Hello everyone! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I know I said I was taking a hiatus which turned into a year-long hiatus *sigh*. I’ve been trying for the longest time to come up with the perfect blog post, a long-winded explanation of the why, the how, and the what. Honestly, it’s simple. Life happened. During this past year, I went through a whirlwind of changes and disasters.
I fell out of love with reading then fell back in love. I stopped writing for a while due to medical issues/stifled creativity (don’t ask) and started back writing again. I resigned from my position and accepted a job at another studio. I wanted to go back to school then dat cost had me messed up, so I decided to give the alternative route another go. I gamed A LOT, but I never once thought to come back and write a blog post about my thoughts.
There was just too much going on at once. A lot of life events, a lot of tears, and a lot of trying to figure out, well, life! I feel like I’m finally headed down the right path. I can say with confidence that I’m in the right mindset to start blogging again.
Here’s the thing: I don’t know what to do with this blog. I feel like “Everything Indie” was just a mashup of different ideas and something inside of me wants to split those ideas into different blogs. Maybe have a blog dedicated to gaming and another blog dedicated to reading/writing? I’m leaning towards it. In that case, I have a lot of work to do breaking down “Everything Indie.” I’ll keep everyone posted via my Twitter page!
No, I didn't post up something because my brother was getting married and I was in the wedding! Every day I had to make runs and buy a shit ton of things, so there was no time to spare. Last week, I got a lot of writing done with the Forgotten World and my New Adult science fiction novel, but let me tell ya, transitioning from fantasy to sci-fi is difficult. There's a lot of self-doubt that happens and I still haven't found a writing buddy! I did go to a book fair and listened to a couple of sci-fi panels hoping that I would absorb something. I got really great advice, but the advice was conflicting. Some authors told me to wing it yet some told me to use research. One author even told me not to base my book on research because it will most likely be proven wrong. Science is an ever changing platform which means it's, unfortunately, not consistent. I'm planning to do a little bit of both: winging it and research. My sci-fi series will have a novella which will explain the events that took place before the series and it involves genes. Spoiler alert: I'm not a scientist. I know little to nothing about genes, so research will be needed. The Forgotten World will be released next year for free on e-book format!
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.”
This is plagiarism.
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.
As you guys have seen in these past couple of months, my writing habits have changed and I haven't really kept up with the blog. Basically, I was going through a re-evaluation phase of my writing and reading habits. I was starting to get bored of YA. To me, it felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again, so I started reading more adult sci-fi/fantasy novels. My switch over influenced my writing habits too in some ways. When I would write YA stories to get me back into the writing habit, I stopped short because in all honesty, I grew tired of it. I knew then it was time to take a step away from the genre all together for a little while. Besides my transition from YA to New Adult/Adult novels, I had to take a sit down and have a heart to heart with myself. It sort of went like this:
Me: Tiffani, I know you've been out the writing game for a while, but you had your fun. Time to focus down on two things.
Also me: 2 things?! An outrage! Blasphemy! *covers ears*
Me: Really, Tiffani? Are we going to do this?
The other me easily caved. I decided to work on two ongoing projects, the first is a YA fantasy and the other is a NA sci-fi. B-but Tiffani, you said you're taking a step away from YA! Yeah, I know, but I've been working on this for years now and it fits better as a YA. Plus, I'm like 40,000 words in. I'm too deep to turn back. The other NA sci-fi is a re-write as well. It started off as a YA but I kept re-writing it and the genre didn't fit. I couldn't find its' "voice" so I never got far. I decided to pick this project back up because the idea came from a class I took. I wanted to challenge readers. I wanted to call morals into question. What is right and what is wrong? Who is the villain and who is the hero? I'm not going to say anything else because I don't want to spoil it, but I do have to say, it's a lot more difficult writing sci-fi than fantasy. Honestly, I think I'm just used to writing fantasy and I'm over-thinking everything. I find myself outlining more for this project than the YA re-write. Usually, I just wing it then come back later to summarize the chapters so there's nothing conflicting. Now, it's almost like I need to know everything before everything happens. My YA novel is a re-write of my first published novel the Forgotten World. I'm planning to release it for free. I don't want to get too much into the reasons as to why I decided to re-do it but I will say this, it's darker. A lot darker and that's how I like it!
Ahhhhhh...I hope this post doesn't offend people, so just to give you guys a heads up, these are my thoughts and concerns.
Nooooooooooooooooo...don't start freaking out! I'm not leaving again. Let me explain before you click away. I've been "absent" for a while both on here and twitter because of personal situations. I'm planning to make a comeback but in a completely different direction. The book realm has always been my escape from everyday life. I can delve right into a book and be taken to a different world. Discussing what I loved with other book nerds made me happy. Book events, Goodreads, and booktube all made me happy. Lately, it hasn't. Years ago, I left the book world like as in I scrapped everything. My blog gone. My Goodreads account gone because of various reasons. One reason was that there was a shit ton of drama happening in the book realm and I already had my own drama to deal with. I came to a realization that drama will always follow you no matter what you do or where you go. I decided to focus on drama that I could control and cut out from my life and, unfortunately, the book realm had to be cut. I came back this year excited to start anew! It was great being back and for a while, I didn't see any drama unfold.
So, enough with the backstory and onto the hiatus! Sometimes when something gets a little too negative for me like the news or social media, I detox. I take a hiatus for a couple of days and come back feeling fine. With the book realm, I'm planning to take a couple of months. The book realm was my escape from drama and now there's drama happening every week. This drama isn't something you can skirt past because of how small this community is. I'm not putting the blame on anyone and I'm not saying people are right or wrong. I just see a storm brewing on the horizon again and I don't want to be in its' path.
Now we got that out the way, what does this mean? I'm not going to be active on Goodreads at all and I will not be doing Read-2-Reviews for a while, so if you want me to review your book, I'm sorry. My blog will also show the change as well. It'll be more about my writing updates and gaming stuff. Reviews are not going away, they just won't be a main focus anymore.
Whether it's from a series that you have outgrown or don't wish to continue, or they are popular books that just don't interest you, let us know what you don't plan on reading.
I have a few books that I plan on never reading and/or series I never will finish but I can only choose 5. So, let's get started.
1. 50 Shades of Grey
Reason: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...No.
2. House of Night series
Reason: The length of the first book was the only reason I made it through. There were plot holes, a horrible insta-love (like, the worst insta-love I've ever seen), stereotypes, and so much more.
3. And I Darken
Reason: Toxic relationships aren't appealing to me in any way, shape, or form so no, I won't be reading this book.
4. The Mortal Instruments series
Reason: The City of Bones was an "okay" book. I could definitely see the appeal of the story, but it didn't capture my interest. It's one of those "it's not you, it's me" books.
5. Air Awakens
Reason: I legit fell asleep twice while reading this. This has never happened to me so I ended up putting down the book and giving it away.
Once upon a time in a land not far away, there was god-like figure called Will Wright. Will Wright was a video game designer and the co-founder of Maxis. Yes my children, he created the Sims. In 2005, Will Wright announced a new game called Spore. It was not only fun but scientific as well. It was, in fact, so scientific that universities were planning to use Spore for their classes. Even our beloved Robin Williams showed it off as well. Long story short, it was a BIG deal (I did pre-order it if you were wondering). Unfortunately, upon release, it was nothing like the videos and demos shown. It was goofy, cartoonish, and the hardcore fighting scenes were completely scrapped. Levels were removed for a more basic design and the creature creator caused an uproar in the scientific community. It was crazy. The severe backlash caused Will Wright to leave the gaming industry for good and this was before the media became tremendously powerful. It wasn't until years later people started to actually enjoy Spore because it was still a great game, it just wasn't the game everyone expected. If you want to know more, check out Lazy Game Reviews video here:
I sincerely hope you guys know where I'm going with this introduction. I'm going to talk about the hype that surrounded not only No Man's Sky but several other games over the years.
The ill effects of the internet:
The rise of the Internet and social media brought about unforeseen good to the world. People used it for business purposes, communication, promotions, publishing, crowd funding campaigns, and much much more. As usual, where there is good, there is also the bad. Now, we're going to bypass the trolling and connect this to overhype. Hype in itself can be a good thing. We all have gotten hyped up about something at least once in our lives whether it be a movie, a TV show or a book. Something made us excited to look forward to it. Overhype is hype but ten times more and ten times worse. It's practically worship. People will go after your life if you don't agree with them. They refuse to see the negative and worrying factors within their cause. It can be funny but sometimes it's dangerous. For example, a Kotaku writer, Jason Schreler, was threatened simply because he reported that No Man's Sky was delayed. He didn't even bash the game, he was doing his job as a reporter. Link to article is here. It was later confirmed by the developers and the hate then flipped towards the developers themselves. Over a two month delay, guys. Threats and hissy fits over a 2 month delay.
When it comes to overhype, the community itself can become toxic leaving a sour taste in people's mouth. It actually does more harm than good. An example of this is League of Legends, a great MMO with a large gaming community. There's even a college class based around it. Because it's a popular MMO, it should be known for all the positive aspects this game provides but, unfortunately, the one thing it's well-known for is its toxic community. Insults and threats are slung at players even if they are new to the game. People have even gone as far as getting another player's number and consistently harass them. Players who want to attempt to try it for themselves are wary of it and plenty of people who've played it discourage newbies from testing it out. Riot Games themselves tried to tame it through punishment and rewards, but it ultimately failed.
The year overhype:
Overhype stems from two things: the community (as we saw in the last 2 paragraphs) and the gaming company. Sometimes one side is more at fault than the other and sometimes it's not the gaming community's fault at all. 2014 is still known as the year of overhyped games and was possibly the worst year of modern day gaming. When you think of 2014, what is the first overhyped game you think of? The first game that comes to mind is Watch Dogs. Ubisoft showed this game with NextGen graphics. They spoke so highly of the game as if it was the second coming of Jesus. When it was released, the one thing that stood out the most was the poor graphics. So, what happened? Turns out Ubisoft was playing the game on an advanced gaming PC and not a NextGen console. We also can't forget about the bugs, the 2-dimensional "complicated" protagonist, and the plot that made no sense. Another title by Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed: Unity, was the first in the series to feature multiplayer. The hype was real but what they forgot to mention was that multiplayer didn't include the main story line. There were side quests exclusively for multiplayer that had nothing to do with anything. It seemed as if they were thrown in to appease the masses like it was going to fool players into thinking Unity was the greatest Assassin's Creed game ever. Spoiler alert, it didn't and these two games among other things led to Ubisoft being labeled as an untrustworthy gaming company prompting them to take a year off from the Assassin's Creed series. These 2 games don't even make up half the list. There was Call of Duty, Destiny, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Titanfall, and much more.
First off, before I go into the next section, let me explain to people who haven't worked in retail how retail works. Employees are always on the bottom rung, making them the last ones to find out anything whether it be news or changes. Keeping this in mind, the fact that Gamestop employees were telling people No Man's Sky was not delayed when it really was shouldn't be surprising. The company most likely kept this information from the employees until Hello Games officially announced the delay. This is why Gamestop should never be considered a reliable source.
Possibilities:
There are two possibilities of what might have happened. The first one is the fault lies with Hello Games.
Even though I don't fully blame Sean Murray, there was a clear disconnect with him and his team. This was an ambitious game and for this idea to have blossomed into its' full potential, there had to be good communication going on between the team and the leader. If there was a good level of communication going on, Sean Murray should have known his team's limitations, what they could and couldn't implement in the game. What seems to have happened was that he spoke too soon and made too many promises without checking with his team to see if all of these things were a possibility. When it finally came down, he realized too late that a lot of the promises he made couldn't be implemented and instead of owning up to his business decisions, he went silent. When questions were raised, conflicting and vague responses were given. Hello Games was probably waiting for things to blow over. This might have worked in the 1900's, but this is 2016. The unsatisfying statements released to the public and the lack of explanations made fans go from this:
To this:
Some people will call this an amateur mistake but we have seen other gaming companies pull the same stunt as well. Remember Aliens: Colonial Marines? This tactic is what we call The “Peter Molyneux Effect," over-promising without fact checking. Jim Sterling's video explains it really well:
Sony:
Many people believe that the fault lies with Sony. Hello Games was fine until Sony started backing them. It would explain the lack of features within the game and it would also explain another possible limitation: time. Like most AAA companies, their main focus is what can they produce to make them money in a short amount of time which leads to super buggy games, glitches and lack of features. If rumors are true, the different divisions of Sony aren't faring as well as their gaming division. No Man's Sky was their next big title. It could've been it's savior. So, maybe Hello Games did know they wouldn't have been able to put together all the features by the time Sony requested and Sony just shrugged it off. It's not hard to picture this giant company looming over little Hello Games constantly saying, "are you done yet?" Not only were they being pressed for time from Sony, they were also being pressed by their own gaming community. Now imagine both Sony and an entire community looming over little Hello Games asking, "are you done yet?" That's a lot to handle.
Final Thoughts:
Now that's out of the way, onto my thoughts. I can't entirely blame Sean Murray. This man essentially became Will Wright 2.0 overnight. Many people seem to forget Hello Games is still an indie company even though they were backed by Sony. This means they didn't have the man power to start off with to implement all these ideas Sean Murray was tossing out. I'm not saying these ideas were impossible. Those videos and gameplay showing full out space battles could have very well been in the game at the start but when Sony decided to back them, they felt pressured to complete No Man's Sky as soon as possible and unfortunately had to make a lot of sacrifices. I believe that Sean Murray didn't want to disappoint his fans, so instead of coming clean, he kept the same facade. What escalated everything was fans taking bits and pieces of Sean Murray's vague statements on certain aspects of the game and jumping to conclusions yet Hello Games did nothing to de-escalate the situation. They even encourage it, adding to the hype. In rare cases, overhype stems from both communities. No Man's Sky is an example of such occurrence.
Not all of your ideas are going to make it to the final cut, I learned this from game writing. Limitations prevent these ideas from blooming. These limitations can include money, story, time and man-power. In the gaming industry, something always has got to give to make the game work. In an indie company, most likely you'll be working with the lack of man-power which effects other aspects like time. Depending on how small the team is, you may not have a set release date for years. In larger gaming companies, mostly time is short and money is tight but there's a lot of man-power which could negatively effect story. Knowing and understanding these limitations is key to making a game succeed.
