Subject: A discussion for the wiki: are ROM hacks fanfiction?
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Posted on: 2017-06-19 02:03:00 UTC
I'd like to direct folks's attention to the discussion page for "ROM hacks," and get opinions on whether ROM hacks count as fanfiction.
—doctorlit, wanting to see a talk page get some actual talking done, for once
So it's a Friday and I figured we might as well still do this. So forgive me for not being able to do any fancy headings or stuff like that and let's jump into this weeks news:
Fandom News
Well E3 happened. New games galore! So many in fact that I won't mention them all here. Any favourites? Any you dislike? Anything you really wanted to see but didn't? For me I'd of loved to see Elder Scroll 6, but you can't get everything. Whilst Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon look... interesting and Anthem looks like an awesome new game from Bioware so I can't wait.
Outside of E3 Warhammer 40,000 is about to be launched into it's 8th Edition with a whole new array of changes to both game-play and lore as they finally step outside the 41st millennium.
Anything else I've missed in any of your fandoms? Let me know down below (hey that rhymed).
Silly News
Uh... not got too much for you here. Besides a Nigerian athlete's wig falling off during the long jump: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-40302842/nigerian-athlete-s-wig-falls-off-during-long-jump
Serious News
The British Parliament is current hung. No that does not mean we've built a large set of gallows for them. It means there is no clear majority following the general election. Whilst the Conservatives have the most seats they don't have the majority needed to have won, and are thus trying to make a deal with the DUP to gain majority. Which, given the history of the DUP and the Troubles has many people (at least around where I live) worried.
At least 30 people have died in a huge fire that engulfed a tower block in London on Wednesday, there are still many missing and in hospital.
Not News
Not really got anything to go here either... Sorry folks, but if you've got anything to share go for it.
Novastorme
I'd like to direct folks's attention to the discussion page for "ROM hacks," and get opinions on whether ROM hacks count as fanfiction.
—doctorlit, wanting to see a talk page get some actual talking done, for once
For example I wouldn't say we could spork Skyrim mods (and by mods here I'm talking about quest mods) even though I have come across some with horrible SPaG.
For Romhacks I don't think we can really spork them either. They are too different from the other types of fanmedia to really be able to do that sort of thing with.
Novastorme.
I would have replied on the Wiki I just can't work out how.
Sure, most video game mods aren't things we can spork, but I'd argue they're, generally speaking, fanproducts (which is a word I just made up to generalize fanfic, fatart, and that sort of thing).
To back up a bit, I'd say what a fanfic is almost always meant to do is to expand on or improve the original cool thing to make it cooler. There's a lot of fic that basically adds more material to the universe, and a lot of the other stuff (AUs, crossovers, and the like) goes "What if we took the thing and made X happen instead?" or "The thing was cool, but I didn't like this bit, I'm writing my version of it instead.". Fanart also expands or improves on on the thing it's being draws about (more art is better, or, in some cases, the original art wasn't good, so it needs to be improved on).
This general theory of what a fan-thing does extends to video games rather well. Quest mods of the sort you mentioned fit well into this framework (there's not enough content about X/the context about X sucks, let's add/replace it!). Heck, even UI mods could be consider fan-UX (this game is cool, but the [whatever] UI sucks, I'm making a better one).
However, not everything fans make can be sporked. Sure, you can concrit anything, but you can't apply the PPC mission format to all media. There's a few prerequisites, like the medium having a concept of plot and characters, and being quotable or summarizable in a way that lets you write a mission about it. (Come to think of it, we could probably spork a quest mod if we really wanted to.)
Now, as to romhacks, I did a few seconds of research. If you're hacking ROM to adjust the game or add stuff to it (like more content or a translation), it's basically a mod that has a particular installation method, and is therefore a fanproduct. Ripping out everything but the engine and building a new game, on the other hand, is roughly equivalent to borrowing someone's basic premise and writing your own version, and doesn't count as a fanproduct.
To actually reach the original question, I'd say that mods and romhacks that act on the narrative stuff like content are effectively fanfic (and, analogously, texture mods are effectively favart), and that some romhacks are mods.
- Tomash
...because I myself was wondering if there needs to be a Department of Bad Fangames/Mods, Department of Bad Fan Animations, Department of Bad Fan Comics, etc for stuff that's fanwork but not written (like fanfic is). Or maybe even an organization different from the PPC entirely. The thing is, fangames and whatnot are a different challenge than fanfiction, because with fangames, you have to have enough skill to progress through the game, and with fan animations, there's no saving your progress, so if it's long, you have to have a lot of time on your hands. And it wouldn't really work to critique the work in writing, because then you'd have to describe things in the game, which wouldn't be quite as easy as just having a YouTube channel and doing a critique/let's play hybrid thing.
You know what? For that stuff, we need a PPC YouTube channel. I guess. Or people could refer to the PPC in the title of their video and so those would all show up in the same search. Some of us could do mod reviews, some could react to and review fan animations, some could read fan comics with fun voices, and some could just scroll through Google Images or DeviantArt looking up "[fandom here] fanart". That'd be really great. Annnnd since I'm pretty sure YouTubers get paid for views and subscribers, all the money that we get from the PPC videos could be donated to writing websites like Springhole.net and fantasynamegenerators.com.
Just kind of throwing that idea out there. Sound cool? Any thoughts? Or what?
-Twistey
After all, the Bad Role-Play Department is a thing, and role-plays aren't strictly narrative. (Boy, would I give a lot to get that spin-off back.) I do think we should put off officially creating new departments until someone is actually prepared and skilled enough to do such multimedia sporkings.
I've always loved the idea of doing radio plays/audiobooks of the PPC. I don't if YouTube has an option for a shared community channel, though. While I do like the idea of giving such a channel's revenue away in donations, I'm not sure it would be worth the effort of running. (And personally, while I recognize that donating to writing sites would be "on theme" for us, I would rather give the money to something a little more practical/material, like food banks or such.)
—doctorlit, thinking, discussing
same as everyone hosts their own missions.
And, as a slight amendment, the act of publishing such a multimedia sporking could create new departments if the creator felt that it was needed.
- Tomash
So... can we all start coming up with a way to structure these videos so that they're somewhat uniform (in the way that missions have generally the sequence of events?)
To both you and doctorlit, I suggest that new departments should be created eventually, once a good number of these have been published, just because of what I said earlier about video games and fan animations requiring a different skill set than fanfic. Once I've got my Google account for Newgrounds stuff up and running, I'll probably start doing game critiques and label the fan-mod or fangame ones as PPC, so you can most likely count on me as someone in this operation, if not maybe the first to be prepared in that way.
About the donation thing doctorlit said, I guess that each of us could donate to whatever we feel would be best to donate to. I personally try to stay away from anything to do with world issues, which probably makes me a very heartless person, but on the other hand decreases the stress of having to decide which problem I want to help solve.
Hmm, I just realized something. These let's-plays are going to be quite a bit more like MSTs than missions, and unless the Boarder reacting is good at doing voices and being in character, we ourselves are going to be the reacting party, not our agents. Is there a way that we can, er, write missions about fixing fangames? Or something? I guess those would just be written, since missions are narratives. Any thoughts?
-Twistey
Missions have a lot more of a narrative around the agents, who do a lot more than just snark at the bad, and don't usually show most of the badfic (Unlike a MST, where you just interleave the commentary with the whole badfic/badmod/...).
Well, as to if you can come up with a way to write (and video-ize) a mission about fixing a fangame (and you have Permission, generally), then I'm not sure there's anything stopping. Might be rather hard to pull off, in that I can't seem to think of a format off the top of my head.
That is, to your initial question, initially, "we" is mostly "you" (but once you have some thoughts, we'll be glad to hear them, offer our opinions, elaborations, etc.). I have some vague thoughts on how a videogame mission could potentially work, but they're not very coherent at the moment and I'll gladly hear yours.
- Tomash
I'm already aware of the general differences between missions and MSTs (missions are more actual story, MSTs are like reaction videos), but thanks for clearing that up further.
I'm pretty sure that writing a mission about fixing a fangame would be pretty easy - just remember stuff about the fangame, then write a mission about fixing the fangame (which, if the fangame has a story, would be pretty similar to one for a fanfic), and then if you want to make it a video, get some people to voice act and animate it for you! (Or live action with cosplay, if you're okay with a face reveal. Sadly, I'm not.)
Okay, about the first question, it would be somewhat similar to the fanfic missions: in the RC, console beeps, the agents go into the game, find out whatever's wrong with the game (and if there's no character they can target, they just so happen to find the developer and corner them, or do whatever departments that don't deal with characters, like DOGA, do), and then read the charge list, and then restore things to their ordinary ways. Any thoughts about that?
-Twistey
that, with sufficient time/effort/etc., you could insert the agents into footage of the thing you were missioning.
- Tomash
But still, if you were playing a game with a set storyline, there'd be no real way to get footage of the agents not following the storyline, so I think that animations would be better.
-Twistey
The Prologue and first chapter of my massive fanfic project, The Continuity Saga, is finally up in Fimfiction.net!
Robert Muller, the special counsel investigating the Trump-Russia collusion scandal, hired a whole bunch of lawyers, including several fraud and money laundering experts (there's an autoplaying video in there). He's also now looking at whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.
This all has resulted in several people connected to the administration getting lawyers, including Pence and, oddly enough Trump's personal lawyer. I wonder how deep the stack of recursive lawyers is going to get before this is over.
Unrelatedly, I didn't really follow E3 much, so I don't quite know what happened there, but apparently people are hyped.
. . . Why doesn't his lawyer just represent himself?
for a few reasons. The big one is that when it's personal, you might be a bit less objective and miss some legal thing you should/shouldn't do. Another is that not everyone's an expert at all types of lawyering: corporate merger lawyers should probably not try to defend themselves from bank robbery charges since they don't really know how criminal stuff works.
I was terribly disappointed with Bethesda's conference.
I can't remember the name, but there was a pirate game that looks great. Some of the people that worked on Black Flag are involved with it.