Dragon Age News Thread

Interesting choice -- by PW, I mean. I can't decide if he's just being really dumb and is setting himself up for an angry note from EA's Legal department (usual policy is to not deal with actionable situations in social media, or even in email, since email is discoverable), or if he's being very clever and is using the podium of his personal social media account to give the contributing artists some cover. Or at least a carefully worded warning, that if written plainly, would read, "HEY YOU DUMB FUCKS! Piracy is not a victimless crime and now you are forcing me to out all 39 of you to my company's lawyers, which is pretty ironic given that the charities you are trying to support are LGBTQ+! And good intentions have never stopped a pitbull litigator, so stfu and leave me out of it!"

O, tumblr. If only attribution was an ingrained cultural norm for your site ... things like this would never happen.

It has nothing to do with Tumblr; that just happens to be the avenue by which the artists have come together for this project. Whether they give credit doesn't matter in this case. They are using their fanart of a proprietary character to obtain money without obtaining the license to use said proprietary character. It doesn't matter that the money is going to a charity or charities.

The Born Perfect campaign using Dorian fanart has been going on for a long while now. The devs have actually tweeted about it before. It was fine when they were just raising awareness and giving people links to donate on their own accord. This is something different.

I have a Dorian t-shirt with a chibi Dorian fanart that is undoubtedly not 100% kosher in the legal department. There are also fanartists that sell prints of their own works using vendors like Cafe Press. But this is small potatoes and Bioware looks the other way, neither do these people put the developers on notice that they're doing it.

The person made a mistake in tweeting PW about it. But I also don't understand PW's reasoning in deciding to respond to it, to acknowledge its existence, in the first place.


[edit] I donated to the lowest tier for the pdf version. We'll see what happens by January when it's supposed to be released. There will either be legal action and hopefully I'll get my money back, or I'll actually get it. I couldn't not support this love of the character. And if it all works out, I'll get some pretty art.

Probably a warning. People in general have very little idea or care when it comes of treatment of intellectual property on the Web (I know, I'm a graphic artist and had my stuff stolen) and they need a little reminder sometimes that there are certain lines that can't be crossed for things to stay as they are.

I'm fairly sure Bioware (like many other companies) in general appreciates fanworks and knows that they keep the fanbase motivated and happy, if not act as informal way to advertise their product outside of it - which is why they don't intervene in most cases. But people can't forget that they can't expect them to endorse making money off it, even for charity, because it opens a legal Pandora's box that will ultimately hurt both sides. Copyright law is a mess, especially that we don't have a global basis for it.

Yeah, that's why companies try to tolerate it as much as they can legally get away with. Unfortunately copyright acts on something like a "use it or lose it" policy.

Imagine some asshole really abuses their copyright. To make up an extreme example, maybe they sell a game with Dragon Age cover art that turns out to be a crappy platformer. That kind of thing can confuse consumers and hurt the brand it's ripping off. But the asshole can point to previous situations and say "hey, Bioware has shown a pattern of copyright non-enforcement, so my shitty knockoff is totally legal!" And that makes it very hard for Bioware to get them to stop.

That's why companies are forced to enforce their copyright, even when they don't really want to.

uǝɥɔlodɐɯɐ‏ @amapolchen
#DragonAge Shooting Preview 😍
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Part 2: 😍😍😍😍😍



Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes
These are wonderful!



[HASH]DAT
(Delete the hashtag when quoting - thanks!)

I agree with everything else you said, but I have to disagree a little with the above. I don't think it's just a coincidence that the 39 contributing artists all have Tumblr accounts. And giving credit does matter, because mindfulness of the purpose of attribution should lead to mindfulness about IP having value to the creator of the IP, which in turn should lead naturally to the habit of asking permission of the creator to make a derivative work. Conversely, willful ignorance of the importance of attribution is what leads to blatant rip-offs of other people's work with none the wiser.

It's The Golden Rule. I don't want my stuff ripped off, so I won't rip-off yours.

Of course it's not a coincidence. But your initial statement made it seem like it was some Tumblr issue, when that isn't the case. I stand by my words that it is the avenue by which the project came together. Also, as I said, the Born Perfect campaign was already in place, with the artwork and all, and only served as a way to raise awareness. To my knowledge, it wasn't developed as an artbook project, but conceived after the success of the initial awareness campaign.



They never restock certain items as well. I missed out on buying a Dorian print when they were available, so now I'll never been able to get one since they don't restock. They are missing out on those dollars from me. I've bought all of the ancillary materials, a mabari plushie, and an Inquisitor jacket. I would gladly spend more money if they had things I want.

Also, y'know, since they have Bull's dragon tooth necklace, there is an opportunity to have Dorian's Pavus Birthright amulet as well. While there isn't an official in-game model, they can base it off the one on his romance card. I'd buy one of those, too.

So, Patrick Weekes, Mark Darrah and Mike Laidlaw seem to be excited about something...but their not giving out any context so, it really could be about anything. I'd post the tweets, but I don't know how to do them in the way Hrungr wants them done. They seem like tweets that we have seen in the past regarding past teases and hints from other BioWare dev's, but I don't know. 

Okay...I saw that after the fact, but rather strange to be "excited" about a terrorist attack.  


So, you mean this tweet, right? Just to clarify.

Unfortunately that wasn't Mike being excited in a good way. He followed that up with this, and there were concerned tweets from Mark, Patrick and Seb.