Plagiarism, Palworld and Video Games

one of the biggest controversies that I've been seeing in recent history is the rise of plagiarism in all works of media or rather the awareness of how many things are plagiarized from H bomber guys plagiarism and YouTube video to the creation of AI plagiarism has run rampant and has become a wild west of sorts in regards to copyright laws it feels like every year there's a ton of ripoffs of popular media that fly under the radar and as 2024 Begins the biggest controversy is is the release of the video game named powor for those unaware po world has been touted by many as Pokemon with guns it has seemingly taken the joy of capturing our own poke uh capturing our own Pals and putting them to work in a survival crafting game people have been in an uproar over the blatant plagiarism that power world has but did po World actually plagiarize Pokémon the truth is that it's worse than you could possibly [Music] imagine in order to fully understand how we can look at plagiarism in the video game industry I want you to do an exercise with me think of the oldest game the first game to have ever existed if you're like me you probably thought of the video game pong which released for Atari in 1972 pong is widely regarded as the first commercially viable video game because it earned a Target millions of dollars putting them on the map as they released one of the first atome consoles allowing everyone to play Pong at home video games took off from that point and plagiarism also took off from that point what was that I have just been informed by my producer that plagiarism didn't start after pong for video games it started with pong that's not possible pong is like the first video game how could they copy something before it or was pong the first video game video games can actually be traced all the way back to the 1950s with one of the first games using an oscilloscope as the screen that game was called tennis for two does this look familiar this was the game that Atari ripped off when they were making what this was not the so apparently this wasn't the game that pong ripped off pong ripped off a game on the Magnavox Odyssey called table tennis as you can see here they both showcased the white paddles and a black background I mean I guess they're very similar regardless of that Magnavox Odyssey proved that Nolan Bush now attended one of their trade shows the lawsuit ruled in favor of Magnavox Odyssey and Atari paid a one-time licensing fee of $700,000 that's like this much in today's time I didn't do the math beforehand so I'm going to do it after and show it on the video this was the first big case of plagiarism in the video games industry and it definitely wasn't the last the reason why we needed to start at the beginning is to show you all how exactly plagiarism worked in the video game industry it was clear that Atari saw Magnavox odyssey's table tennis game and then just ripped it off and made their own design of it Atari was clearly in the wrong so now that we're all experts about this topic let's play a game Let's Play is it plagiarism in this game I will be showing off famous ripoffs that were so blatant they ended up settling them with legal action each round will be worth three points you can get two points for guessing the game that the Ripoff was attempting to plagiarize just by the title and one for guessing the game that they were trying to plagiarize with the game playay finally you can get one point for deciding if the courts deemed it was copyright infringement or not got it let's go the first game on our list is called the great Giana sisters can you guess what game they were inspired by how about with the game play any ideas you're right it was Super Mario Brothers now let's guess do you think this game was deemed as copyright infringement well Nintendo's lawyers swooped in and the super I mean the great Giana sisters was taken off store shelves the answer was yes this is plagiarism all right let's go for round two game two is known as kyc munchkin can you guess what game they were inspired by by just the title how about with the game play you're right it was Pac-Man now was it deemed copyright infringement well according to Atari Inc versus North American Phillips consumer electronics Corp KY munchkin was banned from being sold so the answer was yes this again was plagiarism you're really good at this all all right round three this should be an easy one the game was called meteors can you guess the other how about with the game playay you got this one it was asteroids okay but final question was it copyright infringement according to Atari versus Amusement world it was deemed as not copyright in wait what are you telling me the game that would be copying asteroids was called meteor that's like naming your fast food place MC Ronald's and it still wasn't copyright infringement that's crazy so now I've got to ask what exactly did the courts decide and why wasn't it copyright infringement the reason for the ruling was that the court determined that copyright does not protect broad ideas like asteroids or meteors or the process of shooting and blowing them up in a spaceship but it protects the unique expression of an idea this is known as the idea expression distinction and has been the largest force in allowing the sheer number of ripoffs that follow the Atari age for example have you ever played the game Hollow Knight Hollow Knight is a widely acclaimed action adventure game that follows your character as he traverses the remains of the kingdom of hollist the reason I bring this game up is to highlight that Hollow Knight falls under the sub genre of action adventure games known as Metroid vanas a Metroid Vania game is a game that borrows inspiration of the nonlinear and utility gated exploration and progression systems widely popularized by the Metroid and Castlevania games hence Metroid Bia the reason why we don't see this game or other games copying genres as plagiarism is the idea expression distinction it emphasizes that copyright does not protect broad ideas like nonlinear gameplay or utility gated exploration but it protects the unique expression of those ideas to make a Metroid Vania game about an insect Warrior and a Fallen Kingdom this idea expands to multip multiple sub genres as well such as the Battle Royale Rog light games turn-based card games and so many others all of these games don't directly fall under copyright laws because they all take inspiration from other games but put their own unique expression on those ideas that they were inspired from but the biggest issue comes about when we ask the question how much inspiration is too much inspiration the way we can answer the question is by first defining what inspiration means inspiration comes from the Latin word inspir which means to breathe or blow into and one definition can be to breathe life into something such as breathing life into your own creative work in Rick rubin's the creative act a way of being he writes inspiration is a breath of creative Force drawn in instantly from outside our small selves inspiration can be found anywhere and it shapes our entire worldview as well as our creative world works for example one of the greatest artists of all time Vincent Van go was inspired by many paintings one of the paintings he admired was Japanese painter Hokusai The Great Wave many claimed that Vincent Van go was inspired by this painting when he was creating his most famous painting a star KN When comparing The Great Wave or Star KN we can understand that inspiration was taken from The Great Wave but a star KN did not do anything remotely close to plagiarizing the great weight both paintings are works of art in their own creative aspects this concept is further explained as Rick Rubin writes The Beatles were inspired by American rock and roll artists like Chuck Barry and the shrell but when they played it was different it wasn't different because they wanted it to be so it was different because they were different and that is the secret sauce that we've been missing that is the biggest concept to the determine whether plagiarism truly occurs it's impossible to imitate an artist's point of view we can only ever swim in the same Waters this is the same distinction to why Tetris sued xio interactive in 2012 for their game minow which directly copied Tetris almost 30 years later from the original game and they didn't even bother to make it look any different they could have easily avoided a lawsuit if they just made their own expression on the idea of Tetris so finally with all of this covered we can finally answer the question did poor plagiarize Pokémon and to finally answer it we need to know how much inspiration was taken from their game Satoshi Tajiri the creator of the Pokémon series grew up in Macha Japan and had a hobby of catching and collecting bugs over the nearly 30 years of creating and helping to sculpt Pokémon as the billion dollar franchise that it is today Satoshi was undoubtedly inspired by the new numerous bugs and creatures he had seen just like table tennis video games inspired by actual table tennis in fact the majority of Pokémon all take inspiration from something for example Squirtle is a turtle clef key is just a pair of keys Garbodor is trash literally at the time of making this video there are 1,025 Pokémon I don't even know if that's true I don't know how to count all the exact forms and stuff and by the time you watch this video in a year there'll be more Pokemon so at the time there is 1,025 and all of them have been inspired by something because it's impossible not to be inspired the Pokémon series inspired dozens of fan games as well including its own Monster hunting SL catching subg genre of video games like tempor what like temp cassette beats and even more but when it came to inspiring power world the internet took this and labeled it as plagiarism but is it truly plagiarism did pal World actually copy Pokemon and I've got to say after reviewing all of the details I can comfortably say not entirely wait wait don't why do you no why but seriously I think the problem that multiple people are having including myself is not that it's about plagiarism or they were inspired by Pokémon because if you look at the pals it's clear that they took a little too much inspiration from Pokémon but not every pal is a direct copy of a Pokémon and it's impossible to know where exactly all the inspiration comes from when they were designing their characters but the problem isn't exactly plagiarism it's why did they borrow too much inspiration from Pokemon and the answer is simply they want you to think of Pokemon they're banking on the similarity between the two creatures to hopefully entice players to buy and play their game they banked on this idea that they can get millions of people playing their game as long as it was associated with another billion doll franchise and it works so well for them so much so that they made a ton of money and they are breaking records so the game quickly shifts from being realized as a work of art to becoming a product that they just wanted to sell and the biggest problem is that this mentality is seen across all of their Gams for example pocket pair's upcoming game never grave the wit in the curse looks like a really fun Metroid Vania and I'm actually excited to try it out but the first picture listed on their steam page looks awfully like another game it was clearly inspired by Hollow Knight or rather the success of hollow night because the majority of these pictures and the trailer looks fun inventive and inspired by other things but to have the first picture on their steam Page look identical to the art style of hollow night shows you exactly what they want you to think they want those who like Hollow night which has a huge player base to play their game their other game craftopia has the first 5 Seconds of their trailer looking like it was taken right out of breath of the wild in fact a ton of enemies looks so similar to the ones in breath of the wild besides being a lazy attempt to make their own art stand out they want it to look like breath of the wild because they want you to think about breath of the wild when you buy it they're treating what could have been a great work of art to be just a product and as a budding YouTuber who's trying to make videos to satisfy this Almighty YouTube algorithm I understand how Soul crushing it is to not make a work of art the way you want to but pocket pair relishes in the idea of taking from other art to get you enticed to buy things from them and support them they even have an AI art generator game in which you create art based on prompts now don't even get me started about AI art because that could be an entirely different video so what I guess I'm trying to say with all of the stuff that I covered is that I don't inherently think what pocket pair is doing would be classified as copyright infringement or plagiarism in a court of law but I just think it's really shitty especially in an industry which is facing massive layoffs and that people as well as their art are being devalued for what they bring to this world one of my favorite quotes when researching all of this information comes from an IGN article about plagiarism by Nathan Grayson in that article he writes short of stealing code or assets plagiarism is a giant gray a area yes games are art but they're also products and where there's money to be made there's money to be taken by whatever means necessary so that's my take in all of this it might not even be the same because what I talked about was a lot with the idea expression distinction which was a us-based court ruling and these are both Japanese companies so it might be completely different in what I think and it might actually hold up as copyright in a court who knows but in the meantime I'd love to hear your thoughts about it what do you think about the whole situation are you enjoying playing the game are you having fun because that is great for you if you are feel free to drop a comment about the whole situation subscribe for more and if you haven't watched any of my other videos they are right here for you to watch thank you for watching and I will see you all in the next [Music] video

Channel: SableStew

Views: 1,011

Keywords: palworld, plagiarism and video games, plagiarism, palworld copyright, palworld plagiarism, palworld pokemon comparison, palworld lawsuit, palworld pokemon lawsuit, did palworld copy pokemon, did palworld steal designs, did palworld used ai, pocketpair, pocketpair hollow knight, pocketpair palworld, pocketpair ai, video game history, plagiarism in video games, copyright video games, palworld inspiration, famous ripoffs, video game ripoffs, pong lawsuit, is it plagiarism

Id: fyOMB6M6AE8

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024