Shout-out to all the wonderful forum members who helped me on my last forum post, “What you want vs what will sell?”. Because of your contributions, I’m working on a game of my own that I’m very much in love with.
So I’m doing a 3D 90’s fighter for Steam. Thus far I’ve built menus, stage transitions and a character selection. As anyone whose played a fighter knows, one of the most prominent features of the genre is it’s cast. Having to form a crew of combatants will require some creativity. And then it hit me, I spend a ton of time in politics. It’s a guilty pleasure. Can I get away with making Donald, Hillary, Bill, Bernie, Jeb, Ben Shapiro and other political figures? Can I make generic characters like ‘Big Red’, Triggly Puff, etc?
I’m not going to make this game a political agenda. It’s more in good fun. Make fun of the world around us. Can I make something like this? I’ve seen games with Hillary and Trump characters before. Typically Trump becomes ‘Ronald Mump’, etc. Can I not use their actual names?
Just a fun idea, I’m willing to abandon it if it screams a horrible problem begging to happen.
EDIT: This is a little bit off topic, but how far can I borrow mechanics from other games? I hear you can copyright a character - but not a concept. So mechanics as far as I’m currently understanding is fair game, right? There’s a brilliant point system I want to use in my fighter regardless of what kind of characters I base the video game around.
Off topic: Steal away on mechanics. Nothing that can be protected there.
On topic: Stealing specific identities of public figures actually does have the potential to land you in some trouble. Identities do have some protection. The right of publicity typically provides some protection for the use of personal names in commercial products.
I would make it an obvious parody. That normally lets you get away with pretty much anything. So run with Tronald Dump.
I would also advise that only Hillary and Trump have been heard of outside of the states. It probably doesn’t matter that much, but it does limit your market some.
I feel like we had a very good thread on this a few months back. Will see if I can find it for you.
It is your game and you decide what to do with it.
When somebody adds “political issues” into their game, it usually ends up being quite horrible, even in case of big budgets, and feels out of place. First there’s such abomination as Divinity: Dragon Commander (which was a big waste of my money), which attempted to push every single issue that exist in the world into fantasy game (hippies, anti-vaxers, you name it). Bioware occasionally tried to push certain hot issues into their games, result almost always was cringeworthy.
Feel free to give it a try, though.
IN case of actual politicians, the issues to consider are fair use (Parody/satire) and use of likeness for commercial purposes.
Mechanics are usually not copyrighteable (unless they’re developed by apple, which IIRC, tried to patent shape of a square once), their implementations are.
This. Games in general haven’t mastered the art of subtlety yet, like the older art mediums. So the typical political commentary is just to hit players over the head with an idea.
To deal with political ideas you need to incorporate the idea into the game world, without passing judgement on it. It’s also best to examine the idea from multiple sides. There is not a single idea in politics that is universially good or bad. Make the player think about the ideas, don’t just use a particular view point.
Political satire/parody is a different ball game. Here you are meant to be obvious. The idea is to make a player laugh, not make them think. On the other hand satire is only as relevant as the politicians last mistake. Give it a year and no one will remember Hillary. Although Trump is likely to provide plenty of fodder for a few more years.
Thanks for the viewpoints fellas. It’s been really helpful. I think you’re both on the money about video games and subtlety. You gave me a lot to think about.
You may consider instead of parody-ing particular people - instead consider a creative character of the extreme stereotype of a (self identified) ‘type’ of person you’d like to create.
For example a stereotypical liberal progressive politician could be female with an extreme crew cut hair style, wearing a muted pastel colored pants suit and wave around a bull horn as a weapon.
Another example for a stereotypical conservative politician would be a middle aged white man in a suit who is outwardly wearing some form of religious symbol, toting a large AR15 and waiving a flag.
Other stereotypes semi-related could be a tie-dye wearing hippie, shorts and flip-flops, polo wearing hipster. etc
IMO - stereotypes that represent the type of persona your interested in creating is a lot safer, allows for more creativity and can stand the test of time. Specific people wear out over a short period of time, unless the subject is a historical person.
Looking at most popular fighters - (tekken & street fighter are a good examples) most characters are extreme stereotypes that have morphed into there own characters with there own stories - which I find much more interesting and entertaining than a character based on some recent past actual person.
Relying on the mocking or slandering of famous people as the selling point of your product is probably not going to work. That market is cornered and saturated and it’s being done by all sorts of media outlets, professional and amateur, looking for an angle to get noticed. And Apple at any rate won’t let it fly if they catch it.
If you are genuinely funny at it, go for it, but based on what I’ve seen of even successful professional comedians today, even they aren’t funny at it.
That’s because it was a terrible as a game. I loved the show back in the day so I was a little interested (though fighting games aren’t my thing at all), and I’m pretty sure none of the reviews I read complained about the satirical aspect. A lot of the reviews started out praising the show as a lead-in to the disappointment of the game adaptation, in fact.
While that would be ideal, I don’t think I’ve met anyone who could actually pull that off.
Books, TV, theatre and movies all do it. Its just a case of medium maturity. Games are still pretty young. The techniques are still new. Give it a few more decades and we will see social commentary via games without using a sledgehammer.
I sorta liked the way satire was done in Red Alert 3. They actually appeared to do a great deal of research (well, at least their composer did it). Unfortunately the game itself was not that good, and it was not a “social” commentary.
I did a Tekken styled sidescroller brawler for Android with the Donald versus the various astroturfing protestors for Android. My attitude is go for it as there was more than enough infantile and obscene games (Trump open heart surgery simulator, a feces dispenser that put a cartoon Trump hair piece on it) that were anti-Trump, which was why I repurposed my pocket brawler engine. If that makes me deplorable then I gladly accept that honor and will place it next to my Pepe action figure on my mantle.
The real hard point to all of this is releasing fast enough to maintain relevancy. The South Park guys can churn out an episode in a week, but a game takes months to years if it’s a game starting from scratch. If you were working on something from the zeitgeist like SJW’s, that would be one thing, but trying to comment on the election in four months isn’t even worth it.
A TrigglyPuff sim in the flavor of Goat Simulator might be a hoot:) With a rage and roll mechanic where she goes tumbling around till she finds some SJW triggering object, building or signage, rages and then drops into a demolition roll. Boxes of donuts are hidden around the environment for powerups. Finding bottles of blue hair dye will unleash little blue haired chubby gremlins to assist in the rage and roll demolition.