$10k kickstarter game steals sprites, uses DIY tutorial code

[bobalot]

I wasn't sure at first if this should go into News and Politics forum. However, since this could be done with other game projects on kickstarter, I believe this is the appropriate forum.

Kickstarting Ron Paul

Since its launch, a Kickstarter to develop a Ron Paul video game has hit the Internet rounds and wooed Ron Paul supporters to the tune of several thousands of dollars in an appropriately free market kind of way. The raised funds will back a man's effort to write and develop a video game based on the candidate. Despite what tech blogs and other news media are reporting about this thing, what's happening really isn't so much a story of a good-hearted supporter trying to build support in any way he can for his political candidate of choice by using the skills he possesses. Rather, it's the story of a guy who likes Ron Paul and likes following basic tutorials on game creation, and is combining those two into something that's already been sold to well over 200 people for a grand total of nearly $10,000, somehow.

Let's take a look at this thing. Here's what the Kickstarter page says about the effort:

The Road to REVOLution is a sidescrolling platformer action/adventure game, reminiscent of console classics like Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog. You play the role of Ron Paul and make your way across all 50 states collecting Gold (sound money) and Delegates. The game is full of original artwork and gameplay mechanics. Indie Game Development at its finest, the game is designed, programmed, conceived, and produced by me, D.S. Williams.

The bolding is my own emphasis. Totally cheesy and hamfisted Ron Paul gimmickry aside, the dude claims to be putting out a high-quality, original game with all original mechanics, programmed and designed by him. Cool, a noble effort. It's also cool when you have open directories on your server as well as the actual source code of your game uploaded to those very open directories. That way, anyone in the world can look at it and see cool stuff like this:





Essentially, what this means is that the author is simply following a cookie-cutter tutorial on how to make a video game. In fact, it seems to be this one, which is a cool helpful article that includes all the necessary source code in very clear boxes that make it super easy to copy and paste. Pretty ingenious! Free market principles at play, truly.

"But Enemy of Freedom," you're probably saying, "Perhaps it's just a framework! Just the basics to get the game off the ground! Certainly there are no other instances where the author is doing anything shady or flagrantly attempting to pass something off as his own while reeling in the cash!"

Let's look at that supposed original artwork referenced in the above quote:



First of all, anyone who has ever heard of a Super NES will tell you that the sprites in that mob scene are from Earthbound. The weird George W. Bush head-looking-thing also seems to have been a Monstar from Braid in a past life, and Ron himself is just a slightly modified Waluigi sprite, as evidenced by this sprite sheet that was also hosted among the source code. Look at them both side by side:



Wow. I extend my sincerest congratulations to those who have contributed to the project. You've forked over about $10,000 to let some guy wallow in his own filth for 2 months as he leisurely follows a "how to program video games" tutorial, while taking the occasional break to draw Ron Paul's head on Waluigi's body. This is a gaming revolution worthy of Ron Paul himself, indeed.

"Williams goes on to speculate that indie gaming will hopefully thrive in the 'face of dull, spiritless, cloned, big-budget games'" -MSNBC

"Hey! You might be getting better, but nobody cheats better than Waluigi! You got that?!" -Waluigi, Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour

Source

[VF5SS]

Hey it's a plan that has worked for sprite comics for over 15 years.

[Zaune]

What I want to know is, who the hell pays an average of $50 each for something that's comparable in quality to something an inexperienced amateur Flash developer might throw together over maybe half a year's worth of evenings and weekends and post on Newgrounds?

[bobalot]

Actually, that's not what he said... Generic Big Budget Trash #1 is surely also "full of original artwork and gameplay mechanics", and surely also uses a lot of framework code and reused assets.

I interpret "The game is full of original artwork" as the artwork being original.

Essentially, what this means is that the author is simply following a cookie-cutter tutorial on how to make a video game.

God forbid anyone use properly licensed code in their project!

The sprites are probably copyright infringement, but there's nothing wrong with using open source code or tutorials in writing programs. That's the way it is done all the time, in and out of the for-profit world.

You amazingly (and I suspect deliberately) missed the entire point. This guy raised $9720 (as of this post, he is still raising money) in donations for game that people thought was going to be programmed professionally, not some noob using cookie cutter code. He even describes himself as a "professional programmer" and claims he has done "some artwork professionally"

The fact is nobody would give a shit if this were a freeware game. What's got everybody in fits of laughter is that this douche charged money for this piece of shit.

What I want to know is, who the hell pays an average of $50 each for something that's comparable in quality to something an inexperienced amateur Flash developer might throw together over maybe half a year's worth of evenings and weekends and post on Newgrounds?

Well, only 39 people (as of this post) paid $50+ for the game. Check the kickstarter site for the totals.

I suspect the 11 people who paid $150 will not be the happy with the results.

[Stark]

Kick starter outrage is pretty funny; I've seen people 'outraged' that developers used the money to buy iPads for testing. Turns out the public is dumb.

And those sprites are at worst redrawn; they're not the same sprites. Low budget software is crap; who knew?

[Losonti Tokash]

Ron Paul fans fall for scam with hilarious results, news at 11.

[Irbis]

I interpret "The game is full of original artwork" as the artwork being original.

Sounds like a personal problem.

Or something called 'more than cursory knowledge of dictionary'

I suspect the 11 people who paid $150 will not be the happy with the results.

Note that $150 might buy you two or three hours of a professional developer's time. Even if you go with a low cost off shore outsourcing, that's maybe two work days.

You'd be lucky to get a basic information site for that. Certainly not a working custom game.

By that logic, coding Skyrim or MW3 took one guy 2.5 hours

Oh, and Team Fortress 2 was probably made by unpaid interns for free.

[PeZook]

Ron Paul's supporters are that naive?

Man, I should've thought of that!

[DaveJB]

The sad thing is, I actually could believe that the developer of this thing is some poor fool who's found himself way in over his head and immediately managed to blow the whole $10,000 on various game-making tools. After all, the guy who made The Demon Rush frittered away something like CA$3,000 on programs which he didn't even end up using to develop the game with.

Still, you could probably find any number of people on DeviantART who'd create all the in-game assets for this thing and do a quality job without any plagiarism involved, then buy a pre-made game engine, and still have more than half of the $10K remaining. If this isn't an outright scam it's certainly the biggest example of development and budgetary mismanagement I've seen which doesn't involve 3DRealms or the Demon Rush guy.

[Skgoa]

So let me get this straight, this guy made the same amount of money a more or less well-made mobile app or a really good flash game could have gotten him? And the assets he used for the mock-up are based on other, very good, prior work of others? And you are angry at him because he did not re-invent the wheel but based his code on freely licenced code? Yeah, something is telling me you are just angry at him having a good idea and acting on it. Once the game is finished, it better have no copyright infringement in it and be fun. But other than that, I don't see any issues. Then again, I program a lot and so I know that 99% of all code I could come up with has already been written by someone, somewhere.

[madd0ct0r]

Yeah, there's more then one way to skin a cat, but not an infinite number of ways. And the sprite is pretty clearly redrawn, even the shade patterns are different.
don't know about the earthbound ones though.

Shit. We need to get in on this. Anyone fancy doing a War Simulation game where the emphasis is on the rebuilding phase?

[bobalot]

Instead of creating a new thread for this, I thought I better just necro update this one.

The creator of this shitty Ron Paul game has split with the money. Kickstarter is doing refunds now.

Kalina Anastassova on January 28

If you are reading this, it looks like Daniel split without refunding or doing any of the project. Please contact Kickstarter and we are looking for individuals who were in this funding round to come forward. Please alert Kickstarter and they should have a lawyer contact you. We unfortunatly will have to Sue Dainiel to recoup the monies owed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/133 ... n/comments

[The Yosemite Bear]

oh look it's a green sprit forest McCain

[Flagg]

CAPITALISM!

[General Zod]

Instead of creating a new thread for this, I thought I better just necro update this one.

The creator of this shitty Ron Paul game has split with the money. Kickstarter is doing refunds now.

Kalina Anastassova on January 28

If you are reading this, it looks like Daniel split without refunding or doing any of the project. Please contact Kickstarter and we are looking for individuals who were in this funding round to come forward. Please alert Kickstarter and they should have a lawyer contact you. We unfortunatly will have to Sue Dainiel to recoup the monies owed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/133 ... n/comments

They're going to go through the courts? I thought they were all about letting the free market punish bad merchants.

[Terralthra]

The majority of even hard-core libertarians believe the state, in the form of courts, has the purpose to intervene in broken contracts between private entities.