Creative Piracy

Piracy is illegal, this is for sure. But what about the ones that are considered "transformative work"? What do you do when someone takes an original content and puts their own spin on it? According to Lessig, most of today's forms of media is built on piracy. Mediums such as film and music are born from pirated works of their time. This is very apparent as you look at different movies, most of which takes ideas from older stories and puts their own spin on it. For example, Avatar, the top grossing film of all time, the story itself can be directly related to Disney's Pocahontas, and that story is based off real events of a man instead of the lead woman character in Pocahontas. Each version just puts on a different coat of paint, with different characters and settings, but the underlying story that each tells can be identical if stripped down to its most basic components. A better example of transformative work is of a Youtube user who adds commentary to his recorded "video-game" sessions and that in turn is not piracy. But if there were no commentary it would be considered copyright infringement. Where is the line drawn here?

The example I want to talk about are 2 companies that make games for mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android phones. The companies Zynga and Gameloft often takes direct ideas from massive selling games from homes consoles such as the Xbox 360 or PS3, putting different character names and settings into their own game then selling them on mobile app stores. Is this considered piracy? Taking direct gameplay mechanics (fundamentals of how a game works) and overall theme and putting it into their own game. Gameloft is infamous for being the "copycat" company because of their history with this kind of taking ideas from someone else and applying it to their own product. A simple search on Google would net you the results of a list of games they almost directly copy:

Hero of Sparta I/II = God of War

Shadow Guardian = Uncharted 2

Modern Combat = Modern Warfare

Zombie Infection = Resident Evil IV

Eternal Legacy = Final Fantasy XIII

Dungeon Hunter 2 = Diablo

Sacred Odyssey = Zelda (N64 and Wii)

Starfront - Collision = Starcraft Series

Brain Challenge = Brain Age

Gangstar = Grand Tefth Auto

Blades of Fury = Soulcalibur

Asphalt = Grand Turismo

Skater Nation = Tony Hawk

Shrek Kart = Mario Kart

Star Batallion = Starfox/Starwars

Nova = Halo

Order & Chaos = World of Warcraft

But the counter argument here is that if they didn't provide these experiences on a different device for the people who did not have access to the original games but want it for their mobile devices, then there would be no one else to do this. Companies such as Gameloft and Zynga argues that they provide a kind of fan-service that no one else would or could provide for the customers. The original creators would not want their games on an iPhone, so these companies do it for those of us who want it. But the underlying question is whether or not it is ok, or even legal, to provide a certain service, even if it means to directly copy someone else's, because that someone else wouldn't have done it anyways.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/03/18/gameloft-copycat-strikes-again-world-of-warcraft-ripped-off.aspx
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/29290014/zyngas-copycatting-continues-this-time-its-pokemon
http://www.vg247.com/2012/08/21/zyngas-copycat-games-squander-talent-say-mobile-devs/