QUOTE(vihena)
Out of all the magazines out there for video games, I chose Play because of how in-depth, and how true you guys are to gamers. You guys always dig deep to get to the real esscence of it all.
Hence, I was a little disappointed when I read your Ink article "It's a Cover-Up" in the July 2005 issue. Rather than really looking out for the truth, you guys basically echoed what was said by the web-likes of IGN and Gamespot, and Yahoo news!
Tecmo sued Ninjahacker for exploiting some hacks and creating some rather "interesting" skin mods. The nudity aspect wasn't even 10% of what mods were out there. Many were creative (and copyright infringement) skin mods! Suddenly, we're able to play as Morrigan from Darkstalkers, Ulala from Space Channel 5, McGee's Alice, T800, and even the Wal-Mart mascot and Britney Spears! There were also several unique character skins built within the limits of the models and geometry. DOA Central has a gallery of images featuring these awesome creative mods.
You can't get that kind of creativity from a production standpoint. There's no way any publisher could get that many licenses without breaking the bank. It's "Illegal Art", so to speak. There's a website dedicated to this sort of stuff, and a lot of it is very creative and cool.
It's not wrong to defend what's yours, but Tecmo's approach was very wrong. One of the aspects of the mods was an actual copy of the game was required. This isn't direct competition with Tecmo. Ninjahacker never gave away free copies or illegal downloads. Many a poster on the forum even stated that they were buying these games just for the mods. So these mods essentially promoted and helped sell Tecmo games. Tecmo has effectively slapped all their fans in the face for trying to make their game more fun to play.
Tecmo also victimizes themselves saying "Defamation of Character". I don't know where to put this other than in a grey area. I mean, look at their commercials! "She kicks high." kind of gets a certain message across. They even released a Kasumi "bosom mouse pad"! Defamation of Character indeed! Of course, more debates of it can be found in the xbox-scene forums. Cypher himself even posted there. I doubt he has posted since though. He was sort of vowed to silence on the matter.
So what would have happened to the modding community if Tecmo had won? modthesims.com would cease to exist. No more Half-Life mods (Counterstrike was born FROM mods!). No more Halo mods. No more ANY mods.
I bought my Playstation 2 because of DOA 2 Hardcore. My first Xbox game was DOA3. Because of this incident, I'm no longer buying any Tecmo games. Sorry Rygar, Kasumi.
