The great debate of all time. Can anything really be considered original? Have we done everything that we can? Are the lines blurred between what's plagiarism and what isn't? The answer is yes and no. Musicians have been called out frequently for plagiarism, but the artist refers to it as inspiration. There's a difference though. Being inspired by something drives you to create your own work of art. Plenty of artists create works inspired by certain eras, genres, etc. but taking a certain part of another song and building it from that point on without having any intention of recognizing the person is not "inspiration." It's stealing.
A company recently came under fire for stealing from indie artists and using them for their own clothing line. Even though they claimed to be “inspired” or “influenced” by these artists, the artist called foul play. When the images are put side by side, it’s hard to say that they were just “inspired.”
What is plagiarism?
Nowadays, it’s harder to distinguish what’s plagiarism and what’s not, according to others. What’s original and what’s not. In the gaming world, there’s about a dozen FNAF rip-off games being sold. Any big selling title will always have a rip-off game, so isn’t this considered plagiarism? In the book world, 50 shades of Grey was a Twilight fanfiction later published as a book. She just changed the names of the characters. Isn’t this plagiarism as well? 50 shades of grey is debatable but all the FNAF rip-offs are not.
Plagiarism is copying something and claiming it as your own. It’s like turning in a 35-page essay on “20 reasons why plagiarism is wrong” that you found on the internet and saying you wrote it from scratch. Even though we all know that these games are FNAF rip-offs, they are in fact heavily inspired by the FNAF games not plagiarized. Each game is different whether it’s freeroam, animatronics that look like pigs, or an evil egg, they have some of the same concepts as the FNAF games, but not one of them tried to take a portion of the game itself and pass it off as their own. Yes, most of the games do have voice recordings, but they don’t copy the original phone guy word for word. That would be plagiarism.
50 Shades of Grey is a very grey area (no pun intended) because it has been proven by people time and time again that this fanfiction is in fact a plagiarized BDSM version of Twilight. So, why hasn’t the author faced copyright infringement? Even though it’s 89% identical to Twilight, the BDSM “idea” came from her own mind making it the same thing but different. Also, because Stephanie Meyer has no intention of reading it for herself and/or pursuing copyright claims against her, it’ll forever stay in the grey area.
Going back into the gaming realm, are fanmade games considered plagiarism as well? Nintendo thinks so and they went on a mass spree to pull all the fanmade games off the internet. They definitely angered fans all around the globe but does this really really count as plagiarism? Let me start by saying this, Nintendo has every right to take down fanmade games because people are using their characters that belong to them, but if we go back to the definition of plagiarism, no, fanmade games are not. Let’s look at the actual Webster definition:
1. to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
2. to use (another's production) without crediting the source
3. to commit literary theft
4. to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
Fanmade games pay homage to their “parent” game, they always credit the source and they don’t make revenue off the game itself. They’re free on a public domain. It would make more sense if they were selling these games, but they’re not. If we were to consider fanmade games as plagiarism then we need to draw fanfiction into the equation as well, I mean, fanmade games are essentially visual fanmade stories, so fanfiction needs to go too.
Unoriginality vs. Originality
In the book world, plagiarism, most of the time, is a hard call to make because ideas and concepts cannot be stolen. Saying an author stole your idea about a psychic super-fast vampire is an impossible claim. Why? It’s been done before. It’s an unoriginal idea yet being unoriginal isn’t plagiarizing, it’s taking a trope or several tropes and mashing them into a story. Unoriginality is throwing in a love triangle and making it the main focus because we haven’t seen that before *sarcasm*. So, how does unoriginality tie in with originality? Believe it or not, nothing is original anymore. Everything stems from something. You can make a FPS war game and try to pitch it as something “fresh and new” but Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Titanfall have already done it. You can write a book about a girl in a post-apocalyptic world fighting against an oppressive government, but again it’s been done plenty of times before.
Final Thoughts
So, your idea about a super-fast psychic vampire has been done before. Extend the idea into a story about a half-blood on the run because he’s the illegitimate son of a vampire king. The king’s barren and spiteful wife wants him dead while the king wants his only heir alive. Throw in a love triangle but instead of two love interest fighting over this guy, make them friends and show the difficulty of letting go to make the other person happy. Change your basic FPS war game concept into a game set in the future when robots became aware and went to war with humanity. The main protagonist’s family was murdered in front of her by these robots sending her on a vengeful path. It’s all about what you can bring to the audience. Even though robots and vampires are not new, spinning it into something more turns it into an impressive idea.
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