Limbo of the Lost caught with stolen assets

[Dave Gilbert]

To be fair, JA and AG review from the point of view of an adventure gamer.  PC Gamer and the like cater to a more console-centric audience. 

Anyway, I find the team's behavior pretty darn shameful.  I feel bad for the publisher, who will get a lot of undeserved flak over this.  I admired what they did with Ghost in the Sheet.  A publisher that allows developers to keep the rights to their games is rare.

[LimpingFish]

To be fair, JA and AG review from the point of view of an adventure gamer.  PC Gamer and the like cater to a more console-centric audience. 

Well, I'm speaking solely of the UK editions of PC Gamer/Zone/Format, US gaming magazines being another kettle of fish, and they are anything but console-centric.

They have also given average to high marks to (and featured demos of on their coverdisc) such adventures as Telltales Sam and Max, Overclocked, and numerous indie adventures (including the Blackwell Games ). Just this month, PC Gamer has a full page feature about AGS and the AGS community, praising the program for helping keep the genre alive, and decrying the lack of large publisher/developer support for the genre itself. And every month their freeware sections are overflowing with AGS games.

You also raise another point, Dave, that I'd like to address in general:

I'm tired of the defense of sub-par games by the adventure community, both amateur and professional, simply because only adventure players will "get" them. If JA and AG are anything to go by, the average adventure fan is an insular anal-retentive, who fears and abhors any deviation from a set of well-worn criteria in the games they play.

I approach games of all genres from a single viewpoint...that of a gamer.

To be brutally honest, I wouldn't trust 75% of positive commercial reviews from inside the adventure scene.

I apologise for straying off topic once again, and I apologise if this seems like a rant. And I apologise to Dave if it seems like I'm jumping on him.

[ManicMatt]

Still off topic.. but then I think Limbo of the lost has pretty much been covered anyway..

This reminds of the last days of the Amiga, when publishers stopped sending their crap games to Amiga Power because they knew it'd get a bad review. AP would literally pop down to the shops to buy the shit game so they could review it and give it that 25% review score it deserved.

[Dave Gilbert]

I think we're missing the important question here.

If this happens again, what do we call it?

Pulling a Limbo?  Majesticizing? 

I'm up for suggestions.

[LRH]

Huge nerd for knowing this, *sigh*, However!
This is VERY much like and incident back when I was 8 or 9. I was really into a game called chex quest (check it out, its a total conversion of Doom distributed with chex cereal in 96')
Anyway, the producers of chex quest, Digital Cafe, released a sequel, chex quest 2.
Now, anyone who has modded Doom knows, making your own levels is actually pretty easy.
Rumors that the company began work on the infamous 'chex quest 3' spread.
Soon, chex quest 3 was released, but as a 'fan game' and not official.
Many fans of Doom quickly picked up on:
*Many levels had the exact same layout with different textures
*Many levels were identical to Doom fan-made levels
*Perhaps the most ridiculous and obvious: The game contained graphics from, get this, an oldschool ghostbusters game.

Copyright infrigement much? o.o
It's amazing people think they can pull these things off.

[Gilbert]

Hmmm There aren't much information from the Wikipedia page but we have this:

A fanmade sequel, Chex Quest 3 was also finished, and is available from Home of the Underdogs. This sequel's components, however, were all downloaded from the Digital Café website (now defunct), and the "authors" did nothing but compile them.

If this is true, my guess was Digital Cafe ceased the development of CQ3 when it's halfway done, and the development files of the game used placeholder graphics and levels which were from everywhere (this is quite common practice I think). If the game was to be completed they might have changed more stuff, but it was not, and the 'fans" just compiled the uncompleted game. Though IMO as it's a "fan" game I think most people should be less bothered by "borrowed" materials (especially for non-commercial ones).

[LRH]

Hmmm There aren't much information from the Wikipedia page but we have this:

A fanmade sequel, Chex Quest 3 was also finished, and is available from Home of the Underdogs. This sequel's components, however, were all downloaded from the Digital Café website (now defunct), and the "authors" did nothing but compile them.

If this is true, my guess was Digital Cafe ceased the development of CQ3 when it's halfway done, and the development files of the game used placeholder graphics and levels which were from everywhere (this is quite common practice I think). If the game was to be completed they might have changed more stuff, but it was not, and the 'fans" just compiled the uncompleted game. Though IMO as it's a "fan" game I think most people should be less bothered by "borrowed" materials (especially for non-commercial ones).

While I'm certain materials and resources were taken without permission by other places than just digital cafe' for CQ3, I agree completely, non-commercial use isn't nearly as bad as blatent plaigarism for profit.

[evenwolf]

While I'm certain materials and resources were taken without permission by other places than just digital cafe' for CQ3, I agree completely, non-commercial use isn't nearly as bad as blatent plaigarism for profit.

Hehe, did anybody read that part of the article where they basically describe that scene in every movie where the main character is approached by his good buddy with a money making scheme?  It's like Weekend At Bernies:

"Hey buddy, I know a way that we can make LOADS of money!   All we have to do is.... _________"



*in this case fill the blank with "plagiarize tons of commercial video games."

[evenwolf]

ColdPlaygiarism

This looks a bit like a publicity stunt to me.

[ManicMatt]

Pulling a Limbo?

NO!!
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=29620.0

As you can see, I ripped my graphics straight from Fallout 3.

[evenwolf]

Hmm "Pulling a limbo" or "Losing a Limbo"  ("Looks like someone lost their limbo")

to lose at limbo is to fall on your ass right?   Or touch the pole... we're getting somewhere here.

[Dualnames]

Remember Turrican? a total-rip off out of anything, even its cover is a ripoff from a Manowar album.

[ManicMatt]

You leave Turrican alone! It was a classic! The cover was "inspired" by Manowar! 

[Pumaman]

Interesting to see this reach the mainstream media:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/06/19/dlgame119.xml
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/18/limbo_lost_saga/

well, you know what they say, no publicity is bad publicity for adventure games, right? ... Right?

[Ishmael]

Now that I think of it, the player character reminds me a lot of Luther, from Lands of Lore 2...

[Makeout Patrol]

I can't believe that people are calling for lenience on this. Fair use and parody are one thing; these people took the assets and intellectual property of a wide array of other (vastly superior) games and solid it as their own. If they'd made a crap game and sold it, that would be one thing; they are taking the work of other people, claiming it as their own, and profiting from it, without offering any sort of recompense to the actual authors. How is this not a terrible thing to be doing?

Furthermore, what is this going to do to the reputations of other, similar games? Are publishers going to be as interested in accepting titles from small, independent, unknown developers anymore?

[evenwolf]

Great point.  For all we know, publishers will see AGS game makers us as liabilities from now on.     Assholes who just lie and say everything is their own content ruin the overall credibility for the rest of us.

[SSH]

Great point.  For all we know, publishers will see AGS game makers us as liabilities from now on.     Assholes who just lie and say everything is their own content ruin the overall credibility for the rest of us.

But, it was made with Wintermute... another reason why AGS is superior. None of the games in our DB... oh

[ManicMatt]

Don't worry guys, I'll be soon releasing my own commercial game using AGS. Here is an in-game screenshot:



I made everything in this game myself, the graphics, music, and the engine itself from scratch.

[evenwolf]

Hahah, Limbo of the Lost would be good inspiration for a Photoshop Phriday.