/-/S'pht-Translator-Active/-/

	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited
	Posted By: SiliconDream =PN=	Date: 2/6/02 5:35 p.m.
	In Response To: Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited (Beer Can) : I agree with the spirit of your post, Max, but there's a decidedly different : set of lights coming from homage, thievery, and things derivative. : STAR WARS is one of the ultimate "derivative" stories. It's : virtually the canon of all film and literature...in on big Lucas/ILM : package. : But George has *always* publicly acknowledged his "source : material," and has repeatedly cited his many influences. Well, he doesn't really have a choice, does he? He gets asked a lot. He gets interviewed every ten minutes and everyone on the planet has seen his movies. Additionally, movies are considered a more legitimate artistic medium and so people ask questions like that more often. If Bungie folks got weekly interviews on their artistic inspirations and still refused to cough up, then you might have a reason to be miffed. Which doesn't mean they don't talk about it occasionally in the interviews they do have; check http://www.bungie.net/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/site/1/news/stories/jason_jones_interviewed_by_you.html : Artists paying "homage" to one another is also a fascinating and : somewhat hilarious institution...one that's accepted with mutual : admiration. : Lifting ideas and repackaging them as your own...well, that's an entirely : different deal. : I'm what you might call "immersed" in the creative community, and : have been for many, many years. I understand what it is to use another : guy's idea(s)...but if I do so, it's made clear that I'm paying respects : to a person I admire, or know. : An excellent example of "homage": Ridley Scott's BLACK HAWK DOWN : copter shots off the coast of Morocco...which emulate, purposely, : APOCALYPSE NOW. So--and I haven't seen the movie, so this is an honest question--does a character say "Wow, this reminds me of Apocalypse Now" immediately after those shots? Or is it simply assumed that if you've seen Apocalypse Now, you'll recognize the allusion, and if you haven't, no problem? When the games have Dreaming Gods and Ghols and Ghouls and Ghasts and humanoid serpents from drowned continents and giant spiders from arid other-dimensional realms, when Moo has a level called "Strange Aeons," it'd seem hard to argue that they don't expect aficionados of Clark and Lovecraft to get the references. Sure, they won't be obvious to people who haven't done the necessary reading, but those people don't care. : Understanding, objectively, how things artistic get filtered, resurfaced, and : "siphoned" over time, and knowing that some things are simply : coincidence, I still must say that the examples of Bungie using other : people's stuff is just too rampant to be "homage" or : "coincidence." Especially given the timelines. : The other side of that is this: These guys likely didn't/don't know any : better. I mean, they're basically computer guys. In many ways, they're : about the same as the aforementioned Dungeon Master, writing private : adventures for his buddies based upon whatever he himself finds : "cool." : Regardless, it kind of angers me that they've reaped great success on the : repackaging of previously existing work. The least they could have done is : given a "nod" to their source material. But they do. They've acknowledged Myth's Black Company influence time and again. Same with Oni and Ghost in the Shell and similar anime/manga works, or Halo and Banks. Furthermore, it seems iffy to me to say that artistic "repackaging" is the source of their success. Most players barely notice half of the artistic allusions. The games may be good largely because of clever use of such allusions, but they're successful because many people think they're fun to play. And--I'm going to stick to the story side here because that's what I know well--there's a big difference between the story containing references and allusions, and relying on those references and allusions for its entire power. The surface story of the Marathon series is a conflict with an alien empire. The underlying backstory is the revelation of the main character as a cyborg and an eternal hero who is gradually growing into divinity. Where does Lovecraft come in? In the corners, in touches here and there. The story as a whole--and not just the level-progression-story, but the stuff we've talked about here for years--is decidedly non-Lovecraftian. Myth, admittedly, is very strongly indebted to the Black Company for its overall story, just as Oni is very strongly indebted to various works of manga and anime. But Bungie has been quite up-front about acknowledging those influences. As for things like the Smith/Lovecraft contributions to Myth...again, they make the universe that much more interesting, but they don't form its foundation. Ghols aren't ghouls, and if they were it would substantially change the flavor of the game. Really, Bungie stories have characteristic themes which both force linkages with Smith and Lovecraft and prevent full assimilation. The ultimate enemy is always reality, the impersonal universe which tramples over human needs and aspirations with depressing regularity. But for the latter authors the only solution is escape, while Bungie focuses on the process of growth whereby an individual becomes something that can turn the universe on its ear. If Marathon was a Lovecraft story, the cyborg would be limbless and insane in Hangar 96 by the end; if The Call of Cthulhu was written by Bungie, Cthulhu would be on his back with ten thousand flechettes embedded in his facial tentacles. : Note that I still enjoy the games and their stories. Noted. :-) I guess my viewpoint is that since everybody rips off everyone before them, the Bungie story guys should be praised for their exceptional interest in consciously identifying their influences and referencing them in-game. Most writers don't even know where they got all their ideas, much less bother to tell anyone else. --SiliconDream

[ | Message Index | Read Prev Msg | Read Next Msg ] Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

	Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Beer Can	2/4/02 12:44 a.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	2/4/02 1:29 a.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Beer Can	2/4/02 5:26 p.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	2/5/02 1:01 a.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	AJS	2/4/02 11:31 p.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Max Etchemendy	2/5/02 9:13 p.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Beer Can	2/6/02 1:09 a.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Max Etchemendy	2/6/02 3:44 p.m.
	My apologies...	SiliconDream =PN=	2/6/02 5:37 p.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Beer Can	2/6/02 9:40 p.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	2/6/02 5:35 p.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	Beer Can	2/7/02 12:13 a.m.
	Re: Bungie Rip-Offs, Revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	2/7/02 1:04 a.m.
	Rabid? Ha!	poenadare	2/7/02 2:44 a.m.
	Impossible	mnemesis	2/7/02 12:47 p.m.
	Re: Impossible	M-Class	2/7/02 7:21 p.m.
	Re: Impossible	Mark Levin	2/8/02 4:02 p.m.
	Re: Impossible	mnemesis	2/9/02 10:05 a.m.

Problems? Suggestions? Comments? Email maintainer@bungie.org Marathon's Story Forum is maintained with WebBBS 5.12.