KickStarter Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of MoonFall

[curds]

He already copied the Giovanni clan since in VtM they're the mafia.

Seems like all the vampires in this game are involved in generally criminal activities, unless I missed something. Again I think it's a stretch to say that's a ripoff of the Giovanni, specifically. I agree there are similarities but that seems something inevitable given the setting rather than like he's straight up copying a WoD clan.

There is the matter of him stating that he's making a WoD clone because Pdox isn't working on WoD.

You mean this?:

I mean Paradox is taking their sweet time with VtMB 2 and someone has to take advantage of all that marketing.

First of all, seems like a joke response to your comment. Second, he says he's taking advantage of the current market for a vampire RPG, not specifcally saying he's cloning WoD.

 

[Tyranicon]

When they have clans and bloodlines they are a direct clone of WoD. It is a fair criticism.

Eh, I disagree. It's an RPG, so you ideally want to have some way of distinguishing character achetypes. And since it's a vampire RPG, the logical way of doing this is having different vampire types.

I really don't think including distinct clans is enough to call it a clone. However if the dev reveals the lineages and they end up being very similar to the specific clans of VTM then I will begin to agree with you. But at this point I think it's a bit much to essentially call it plagiarism - even if the influence is obvious.

He already copied the Giovanni clan since in VtM they're the mafia. There is the matter of him stating that he's making a WoD clone because Pdox isn't working on WoD. You can't get any more verification then that.

Whoa whoa whoa. Let's stop the forum larping for a second. Is that seriously the issue? I don't need people thinking I'm actually plagiarizing shit, that was a joke my dude.

I'm not stealing everything from VtMB to make a clone game. I'll have to throw up an edit.

Man, I thought it was just a funny quip. Man, codex. The hell.

 

[JamesDixon]

When they have clans and bloodlines they are a direct clone of WoD. It is a fair criticism.

Eh, I disagree. It's an RPG, so you ideally want to have some way of distinguishing character achetypes. And since it's a vampire RPG, the logical way of doing this is having different vampire types.

I really don't think including distinct clans is enough to call it a clone. However if the dev reveals the lineages and they end up being very similar to the specific clans of VTM then I will begin to agree with you. But at this point I think it's a bit much to essentially call it plagiarism - even if the influence is obvious.

He already copied the Giovanni clan since in VtM they're the mafia. There is the matter of him stating that he's making a WoD clone because Pdox isn't working on WoD. You can't get any more verification then that.

Whoa whoa whoa. Let's stop the forum larping for a second. Is that seriously the issue? I don't need people thinking I'm actually plagiarizing shit, that was a joke my dude.

I'm not stealing everything from VtMB to make a clone game. I'll have to throw up an edit.

Man, I thought it was just a funny quip. Man, codex. The hell.

I have your original quote, so it will be immortalized forever.

I'm a professional writer that had to deal with the worst scum of the earth publishers trying to steal my shit. Plagiarizing is very serious business for me. You think I was LARPing? I wasn't. In fact, I was downright being helpful to you and to get you to think through your worldbuilding.

So far, we've got WoD clans and bloodlines. What else are you using from WoD?

Sometimes the best advice you can get as a writer is from other writers that are very critical of your work. Do you think I was doing this to fucking hurt your feelings and trash you? Bitch I don't even know you enough to hate you. Thus, my default mode is to be helpful.

 

[Tyranicon]

When they have clans and bloodlines they are a direct clone of WoD. It is a fair criticism.

Eh, I disagree. It's an RPG, so you ideally want to have some way of distinguishing character achetypes. And since it's a vampire RPG, the logical way of doing this is having different vampire types.

I really don't think including distinct clans is enough to call it a clone. However if the dev reveals the lineages and they end up being very similar to the specific clans of VTM then I will begin to agree with you. But at this point I think it's a bit much to essentially call it plagiarism - even if the influence is obvious.

He already copied the Giovanni clan since in VtM they're the mafia. There is the matter of him stating that he's making a WoD clone because Pdox isn't working on WoD. You can't get any more verification then that.

Whoa whoa whoa. Let's stop the forum larping for a second. Is that seriously the issue? I don't need people thinking I'm actually plagiarizing shit, that was a joke my dude.

I'm not stealing everything from VtMB to make a clone game. I'll have to throw up an edit.

Man, I thought it was just a funny quip. Man, codex. The hell.

I have your original quote, so it will be immortalized forever.

I'm a professional writer that had to deal with the worst scum of the earth publishers trying to steal my shit. Plagiarizing is very serious business for me. You think I was LARPing? I wasn't. In fact, I was downright being helpful to you and to get you to think through your worldbuilding.

So far, we've got WoD clans and bloodlines. What else are you using from WoD?

Sometimes the best advice you can get as a writer is from other writers that are very critical of your work. Do you think I was doing this to fucking hurt your feelings and trash you? Bitch I don't even know you enough to hate you. Thus, my default mode is to be helpful.

Cool, I'll get back to you when I'm less high. I got a buttload of lore and background and I'd love an audience for it.

 

[curds]

I'm curious as to how you could design a modern-day vampire RPG with no similarities to WoD/VTM.

 

[JamesDixon]

When they have clans and bloodlines they are a direct clone of WoD. It is a fair criticism.

Eh, I disagree. It's an RPG, so you ideally want to have some way of distinguishing character achetypes. And since it's a vampire RPG, the logical way of doing this is having different vampire types.

I really don't think including distinct clans is enough to call it a clone. However if the dev reveals the lineages and they end up being very similar to the specific clans of VTM then I will begin to agree with you. But at this point I think it's a bit much to essentially call it plagiarism - even if the influence is obvious.

He already copied the Giovanni clan since in VtM they're the mafia. There is the matter of him stating that he's making a WoD clone because Pdox isn't working on WoD. You can't get any more verification then that.

Whoa whoa whoa. Let's stop the forum larping for a second. Is that seriously the issue? I don't need people thinking I'm actually plagiarizing shit, that was a joke my dude.

I'm not stealing everything from VtMB to make a clone game. I'll have to throw up an edit.

Man, I thought it was just a funny quip. Man, codex. The hell.

I have your original quote, so it will be immortalized forever.

I'm a professional writer that had to deal with the worst scum of the earth publishers trying to steal my shit. Plagiarizing is very serious business for me. You think I was LARPing? I wasn't. In fact, I was downright being helpful to you and to get you to think through your worldbuilding.

So far, we've got WoD clans and bloodlines. What else are you using from WoD?

Sometimes the best advice you can get as a writer is from other writers that are very critical of your work. Do you think I was doing this to fucking hurt your feelings and trash you? Bitch I don't even know you enough to hate you. Thus, my default mode is to be helpful.

Cool, I'll get back to you when I'm less high. I got a buttload of lore and background and I'd love an audience for it.

I can't wait to see it. Feel free to drop me a DM.

 

[Kirliean]

Posting to watch. This looks promising after the continued failure of VTMB 2 to appear.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

tell me more about the vampire waifus pls

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm a professional writer that had to deal with the worst scum of the earth publishers trying to steal my shit. Plagiarizing is very serious business for me. You think I was LARPing? I wasn't. In fact, I was downright being helpful to you and to get you to think through your worldbuilding.

 

[PorkaMorka]

For video games familiar settings are often better than original settings, because they are easy for the player to understand and get comfortable with, he can jump right into playing the game and have things make sense without having to read a huge in game wiki (or click through endless info dumps in dialog) to familiarize himself with your totally unique lore.

 

[EvilWolf]

Yes no similarities at all with WoD from your pitch. Tell me that you're a liar without telling me you're a liar.

It doesn't matter what you change the name you will still have vampire clans operating within ruling councils along with the fucking bloodlines. Are you doing generations as well? Are you tracing the first vampire to Cain or some other historical/legendary character?

.... it's an isometric (not first person), turn-based (not realtime), party-based (not single character) rpg with completely different gameplay systems, a different setting, different lore, different characters, different vampire mechanics, and different magic system. Vampires are vastly different than the relatively mainstream ones of VtMB.

Not relevant at all to the discussion regarding the lore of the games.

VtMB does not overtly characterize itself as cyberpunk, instead being relatively modern. The main focus of the kindred Clans is not in ruling over crime syndicates. Lineage is a pretty common word in the english language.

Oooo your clans are criminals yet there are criminal syndicates in WoD run by vampires like the Giovanni. Yeah, totally original there...

Also for what's it's worth, I'm the writer/owner. I'm not huge but I have two games published and shipped under my belt with a third one nearing completion. All my games have positive reviews, and I'm making enough money off solodev to pay my bills and sustain fulltime gamedev. My latest game has easily 40+ hours of gameplay, four different faction quest chains, and expansive overworld gameplay.

Well as a thief of what someone else wrote you're not too original. You flat out told me that you've stolen from WoD just because PDox hasn't made anything. Also, I could care less about your prior games. Your prior games could be just as shit as this one will be if you ripped off other well known properties.

I also have 10+ years of professional corporate writing experience and another 10 years of writing experience for video games.

Well that explains how you are able to steal from other corporate properties with ease and a lack of conscience.

Hopefully that answers all your questions. Now that you have my resume, are you going to offer me a job?

I don't work with thieves. No, I wouldn't hire you for any of my properties under development or established settings I've published. No, you won't find out what the established setting is because I don't want you to steal it.

Why do you care so much about Woke Wolf and Paracucks "Intellectual" properties? Newsflash, various religious texts did it centuries before Mark ever set pen to paper. Go ahead and attack my weakest point with vitriol while you ignore the facts.

 

[purupuru]

Is it Unity? I sure hope it's not RPGmaker anymore.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

IP rights are megagay.

 

[copebot]

Plagiarism isn't illegal. If you are really concerned about plagiarism, register your copyrights and sue everyone who violates them. Then it's illegal to plagiarize you, rather than just rude. In the US, statutory damages are very high even if there are no actual damages, e.g. if someone copies large portions of your stupid fanfic, you can sue them and try to collect lots of money even if you were not financially harmed. People who just whine about 'plagiarism' are just teens, hobbyists, and academics for the most part.

It's not plagiarism to adapt a similar setting, and it's not violating VtM's copyright to just have a vaguely similar setting. Notice how entire Hollywood movies get made about Dracula or whatever without each studio suing each other. Ann Rice didn't sue White Wolf, White Wolf didn't sue Twilight into oblivion.

What's violating White Wolf's IP? Copying and pasting large sections of material, copying and pasting artwork, possibly going so far as to trace artwork so it makes up a large percentage of the copy, and anything else that their lawyers have enough chutzpah to allege if a copy is close enough when you squint at it. Just having characters with pointy teeth created with entirely original assets does not violate anyone's IP, at least in the United States. There are certain scummy things that companies do to make copying characters and other things hazardous (such as trademarking character names) but generally, if you created it, if it's just thematically close there's nothing that infringes.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah just steal and be derivative of the same old 30 year old emo goth shit instead of innovating and creating something unique. That formula rarely works out for companies that do it.

You mean like Fallout derived from Wasteland or Mass Effect derived from Star Control or Wizardry derived from D&D or Pathfinder derived from D&D or Pillars of Eternity derived from D&D, etc?

The Hollywood "it's x meets y" high concept is time-tested. Yeah, it can fail, it can also succeed. Depends on the execution.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

stealing ideas is based and what everyone did until modern copyright law was made
IP laws are stupid

 

[JamesDixon]

stealing ideas is based and what everyone did until modern copyright law was made
IP laws are stupid

This comment is stupid.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

stealing ideas is based and what everyone did until modern copyright law was made
IP laws are stupid

This comment is stupid.

IP laws create natural monopolies, people who like IP laws inherently endorse monopolies existing.

 

[JamesDixon]

Yeah just steal and be derivative of the same old 30 year old emo goth shit instead of innovating and creating something unique. That formula rarely works out for companies that do it.

You mean like Fallout derived from Wasteland or Mass Effect derived from Star Control or Wizardry derived from D&D or Pathfinder derived from D&D or Pillars of Eternity derived from D&D, etc?

The Hollywood "it's x meets y" high concept is time-tested. Yeah, it can fail, it can also succeed. Depends on the execution.

It's hilarious that you cite Fallout since the same guy that created Wasteland did Fallout. Also, all of those games don't really copy from each other directly, so this is an invalid argument Roguey. I expected better from you since this is an invalid comparison and strawman argument fallacies.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Yeah just steal and be derivative of the same old 30 year old emo goth shit instead of innovating and creating something unique. That formula rarely works out for companies that do it.

You mean like Fallout derived from Wasteland or Mass Effect derived from Star Control or Wizardry derived from D&D or Pathfinder derived from D&D or Pillars of Eternity derived from D&D, etc?

The Hollywood "it's x meets y" high concept is time-tested. Yeah, it can fail, it can also succeed. Depends on the execution.

It's hilarious that you cite Fallout since the same guy that created Wasteland did Fallout. Also, all of those games don't really copy from each other directly, so this is an invalid argument Roguey. I expected better from you since this is an invalid comparison and strawman argument fallacies.

He created Fallout because he didn't own the IP rights to Wasteland.

 

[JamesDixon]

stealing ideas is based and what everyone did until modern copyright law was made
IP laws are stupid

This comment is stupid.

IP laws create natural monopolies, people who like IP laws inherently endorse monopolies existing.

Oh so owning your property is now a monopoly huh? I guess my labor is a monopoly as well huh? Do you have your doors locked on your property rusty? If not then you've got a monopoly on housing, food, heat, etc... Shame that you locked out all those poor homeless people from your house through the use of a monopoly.

 

[Roguey]

It's hilarious that you cite Fallout since the same guy that created Wasteland did Fallout

Which guy is that? Fargo? He wasn't involved with Fallout other than saying that the leveling up needed something more which led to perks. A bunch of people completely unrelated to Wasteland made up all the content for Fallout.

 

[JamesDixon]

Yeah just steal and be derivative of the same old 30 year old emo goth shit instead of innovating and creating something unique. That formula rarely works out for companies that do it.

You mean like Fallout derived from Wasteland or Mass Effect derived from Star Control or Wizardry derived from D&D or Pathfinder derived from D&D or Pillars of Eternity derived from D&D, etc?

The Hollywood "it's x meets y" high concept is time-tested. Yeah, it can fail, it can also succeed. Depends on the execution.

It's hilarious that you cite Fallout since the same guy that created Wasteland did Fallout. Also, all of those games don't really copy from each other directly, so this is an invalid argument Roguey. I expected better from you since this is an invalid comparison and strawman argument fallacies.

He created Fallout because he didn't own the IP rights to Wasteland.

Yes, because he sold the IP rights to the publisher. Much like you sell your house to another person in a monopolistic exchange.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

stealing ideas is based and what everyone did until modern copyright law was made
IP laws are stupid

This comment is stupid.

IP laws create natural monopolies, people who like IP laws inherently endorse monopolies existing.

Oh so owning your property is now a monopoly huh? I guess my labor is a monopoly as well huh? Do you have your doors locked on your property rusty? If not then you've got a monopoly on housing, food, heat, etc... Shame that you locked out all those poor homeless people from your house through the use of a monopoly.

How does one own an idea?

 

[JamesDixon]

It's hilarious that you cite Fallout since the same guy that created Wasteland did Fallout

Which guy is that? Fargo? He wasn't involved with Fallout other than saying that the leveling up needed something more which led to perks. A bunch of people completely unrelated to Wasteland made up all the content for Fallout.

Fargo was the owner of Interplay that developed Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics. His company made both.