Metal Gear Solid Fan-Film Sequel Nixed By Game Maker, Even Though They Didn't Threaten The Original Film

from the grinds-my-metal-gears dept

Not so long ago, we wrote about Konami shutting down a fan-remake of the original Metal Gear, the much-beloved initial entry into the vaunted franchise. In that case, Konami did something of a flip-flop, with a company rep telling the development team initially that they had the go-ahead, only for the company's lawyers to pull the rug out from under the remake at the last moment. Well, flip-flopping seems to be becoming a thing when it comes to Metal Gear fan projects, now that the sequel to a previously released Metal Gear Solid fan-film has been nixed by the lawyers.

The original fan-film was called Metal Gear Solid Philanthropy, and Part 1 was released several years ago. It was generally regarded as mega-awesome. The indie team behind the project received no contact from anyone at Konami or from the Metal Gear Solid team until they met creator Hideo Kojima in person, who told the filmmakers how much he appreciated the film. The team began to work on Part 2. Then, apparently because they just couldn't freaking help themselves, the Konami brass shut the project down. You can hear from the director himself, in a "Farewell to Philanthropy" video put out.

It takes a better person than I for him to say these words.

"We knew this might've happened. And we have nothing against the creators of Metal Gear, the saga that we all love and will continue to love."

Good for Giacomo Talamini. He's much stronger with the jedi routine than I am, because I can assure you that if I were in his shoes I would be going full on dark-side. Mind-choking, sand-people killing, the whole bit. It's one thing to have Konami needlessly shut down a fan project instead of simply working out a zero-sum or cheap licensing arrangement, since the production of this film does absolutely nothing to harm the MGS franchise, and may indeed help spur it on further. But for the filmmakers to have received no negative feedback from Konami on their first film, and for the creator of the damned franchise to express his support, only to have the lawyers lose their lunch partway through the filming of the second film would be too much for me to bear.

Hell, it's too much for me to bear as a gamer and a fan.

Filed Under: culture, fan films, metal gear solid, ownership, trademark
Companies: konami

Just Kidding, Square Enix Still Hates Its Biggest Fans

from the what-was-i-thinking? dept

Human beings are creatures of habit. As such, we generally feel most comfortable when we're in familiar surroundings and when things typically turn out as we expect. With that in mind, I realize some of you readers may have found yourselves in an unfamiliar and distressing new world when I wrote about a Final Fantasy fan film that appeared to have Square Enix's tacit approval for a Kickstarter project. The makers of what looks like a fantastic web series mentioned on their Kickstarter page that they had proactively gone to Square Enix to make sure they knew what was happening and that the trailer for the series actually made an appearance on the company's website. "What the hell is this all about?", you must have thought. "What's next, cats and dogs living in harmony? Pepsi admitting that Coke is totally better? What are we going to do!?!?"

Well, rest easy, because Square Enix's legal team is here to remind you that they still totally hate their biggest fans and all is just as wrong with the world as it ever was. You already know where we're going with this, so here are the claims from the DMCA takedown notice they sent over the Kickstarter project.

· The project itself is in infringement of our copyrights and should be removed in its entirety from Kickstarter.

· The project itself admits it is an unofficial fan project in its title “Final Fantasy VII: The Web Series (Unofficial Fan Project).

· The description of the project itself claims to use the copyrighted characters and events of Final Fantasy VII.

Not only did the projcet admit it on Kickstarter, they admitted it to you guys when they reached out to let you know what they were doing. And they made a point to secure music licensing. To go the DMCA route rather than finding an amicable way to properly license this with them would be bad enough, but to know what the filmmakers were doing and let them get this far only to dash their project on the rocks of your legal team is downright sadistic. The project's page is now down, noting that there is an intellectual property dispute, which means prospective backers can't contribute any longer.

Via their Facebook page, the team let their fans know that they're still trying to get something worked out with Square Enix and managed to deliver the message with a touch of irony any Final Fantasy 7 fan will appreciate.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

You will have noticed that the Square Enix legal team have taken an interest in our project. We're in the process of opening up discussions with the team regarding the ongoing status of our project and hopefully the continuation of our Kickstarter campaign. We'll keep you up to date on any envelopments.

"These days, all it takes for your dreams to come true is money and power."
- President Shinra

Here's hoping Square Enix muzzles their legal dogs and does the right thing by their fans, because it would be a shame to see one of the most popular games ever taint its reputation by being DMCA bullies over a harmless fan film.

Filed Under: fan films, final fantasy, infringement
Companies: square enix

Final Fantasy Fan Film Kickstarter Project, Apparently With Square Enix's Tacit Approval

from the good-signs dept

Video game giant Square Enix has never had a great track record when it comes to opting for lawyers over any kind of fan-created works built off of its properties. In fact, far from even making any attempt to encourage its fans, Square instead seems to enjoy the sledgehammer approach. Whether it was shutting down a fan-game set in the enormously popular Chronno Trigger universe, or a similar effort to create an OpenCarmageddon, the trend you'll notice is that these legal moves are made against some of the most rabid fans of some of the most beloved game franchises around.

So what would Square do if someone wanted to build off of what is almost certainly its most beloved franchise, the Final Fantasy games? Well, apparently the company will quietly okay it. At least, that's the case with the Kickstarter project for Final Fantasy 7: The Web Series, which has reportedly secured some of the necessary rights from Square Enix to move forward.

Today the team launched a Kickstarter to raise $400,000 for the project, which is now a 5-6-episode webseries based on Square's popular role-playing game. They say they've got the blessing of series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi—and the rights to use music from Final Fantasy VII.

"We have been in contact with SE for several months, and have attained full music rights," producer Dan Purcell told me in an e-mail today. "We have not however been endorsed or backed by SE. We have passed all necessary steps, including Kickstarter's review process."

Now, this doesn't explicitly say that the company, Square Enix, has given everyone involved the go-ahead for the project, but it's hard to imagine the film creators going through the steps of securing music rights, contacting Sakaguchi, and then leaving it all to risk of the game developer's lawyers. In addition, the Q&A on Kickstarter indicates that the filmmakers have been reaching out to Square, that Square's general counsel is definitely aware of the project, and that the trailer for the series has even appeared on Square's website. I would guess that there has been at least some assurance made that nobody is going to get sued over this and, before anyone rushes to point out that the fans went the route of securing rights, that's only true of the music and no project of this kind is going to be able pay the kind of massive costs rights-holders have previously required. From all appearences, it looks like Square is playing nice.

And if that has indeed happened, it's a huge step forward for Square, and a step that might just be becoming a trend. The company recently went a little more lax when OCRemix, famed video game music organization, wanted to pay tribute to Final Fantasy 6, and Square gave its blessing. If it was now to give a muted nod to this fan film project building off of one of its most popular games ever, it might just be an indication that the company is rethinking its legalistic ways. And that'd be good for all fans of the game, because the web series looks fantastic. If the films are as good as the trailer, they're a big old kick in the crotch to all those that decry fan-generated content. Not to mention a boon to those of us that go all teen-girl-at-a-Bieber-concert for anything related to Final Fantasy 7. I'll be keeping an eye on this to make sure Square doesn't poop the bed, but so far it looks like the company is probably going to play nice.

Filed Under: fan films, final fantasy, support
Companies: square enix

Will Disney Block Star Wars Fan-Made Content?

from the there's-a-mouse-in-the-house dept

We discussed recently how George Lucas relinquished control of the Star Wars franchise, selling it to Disney. As Leigh noted in that piece, critics have long chastised Lucas for the control he exerted over his films, as well as the meddling he did on the classics so many hold dear. While that criticism is certainly valid, one area where Lucas seemed to be open -- in many ways bucking the Hollywood trend -- was with fan-made content, such as fan films and fan fiction. In fact, Lucasfilm to a great extent embraced fan fiction, even going so far as to hold contests for such content. The fact that Lucasfilm gained rights ownership of those fan-made films led to some criticism, but at least the company wasn't suing the jedi tunics off of its own fans.
These aren't the defendants you're looking for.
Image source: CC BY 2.0
But now some folks are wondering about the fate of all this fan-made content, and how future fan content will be received, now that the Empire Disney controls the franchise. Dennis S. writes in about a piece on this topic at Ars Technica, which reads less like a question about fan-made content and more like a propsective eulogy for it.

In 2007, Lucasfilm even released tools that would more easily enable remixing of Star Wars content. A top Lucasfilm lawyer, Jeffrey Ulin, began speaking at conferences and to the media about the value of fan mash-ups and remixes. Those works were "part of keeping the love of Star Wars and the franchise alive... We're really trying to position ourselves for the next 30 years," Ulin told the Wall Street Journal in 2007.

Certainly, Disney fans who make their own movie featuring Mickey Mouse are more likely to get a cease-and-desist letter from a Disney lawyer than an award. After all, it was Disney who famously lobbied Congress to extend copyright terms in 1998, so much so that some dubbed the new law the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Perhaps no single company more than Disney bears more responsibility for the sorry state of the US public domain, which hasn't seen any significant works added to it in decades. For the most part, culture after 1923 has been frozen in a state of private ownership—mostly owned by the large media corporations that began rising at about that time.

It's very difficult to argue with the precedent that the article lays out. Star Wars enjoys what may well be the biggest franchise fanbase ever. Part of that fanbase is so fanatical that they want to take part in the fun, sharing with one another their own creations and extensions of the Star Wars story. Many believe it's this same enthusiasm that has built up the Star Wars brand to such an amazing degree, but Disney's history suggests these contributions may no longer be welcome.

Frankly, that may pose a bigger problem than one would imagine. Obviously the Star Wars brand is big enough at this point that whatever content Disney releases is likely to be a hit...but will it grow as fast as it could if Mickey Mouse goes all emperor over the people? There's a serious risk in alienating folks over this kind of thing. Star Wars fans aren't stupid. There's a reason there's been a fair amount of hand-wringing over the sale of the franchise to Disney, seemingly much moreso than other sales like Marvel. This is a community that likes to contribute their own work to the story. I would say that such contributions are integral to the fanbase. If Disney acts to block that kind of thing, as they have in the past, the fans may well rebel against the Empire Disney and its Senate boardroom.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, fan fiction, fan films, fans, star wars
Companies: disney, lucasfilm

Sony & NBC Interfere With Fan-Funded Web Series, Accomplish Nothing

from the except-making-the-lawyers-richer dept

ChurchHatesTucker points us to yet another example of how the strictures of the legacy entertainment industry are at odds with modern attitudes towards culture and creativity, and the hypocrisy of those who rely on fair use but seek to limit it for others. First, a bit of background:

The NBC series Community (which is awesome, by the way) recently introduced a show-within-the-show: a parody of Dr. Who entitled Inspector Spacetime and shown only in a few short clips. Travis Richey, the actor who portrays the titular character for his few seconds on screen, and who is also an experienced web series producer, immediately saw the potential to extend the fake show into a series of real shorts. He approached the Community creators with a script, only to discover that, as he puts it, "Hollywood doesn't work quite that way." He then had his agent pitch it through official studio channels, but never heard back—so he took the idea to Kickstarter, planning to produce the series himself.

It will come as a surprise to no one that the lawyers made short work of that plan—but Richey isn't stopping, he's just changing the title:

Lawyers from Sony and NBC have contacted me demanding that I cease production on an Inspector Spacetime web series.

Though I firmly believe the law would be on my side in producing this parody, I have no wish or ability to fight a show that I love as much as "Community." I had hoped that they would embrace what is essentially a fan film and appreciate the value it adds to the character, and the audience that we would bring who are finding "Community" for the first time through this character, but alas, that's not the case. So, I will be removing all references to Inspector Spacetime from this series (it only happened in the title anyway), and altering the appearance of the Inspector so that he does not look like Inspector Spacetime. What remains is 100% the creation of myself, my writing partner, and you, the fans.

The title card on the video now reads "Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time", and the project is already more than half-funded, with the rest of the month still to go. Richey says the money is for equipment only: everyone involved is a volunteer, and the finished series won't be monetized at all. This is a case of someone who just loves to create, for its own sake, being blocked by problematic, hypocritical legal claims. Problematic because a name and a simple character concept, barely established with a handful of brief clips, should really fall on the idea side of the idea/expression dichotomy; hypocritical because that character is himself a direct parody of a much bigger cultural icon, and relies on that very same dichotomy for his existence.

Some will say that it's no big deal: he changed the title, and now he can make the series. Luckily, this time, that does appear to be the case—but there is no reason even that should have been necessary. As Richey says, he still thinks he is in the right, but has no intention of going to court: not just because of the expense, but because he doesn't want to. He wants to create, not have creator-fights with his peers. But somehow the industry that claims its every move is about protecting creators always manages to get in the way of people like that.

Filed Under: community, fan films, inspector spacetime, travis richey
Companies: kickstarter, nbc universal, sony