a new harvest moon - Garvest Boon

SNES, HM64, BTN, STH, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, AWL:SE, Magical Melody, Puzzle de HM, Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, Frantic Farming, Hero of Leaf Valley, My Little Shop, Seeds of Memories, Lil' Farmers, Light of Hope, Popolocrois: SoS, and Doraemon: SoS.
gamerChick
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Post  Posted:

Have you guys heard of this game? Garvest Boon. It's incredibly similar to harvest moon, but they just released it. A bit more survival oriented, but you seem to be able to farm and open a shop, build houses anywhere on the map and make friends with villagers... I wonder if it's any good, the graphics seem ok? Had any of you heard of it before?

http://www.mariadele.se/garvest-boon is the official page, but i saw it also on desura http://www.desura.com/games/garvest-boon
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NessEggman
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Post  Posted:

Um, they stole a lot of the graphical content from the SNES Harvest Moon, and even the title is a rip-off of Harvest Moon.

It's okay to make fangames or inspired games for free, but to make one using sprites and recolored sprites and a name that obviously references the game it's swiping from and sell it for $10? That's illegal.

EDIT: The other sprites and graphcis seem to be stolen from other games. I see Pokemon among many others in there :\

This is a copyrighted art theft nightmare.
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THIS ISN'T HARVEST MOON! IT'S MY ORIGINAL GAME, BLARVEST BLOON!! (Do not steal)

It's so ridiculous I can't see it as anything other than a joke.
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NessEggman
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Post  Posted:

LOL "BLARVEST BLOON"!!

I watched the videos and it looks so crappy, too. I have a suspicion the OP is the creator or creator's friend or something trying to promote it maybe??
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Post  Posted:

"Just released it"
*checks Desura page*
Date Feb 27th, 2014

Yeah, shameless self promotion at its finest. You DO realize Natsume has said more than once they read these forums, right?
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Domineam
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Post  Posted:

Hm, "an independent videogame heavily inspired by a legendary game from 1990 SNES"...

I WONDER WHAT GAME THAT COULD BE

I mean they're so damn subtle about it
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Mabbie
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Post  Posted:

It's incredibly similar... *checks website* ...>.>; are you kidding me.......
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LeBurns
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Post  Posted:

I matched one NPC from Pokemon Fire Red without even trying, just compared the sprites I had on file. Too much of everything else looks familiar also.

Image

I guess it doesn't matter much to me as I'm not touching it.
garvestFan
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Post  Posted:

yeah you're right it's self promotion! But the game is 1.99 not 10.99! Anyways it's fan art like any other, and a game of that dimension takes months to complete. Couple of bucks for that time's worth is nothing unfair, i'd say ;)
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Anonymous Fish

Post  Posted:

Looks like it's already been pulled. It's cool that you want to make a game, but try using your own art :)
garvestFan
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Post  Posted:

Take a look- http://mastermindagalore.tumblr.com/ The author admits on her blog to there being a copyright twist going on at Desura, and shares her thoughts on her intentions. If I were her, I'd modify those offending sprites. Most of the sprites are similar, but not identical, to the original Harvest Moon. And on the official site she says she wanted to do a remix and reconstructed the game exactly as she remembered it without ever looking at it for reference. She must have used creative commons to achieve this goal, but still, she got quite close just by memory alone!
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NessEggman
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Post  Posted:

I appreciate the time that went into making the game, but you can't use stolen art. Part of game development is indeed making the art as well.

Fanworks are fine, but you can't sell them. You're essentially taking artwork made my others and selling it as your own. The artists who create the sprites for games also put a lot of hard work into those, and they deserve to be paid for your use. So unless you worked out contracts with the companies and artists involved, you're stealing their art and their hard work.

Also, calling the game 'Garvest Boon' is copyright infringement as well. You're using the fact that it sounds like "Harvest Moon" to promote the game. People might become interested because they think it is related to Harvest Moon, and part of that hard work that goes into game development includes the promotion and advertising of the game, as well. You have to create your own game and sell it on its own qualities and merits, not ones stolen from another game.

Creating the code is only one small part of game development. At this point, you are using stolen names and artwork to try to sell an unfinished game. If you want to sell your game, create your own artwork or get artwork with permission, as well as come up with a creative game that better describes your name and helps sell it on its own merit.

Also, the art is not 'remixed' or 'reconstructed.' They are edits of the actual art themselves. Taking someone else's already created sprites and drawing over parts of them or altering the colors is not creating. It is stealing. It would be like copying the entire text of Harry Potter and changing a few words and putting a cover on it that says "Garry Botter" and saying I wrote it. Even if taking the time to copy down everything word for word takes time, spending time on something alone does not make you justified in selling it as your own.

You didn't create the artwork, so you can't use it to sell your game. Creative Commons does NOT extend to allow this.
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Post  Posted:

NessEggman wrote:
Also, the art is not 'remixed' or 'reconstructed.' They are edits of the actual art themselves. Taking someone else's already created sprites and drawing over parts of them or altering the colors is not creating. It is stealing. It would be like copying the entire text of Harry Potter and changing a few words and putting a cover on it that says "Garry Botter" and saying I wrote it. Even if taking the time to copy down everything word for word takes time, spending time on something alone does not make you justified in selling it as your own.

You didn't create the artwork, so you can't use it to sell your game. Creative Commons does NOT extend to allow this.
Actually, the art in the game is under creative commons that even allow it to be used for commercial use. So it DOES extend to cover this.

Secondly, most people don't get the reference of Garvest Boon until they see the gameplay. So it's rather the other way around: nobody buys the game for the way it sounds. It's mainly a counterproductive title that nobody gets.

Thirdly, this is not a game that says to have created all sprites, but admits to being a mash-up. Let me wikipedia that notion for you:
"A remix in art often takes multiple perspectives upon the same theme. An artist takes an original work of art and adds their own take on the piece creating something completely different while still leaving traces of the original work. It is essentially a reworked abstraction of the original work while still holding remnants of the original piece while still letting the true meanings of the original piece shine through. Famous examples include the Marilyn prints of Andy Warhol (modifies colors and styles of one image), and The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso, (merges various angles of perspective into one view). Some of Picasso's other famous paintings also incorporate parts of his life, such as his love affairs, into his paintings. For example, his painting Les Trois Danseuses, or The Three Dancers, is about a love triangle.

Other types of remixes in art are parodies. A parody in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or make fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. They can be found all throughout art and culture from literature to animation. Current television shows are filled with parodies such as South Park, Family Guy, and the Simpsons.

The internet has allowed for art to be remixed quite easily, as evidenced by sites like memgenerator.net (provides pictorial template upon which any words may be written by various anonymous users), and Dan Walsh's Garfieldminusgarfield.net [1] (removes the main character from various original strips by Garfield creator Jim Davis)."

So read up on your stuff before you talk. Just don't buy the game. As stated in the creator's blog http://mastermindagalore.tumblr.com/ she's waiting for Natsume's official notice.
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LeBurns
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Post  Posted:

Isn't there an RPG Maker software that is just for people that want to put together a game/story like this?

EDIT: Found it.

http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/

Course ... it's not free.
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Post  Posted:

I honestly doubt that stuff like sprite rips from Pokemon games are licensed as Creative Commons materials. It just doesn't work that way.

Also remix/parody doesn't actually mean anything most of the time... if the creators see something and they don't like it, they have every right to take it down. Especially in the case of remixes. That doesn't mean every company cares or is litigious as Disney but you still have to take it into consideration.

As someone who has made fan works I wouldn't consider a recolor or "close to the original product as possible" imitation to be fan art or showing any kind of unique spin on a concept...
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