Finn-R

I know this discussion happened a year ago and I'm late to weigh in. I was really disappointed to hear that some of the criticisms levied against the Space Quest Fan games.
 
I agree that breaking cannon can be annoying, but does everyone need to be a Space Quest Historian? Just enjoy these games for what they are.
 
I bought all the original Space Quest games when they were released. In my mid thirties I have still failed to evolve beyond a gamer. Fed up with the games released by major gaming publishers I have now started to see some of the games created by fans and kick-starter projects. I like them - a lot!
 
It really got my goat when I heard some people in this forum saying they "hate" a particular fan-game because of ripped graphics. That they felt so uninhibited that they could voice their perception of laziness! I would like to ask these people if they ever finished Space Quest 4? In the case of fan games - not everyone is a talented artist, musician, or has the ability to write a script - they are trying to do the best with what they have on the little resources they have available.
 
These games are not sold commercially but freely distributed, they are often made by people while studying, working jobs or supporting a family. The key point I raise again is "doing the best with what they have!".
 
Sierra that produced the original fan inspiring titles was a company that did the best with what the had! Those people did their best, received encouragement and got better at what they did in turn. I recently listened to the interviews by Chris Pope and Sierra was sourcing kids from the local high school and turning kitchen staff into game developers. Sirra wanted to move to larger markets and their games fell out of popularity, but it was trying to obsess over the best talent and market appeal that divorced this company from its humble origins. It was moving on from these humble origins that made their games indistinguishable form so many other soulless games on the market. Today, I don't think they even have anybody that gives a rats about their IP.
 
I think these people who have put their time and effort into creating these games that they choose to share with the community should be encouraged, and not criticised by people who haven't released a game themselves. Unlike the Star Wars, there is no George Lucas to come and pass his decree on what is cannon and set a standard. Instead in this case, there is a loosely knit community of people united by a love of Space Quest. It is these people who produce such diversity and ultimately succeed in keeping the series alive.
 
Now sure, go and pick my statements to bits as I'm sure some of you will but I'm glad for anything and everything Space Quest and anybody who has contributed has my unconditional gratitude. Thank you.

Hmm...I think I'll throw my Official Bootleg Astro Chicken Flight Hat into the ring here. Although I'm not sure some of you will like what I have to say this time.
 

Mostly because of this. :mellow: I've seen the various responses in this thread as to why someone would rip/repurpose/alter original resources, but it strikes me as odd that the single *biggest* reason (at least, the biggest one I can think of) doesn't seem to have come up.
 
Maybe the reason they do this sort of thing is because they have no choice.
 
The fact of the matter is, not everyone is an artist. This is a fact that I am intimately familiar with - it's been the source of many a crushed dream and frustrated head-desk on my part over the years. :( I'm something of a dreamer, and there are plenty of ideas floating around inside my armor-plated skull, but thanks to a complete and total lack of artistic talent, I have no way to adequately express them. I can't draw for spit - on a *good* day, my best drawings look like something an 8-year-old did. The closest thing I have to a creative talent is the ability to write - which might be fine for some people, but not for me. <_< I'm a highly audio-visual oriented person who best experiences things viscerally - directly, through the senses - and to me the written word has always come across as half-assed compared to that. It's the difference between actually *seeing* a movie and having someone reading the script of said movie to you - can anyone here honestly say they'd prefer the latter over the former?
 
My point being, I know from first-hand experience the frustration of wanting to create something awesome for other people to enjoy, but not being able to do so due to lack of talent. Once, years ago, I attempted to make my own Space Quest fangame. It wasn't anything fancy - just a short little adventure that was more of a test of my own creative skill than anything else. Since I had no ability to create my own graphical resources, I had two choices: 'borrow' resources from existing games, or make something that didn't require graphics. I chose the latter route, and put together an interactive fiction game (read: old-skool text adventure). Or at least, I *tried* to -like many other would-be fangame authors of that bygone era, I got frustrated and never finished. (Ah, those were the days - a new fangame announcement every few days, and a new cancellation of an existing project just as often. ;) )
 
In my case, the death knell came when I finally realized that it was the game itself that was making me frustrated. Not because it was hard to make, or because I felt overwhelmed - but because the more I worked on it, the more it *mocked* me and my efforts. I could see all these places, characters, and ideas in my head as vividly as if they were real - but every time I tried to put pen to virtual paper to write the corresponding text descriptions, they came up short. Nothing I wrote could make my ideas *exist* in that virtual world the way I wanted them to.To this day, I'm still not sure if it was because I just wasn't that good a writer, or if I *was* good enough but was being overly critical of my own abilities, or if I was just so used to *seeing* things that trying to approximate sight with words felt horribly clumsy and half-assed from my perspective. :unsure: All I knew was that it wasn't working, so I cut my losses and walked away.
 
There are others like me out there - people who have ideas, who *yearn* to create, to share them with others, but who lack the technical skill to make it happen. I've been in their shoes, and I can tell you from experience that it's not a fun place to be. <_< I can understand 100% why someone would resort to stealing graphics, music tracks, and other resources to make a game - because for some folks, it's the only option they really have. The only other choice would be to not try to share their ideas at all - and in my book, that's arguably worse. :(
 
...sorry, didn't mean to go on a rant there. ^_^ I used to do sprite/pixel editing as something of a hobby, and I'm thus well-versed in the art of ripping and reworking graphical resources (and pondering the resulting ethical quandaries). Just a frustrated geek who feels the need to vent. :ph34r:

I personally have no problem with people using ripped game assets...as long as the game itself is good. A good story and characters always trump things like graphics in my opinion. Maybe it's because I started out with Zork and the other IF games.

Thanks Troels...
I've send you a PM.
Cheers