DavidDayton said:
...or maybe a fan group could make a game using similar mechanics and gameplay to a Nintendo title but without using copywritten sprites, characters, and music!
Why does this matter so much, though? I mean, yes - there's a ton of merit in using original assets. There's a sense of accomplishment with using 100% original artwork. That's great. If you're going to make a game, you
should probably do that.
But outside of potential legal issues, should it really matter as much as it does? Assuming they actually finish this thing (so many of the better-looking fangames get canceled or simply
sit in development limbo for years), you get to play a great game, either way.
It's just one way, you have original sprites and original characters, and the other way, you have Link and Octoroks. If it's going to be the same game one way or the other, and the developer(s) is alright with never getting any money out of it, who cares? I don't.
Is it something to do with "growing up"? You have to stop certain fandom-related outputs at a certain age? Or a certain quality level? Because a lot of professional comic book artists still draw fanart outside of official artwork gigs. You think that just because some guy gets hired to draw Spider-Man for Marvel suddenly he's not allowed to draw Superman or something in his sketch book and post it to his art blog?
Do you think that if people are making games of such quality that nobody will hire them if their portfolio contains cribbed assets? I don't know if that really matters; if you show an understanding of how a game works from a design perspective, it shouldn't matter what you designed it with, it should matter how you designed it. I'd like to hope that's enough. A good game is a good game, regardless of what was stolen from where. After all, for some designers, it's either going to be nice looking Link sprites or it's going to be ghastly MS Paint stuff.
As for being threatened with a lawsuit, those incidents are rapidly dwindling. Most of them were likely the result of misunderstandings - a lack of clarity regarding what a fangame is (I'd assume most companies saw them as illegal bootlegs and that the people making them had the intent to sell what they were creating - that's almost never the case, with a fangame). The last C&D I remember hearing about was probably four or five years ago -
Chrono Resurrection.
There's nothing wrong with fangames as long as they're fun and they actually manage to get released.