CTSD/CTTO announcement

[Schala Zeal]

Well, I failed to obtain permission from SE about making a game from scratch, even when I offered to donate it to them with full rights and permission to sell, but apparently they're not even tempted.

However, I still have ambition. The bad news is I'm scrapping both projects. The good news is it isn't illegal to make spoofs, correct? While not quite original, the characters will have much in common with Chrono counterparts. Also, I've been making my own fictional universe as well, so I might incorporate them into it.

[FaustWolf]

Did you literally email them? And did they respond?

[Schala Zeal]

Yes, here's the transcript:

Thank you for contacting SQUARE ENIX Customer Support,

All content of our games is copyright SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.  We regret to inform you that we do not grant permission to individuals to use any copyrighted content.  Because we receive numerous requests, our policy is to decline any use of our copyrights. We currently are not granting permission to any one except our own business partners.

The Private Policy of SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd./SQUARE ENIX Inc. stating the use of materials, is as follows:

All game materials, including, but not limited to, their design, text, graphics, screen shots, files are copyrighted by SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.  All rights reserved. Any other use of materials of our games -- including any commercial use, reproduction for purposes other than that noted above, modification, distribution, or republication -- without the prior written permission of SQUARE ENIX is strictly prohibited. No materials of our games may be used on any other product, published, or otherwise performed in public.

We hope that this information has been of some assistance and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Thanks,
Neil- SQUARE ENIX Customer Support
www.square-enix.com



-----Original Message-----
From: <censored>
Sent: May 19, 2009 4:49:34 PM
Subject: Re:

I thought today if you're concerned about fan derivatives, particularly the ones I'm hoping to make, well... why don't I just give you the rights to everything I make? My incentive to make such is purely my love for your titles, not profit at all. I don't necessarily care about being accredited either. However, if you do agree with what I hope will happen, I do request that I may continue to work on my projects. I'd give you the source code and compiled product, of course, every time I do provide an update. I will even grant you the rights to sell anything I produce. After all, you own what you make, but I just want the chance to submit fan contributions.

I hope you will accept my offer, as this cannot possibly hurt you in any way. Again, I expect nothing in return. Having permission to develop and submit my own fan projects would satisfy me. Although, being a hobby, I'm sure it's reasonable for me to show friends and family my work, right?

By the way, just to let you know ahead of time, these projects consist of PC games. I'm not one to make ROM hacks, but instead write my own games. Also, I hope this won't be a problem, but I assume you write your games and other products using the C++ programming language. However, I use the Free Pascal Compiler ( http://freepascal.org for reference) for my projects, using the Simple DirectMedia Library bindings. ( http://libsdl.org ) I would be happy to provide any changes to the code I submit in case none of your staff are fluent in Pascal.

Best regards,
<censored>

[Schala Zeal]

I decided to put this in a separate post to distinguish it. I'm going to ask TK if I can use the title Temporal Odyssey (without the CT prefix of course) and set up an "original" saga (non-canonical from CT)

When I do release the project, I'm guaranteed to get flamed with "CT ripoff OMG" but I'll want to put my own little touch. Perhaps take the Zelda/Schala characters and squish them together to make an interestingly new character, for example.

[FaustWolf]

...Whoa. Thanks for reproducing that. Well, I think that should handily answer questions as to whether or not real, live people read these emails.

[Vehek]

Which view do you think this answers?
There are probably real people involved, as sometimes there's more text, but mostly they use the same words.

Some examples of the exact same wording:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=946860&topic=48681624
http://www.psu.com/forums/showpost.php?s=91ab81e6141bb6464b47e74f2d56f78a&p=89189&postcount=4
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=494178&whichpage=1&#3223629

[Eske]

Yea, I'm pretty sure its real people who check them and then just choose from a list of pre-written or mostly pre-written emails to reply.    If I were working there, I would just scan the emails for the gist and then choose the most appropriate premade reply so that I could work through several emails per minute.

[Schala Zeal]

Well, with TK's permission, I'm hoping the new title of my game is Temporal Odyssey. This game will be a "clean room" game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

Some examples of "clean room" products:

- ReactOS (http://reactos.org ) and Microsoft Windows
- Free Pascal (http://freepascal.org ) and Borland Turbo Pascal
- GIMP (http://gimp.org ) and Adobe Photoshop

Yes, I know none of these are games but I hope you'll see what I mean.

[FaustWolf]

Oh, man, those previous examples are interesting. Either the language is pretty much canned and in "the SE email answerer's handbook" or I guess there could be bots involved. Neilbot?

[Chrono'99]

I fixed it for you.

[V_Translanka]

Valiant sounds good, but Valiance does not. And does it still count if you put up a whole table like that...? >_>

[Ramsus]

Well, with TK's permission, I'm hoping the new title of my game is Temporal Odyssey. This game will be a "clean room" game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

Some examples of "clean room" products:

- ReactOS (http://reactos.org ) and Microsoft Windows
- Free Pascal (http://freepascal.org ) and Borland Turbo Pascal
- GIMP (http://gimp.org ) and Adobe Photoshop

Yes, I know none of these are games but I hope you'll see what I mean.

You chose bad examples.

The Free Pascal compiler is its own Pascal/Delphi implementation based on the de-facto standards created by other implementations and some real language standards. It is not a reverse-engineered re-implementation of someone else's work, so while it technically may be "clean room design," citing it is about as relevant as citing Mozilla Firefox versus Internet Explorer or VIM versus Emacs.

Similarly, The GIMP is simply just another image manipulation program, created from scratch and independently from other projects. In fact, it was originally created as part of a master's thesis by two computer science grad students. It is not a re-implementation of any other existing application, so it isn't very relevant in this case either.

Typically when it comes to game engines, clean room design doesn't matter a whole lot. Based on precedent, there's a lot you can do if you wanted to, so long as you don't copy and distribute the original, copyrighted art/music/data assets with your engine and you stay away from very, very recent games where people still care about the techniques they used.

Even then, that's only if you wanted to create an engine intended to function as a drop-in replacement for the original game engine's code. If you're creating your own game with its own engine that's simply modeled after another game's gameplay and art style, then there's no real reason to even discuss reverse engineering and copyright infringement, or clean room design.

I mean, sure, technically it counts as clean room design if you make a new game engine without looking at the original code, but unless you're making it as a drop-in replacement for another game's data and art assets, the clean room design aspect is completely insignificant and not worth mentioning, because you're not reverse engineering anything. You're just making a new game.

Hell, even if you did make it a drop-in replacement, precedent shows that it won't even matter.

[Schala Zeal]

Well, CT: Resurrection was from scratch it seemed. They did even the music themselves, and still got shut down. Does using the original game as a simple reference count as infringement? Or was there something they actually TOOK from the original game (be it art/music/etc)? I'd have to theorize that... well, CTR was developed for GameCube, and in that case, it was likely to be marketed for profit, since currently, let alone back in 2004, there aren't very stable GC emulators.

If that was the case, then yeah, I can see why SE would want to step in... I guess. Otherwise, I'm lost.

[Ramsus]

They were shut down for using the characters, setting, and story of the original game, which is their main copyright infringement. Also, their art was derived in the sense that they created models based on the designs of the original game's character art. Not to mention they used all the trademarked logos and names.

It had nothing to do with their software development practices or the code they wrote. As long as you give your characters different designs and names, create your own setting, and use your own story, you're good.

[Schala Zeal]

So, the above corny modification I mentioned? I mean... I want some resemblance. Is there any artists here that I can discuss character creation with? My expertise is pretty much in world design. I stink at drawing people and stuff.