I was doing some review of the Release Notes (http://eu.cityofheroes.com/en/news/article/issue_14_architect) for Issue 14, and found the following unambiguous phrase:
"Parodies and derivative works are not allowed."
As such, I would urge caution before making/publishing works that are based on, homages to, or parodies of known copyrighted works.
I'd been planning on creating a parody arc in which characters from the World of Warcraft system were invading the Mission Architect system, and needed to be forcibly expelled. But now I'm pretty much abandoning that idea because I feel that NCSoft would be well within its rights to ban it if I did so.
They're more fussy about copyrights on MA than they are on PC creation.
I have a character named Sentryman, who is one of my longest standing toons. Last few years I got him to 50 without a word from the devs. With MA, I'm not allowed to use the same name because of Marvel's copyrighted character, Sentry (http://www.marvel.com/universe/Sentry_(Robert_Reynolds)).
Parodies are usually allowable, so that's surprising. Thanks for the heads up, Viking.
You can't really police ideas effectively. And if you could, they'd have to scrap the whole darn game. Starting with Statesman.
The key is going to be avoiding characters that are too much like a 'known' out-of-game character. Don't use names and appearances where the resemblances are too striking and for goodness' sake don't put names and likenesses together. Don't repeat catchphrases used by those characters. And don't describe your arcs as being like a given copyrighted story.
My arc, for example, is totally intended to be a parody... but not of any one character or storyline. Viking commented on certain similarities to a certain movie that was in fact completely unintentional. (The secret's out!) It was a generic parody of the heroes whose private lives and public deeds always seem to collide. It's subtle enough that I don't think I'll get in trouble with it, although you can't help but compare it with Peter Parker, Poster Boy for Private Life Trainwrecks.
Considering the number of parodies already on MA -- some of which have been played by devs -- you'd have to be really close to get shut down.
BlueBard's is perfectly safe, I think. There's one up that is popular and was popular in beta as well called Trademark Infringment that seems to be getting by all right. Maybe check that one out to get an idea of how much you can do. It's far more obvious than BlueBard's.
Side note: I heartily recommend "A Day in the Life." It's fun, albeit challenging at times. My wife and I ran it after it went live; she enjoyed it too. :)
Quote from: Lionheart on April 16, 2009, 11:15:44 PM
Side note: I heartily recommend "A Day in the Life." It's fun, albeit challenging at times. My wife and I ran it after it went live; she enjoyed it too. :)
I certainly hope you didn't get into too much trouble when your wife found out you had a 'girlfriend'... ;)
She did comment on it; I told her it was a case of mistaken identity. But we couldn't let the poor thing get fried by a lunatic, could we?