Cause they strike hard and fade away again.

@KitsuneNight yeah, but unless you're Capcom, why make lawyers cooler than they actually are?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: absolutely yes.

If anything, fan games/projects can and do stifle creativity of rights holders and their creatives. We can only speculate on the sheer number of concepts that have been abandoned or otherwise revised because a company didn't want to be accused of "copying" a fan game.

How many potential Pokémon designs/evolutions have been shelved because they were too similar to "fakemon"?

I get the urge to make fan games of beloved properties. I was there myself as a young'un, but I'm not blind to the harm that such projects can cause to creatives that actually do this for a living and companies who have brands to maintain and protect.

@Polley001
Yes but spreading misinformation and polarising people is much more profitable for traffic.

@Sketcz I see. I have to say, that quote really skewed my impression of what this article was saying, since it's presented in a way that really ends up suggesting that it's your own opinion. Still, I'm glad it was unrelated to the actual content of the lecture and I'm sorry for misjudging you.

I can definitely sympathize with being impressionable in this way, and this is certainly how a lot of the internet tends to portray Nintendo's actions and intents (whether intentional or otherwise). In that sense I really can't disagree that this is an effect of what Nintendo is doing. Going back to ghost story metaphor, it feels like Nintendo has become this phantom (or a ninja, arguably) whose myths get spread around with many unable to tell what the actual facts are. It's a real shame.

Nintendo seem to be trying to deny the industry its natural evolution. Imagine suing your children for looking like you. That’s what they’re doing… metaphorically speaking of course.

Nintendo isn’t immune to unjustifiably throwing its weight around to benefit their control of a market through legal muscle.

I’m not saying they’ve reached that point.

However, Nintendo knows that through its legal muscle alone it doesn’t have to get things to the courts in order to exact the outcomes they want. This is easily abused by corporations with sizeable resources.

@SillyG Obviously it'd be ridiculous to actually be mad at the fans "responsible" for this, but it was really sad to hear (and stop reading if you don't like to know Pokémon leak contents) that they allegedly scrapped a Flying-type Eeveelution due to resembling a fakemon (and I have to assume that's the reason the only new Eeveelution in ages was for a type that didn't previously exist)

@Sketcz Sounds interesting, I'll try to give it a listen

@Polley001 I basically agree, I don’t really understand this. Nintendo goes after people who use their IP or who plagiarize so blatantly that a reasonable person would confuse them. Thousands of games take the basic template of Mario, Metroid or Zelda without any problems. Just how derivative are these students planning to be?

It's all fun and games until people start fighting back. Not in the courts either.

I am the Tecnocampus student who asked this question in the talk! When i was speaking with my classmates, there are several of us who are afraid that getting inspiration of mechanics or other aspects of popular videogames might be considered too much by big companies and they will try to sue us somehow, maybe by taking advantage of the fact that we are inexperienced in legal matters, publishing and copyright.
Thank you very much for remembering and talking about the subject!

I find the very suggestion that protecting your copyright stifles creativity a bit of a hard sell.

Do what you want in your own space. Just don't profit from it online - and that includes "fame" / reputation.

I'd actually argue (and I know I often go against the grain, but whatever!) that creativity in videogames (and films and music) is suffering greatly from the influence of what's come before.

Crap, biased, contradictory article. If these future talents are being creative, then they won’t incur the wrath of Nintendo or any other large company if their work is original.
Contrary to popular opinion, Nintendo doesn’t go after games that simply “look a bit like their work”, they go after blatant plagiarism, or others using their characters/IP’s without prior permission. Nothing wrong with that in my book.
TLDR:- if future work is actually creative and original, Nintendo won’t go after them. Therefore, the article is hogwash.

@Chibi We don't want to steal any kind of material from previous video games. My question was aimed at knowing if companies like Nintendo have any kind of copyright on ideas or any intellectual protection. I asked the question because I would love to make a video game that is based more on what the NPCs do on their own than what the player does, that is, a game about seeing how relationships, conflicts and events arise where you can interact by giving advice. The closest thing to this idea was Tomodachi Life and I wanted to know if "recreating" the setting of the game could cause me any problems in the long run. Also taking into account that we are still first year students and we don't know much, especially on legal issues.

Gone are the days when games like Super Mario Bros. Crossover and Super Mario Bros. X were allowed to exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

@PopetheRev28 I mean, fighting back in the courts can work like that too! Just give em’ the good ol’ Harvey Dent treatment if yaknowwhaddimsayin’

@Chibi It's so easy to say "If these future talents are being creative, then they won’t incur the wrath of Nintendo or any other large company if their work is original.".
Human society is FILLED with copycat works.
In the '80s, game designers were far less afraid of being sued. Any of idea how many of them H.R. Giger and Fox could've gone after for copying the Alien film franchise?
How many unlicensed Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stalones have we played as over the years?
The classic Simpsons quote "If we can't steal ideas, where are they going to come from?" sums it up.

The music industry has so many remade works, doubtful they all got permission. How many artists have composed yet another Last Christmas rendition than come up with their own Christmas music?

@HelenaFG13 Don't let that become the excuse that keeps you from creating. You can find many creative people claiming that they can't do what they want because of X, Y, and Z but the truth is, they're scared.

I've been there. It's difficult to push forward with such a daunting task and the "excuses" start to look like real obstacles. I've seen many artist friends completely give up and use the "they won't let me" line. "They" might be money, family, kids, corporations, the government, etc.. I've seen it a lot. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

If you truly have passion for your ideas, see them through. Go boldly forward regardless of the unknown(and probably unreal) dangers ahead. If you make something so good that a corporation wants to sue you, deal with it when and if it happens. Nothing is stopping you.

I figured this would be about Nintendo's approach to fangames, where they are extremely consistent in sending takedowns. Fangames are also critical for creative development - romhacking Sonic games led to Sonic Mania, which led to Penny's Big Breakaway.

And so I was coming here prepared to defend fangames as creative. But now I see these students are concerned about Nintendo legal action against even their own original ideas! Even if that's unlikely - outside a case like Palworld - ask yourself: is this the kind of reputation Nintendo wants for itself? A legalistic boogeyman to upcoming game devs? Game development is about collaboration. I hope to see Nintendo take an approach to game devs someday that is collaborative rather than punitive.

@Hexapus Thanks! I really appreciate it. You're right that we often let ourselves be held back by assumptions and we shouldn't. Over the next few years I'll start working on this idea along with some colleagues, and we will try to develop even more ideas (when we learn a lot more about programming haha)

@HelenaFG13 No problem! All the best to you and your future games!

@HelenaFG13
As I have already replied, I’ve not seen any cases of Nintendo going after games that merely “resemble “ their work. If that was the case, there would be thousands more lawsuits. I get it that it’s Nintendos IP you are worried about closely resembling. IMO that’s just an unfortunate coincidence. Nintendo is nowhere near as litigious as 95% of the internet makes out and in most cases, their actions are justified. A good point in case being Palworld. That game is clearly plagiarism and is literally trying to be successful by controversially riding the coattails of Pokemon. The OP is just talking *****.

@KingMike
There’s literally hundreds of thousands right and how many have Nintendo actually gone after?
Just shows you that Nintendo is nowhere near as litigious as the internet would have you believe.

As bloodthirsty as Nintendo's lawyers are, they aren't the problem. The real problem is the state of legal systems the world over that enable what Nintendo's lawyers do. Nintendo is only one of many entities abusing this system and it's going to continue until something changes, which probably won't happen in our lifetimes.

Something of a well-known fact over plagarism is that every idea has been done already. Fanfiction authors have to deal with the fact that another author can accuse you of copying their work, or of ripping off someone else's idea, without you having a clue about the other author.

With this situation, Nintendo decided that, since Palworld was hugely successful, they'd dust off one of their old patents, made some 'clarifying' sub-patents and sued them based on those.
It's well known now that the patents they sued them on were filed AFTER Palworld was released.

Now, that's a even worse risk than just getting sued for making your own Mario or Zelda game. That someone like Nintendo could take your game that's inspired by the games you grew up with, and sue you into bankruptcy because the core mechanics of your game are close enough to something they patented.

Patents are effectively a company declaring THEY own something and that everyone who uses that item must acknowledge that THEY own it. And that's what makes the whole situation even worse. That they effectively declared legal ownership of the underlying concepts of POKeMON to the point you can't even make a clone without them getting involved.

How long will it be before the big studios effectively use the fact one of them owns the patent for a sprite moving on a playfield to claim half the price of each copy off every game that still uses sprites?

I am well aware of the fact that I am tarring with the same brush here, but my first thought was "That's rich, coming from Spain." Spain seems to basically be Europe's China when it comes to this. HeroQuest, SuperSega, and that's just off the top of my head.

But hey, Astrobot won game of the year, and that is clearly a tribute to 3D Mario. They even acknowledged as much in their winning speech. So there's your stifled creativity.

I wanted to go super snarky here, but I will just leave it at this.

@HelenaFG13 I feel like I can give you a small hand, so I will.

If you are afraid of taking inspiration from mechanics, don't.

If I recall correctly (and I might not, mind you, but hear me out), the Palworld thing is Nintendo suing Palword over literal copying of code. I might be wrong, but there you are. And as many others have already stated, Nintendo took this approach because that wasn't the only thing they've done, just the most assured way of getting them to stop.

Their monsters are so close to literal copies of Pokemon, that it means they are clearly using Pokemon's popularity and fame to push their own game. If the monsters looked more like dinosaurs or something, or just a large variety of cartoony dogs, there probably would have never been a problem.

In your example of Tomodachi Life, Nintendo doesn't own the idea of islands, of appartments on islands, of shops, of food. Of people living their lives. But to give an analogy, Coca Cola or Pepsi don't own the rights to soda pop with a cola taste. You are free to come up with a formula and release it. It becomes a problem when your can looks a lot like a Coca Cola can or a Pepsi can, and you call your product Caco Cola or something. Or Pupsi. Or Poopsie... Though you're probably not going to sell a lot of that...

It's a grey area for a reason. But make your can purple and call it Fresh Cola, and there probably isn't a problem. Don't call your game Tomodachi Fun or something, don't closely recreate the Mii look, don't have them talk in a weird AI voice, and you will be fine. Nintendo doesn't even own the name Tomodachi (which literally means friend), but if the game idea is similar, and the name is similar, it becomes a problem. You can call your main character Mario, just don't give him a red hat and make him a plumber and make his main skill jumping really high.

I actually have had a very similar kind of idea as what you describe for a very long time, but I lack the time and skills to create it, so I will leave it at a dream stage.

Unless you guys need someone to create music, then I can join you and pitch my part of the ideas I have.

This is one of the major reasons why I will never purchase a Nintendo system, at least not until they sort themselves out.

What I find ironic is that a good few of Koji Kondo’s iconic melodies (and other Nintendo music) sound like they have sections outright copied from other pieces. I know there’s the “interpolation” argument, but they go way beyond that to my ear. I forget what exactly, there was a good YouTube video demonstrating loads of examples. I suppose it’s one rule for Nintendo, a different rule for everyone else!

No. If people are making games banking on an association with a well known product, that isn’t creative and yes imo they deserve to be sued. There are plenty of indie monster catching games and industry competitors like Digimon. Plenty of similar but not games like Ninjala or Foamstars to Splatoon.

Just like rom hacks, “PC versions” and “unity remasters” folks that do this know you will see the franchise you are familiar with and purchase. People make Disney porn too, doesn’t mean that should be the next version of a Disney movie because some folks want to see the characters like that. These indies just want a shortcut because they don’t want to eat the costs if they fail. And many just wanna do “what they want” to existing products. The devs (and artists and musicians and other staff) at Nintendo and Game Freak work hard on their games and just because they create in the umbrella of a company doesn’t mean you can steal from them.

Stop stealing from others and you won’t get sued. Games and patents are publicly accessible and it isn’t hard to do a little research to make sure you aren’t infringing. Companies don’t like frivolous lawsuits either. They file what they think they can win.

Make your own games and make them unique. I’m still pretty frustrated with gaming so you can’t tell me every idea ever has been exhausted.

Nintendo have the whole system rigged. If someone copies them they throw their lawyers on that developer. If Nintendo copies someone else they claim and revise history as being the 'first' to do it, which means their gullible fans will believe them. 😆

@Sketcz I truly can't tell if you are trolling.
Colopl (Publisher of White Cat Project) copied Nintendo's patent and used them to go after smaller game devs, while Nintendo had been letting other devs use those patents at no fee for years.
Nintendo sued them because they were patent trolling and attacking smaller indie devs.
This is quite literally an exemple of Nintendo protecting smaller developers.
Again, are you trolling?
Because if you are not, your opinion about any of this can be safely discarded, if you can't be bothered to even do the minimal amount of research.

@Sketcz so it’s obvious you didn’t read what I wrote but before I respond are you referring to this patent? If not, please point me to the patent in question and not an article about it. Thank you.

https://patents.justia.com/patent/6971957

Forbes requires registration and I don’t use social media.

@Sketcz ok that’s a lot to read and I have a bit of tonal whiplash from your replies. So this is a preface response. I am gonna read what you wrote and respond but will need a few days because this is not a site I visit often, I feel I let myself get baited (not because you questioned me but due to the tone and flippancy of your initial comment to me which was unnecessary. Passion is nice, but manners cost nothing) but I responded to you and feel obligated to see this through at least one last interaction. That being said I will likely once we are done with this not respond to you again because like I said your initial tone was unnecessarily antagonistic and unprovoked and that is just not an interaction I would like to maintain. Ok so now that has been said give me a few days to read through this and give my final response. Thank you.