Escapist fires central staff members, causing mass walk out, including ZP

[DeerDK]

4 hours ago, YellowJersey said:

Shame, in addition to ZP, I really like Cold Take and The Stuff of Legends.

Luckily they will continue their work

[DeerDK]

 

For those interested, Zero Punctuation 2.0 is now live. 

[Needfuldoer]

Just now, DeerDK said:

For those interested, Zero Punctuation 2.0 is now live. 

Playing the long game with that title, eh Yahtzee?

 

I'm no lawyer, but I hope this is 'legally distinct' enough for them to continue in this form.

[DeerDK]

27 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Playing the long game with that title, eh Yahtzee?

 

I'm no lawyer, but I hope this is 'legally distinct' enough for them to continue in this form.

Apparently it's also the name of his own homepage, so I guess it's pretty much his. 

[Needfuldoer]

15 minutes ago, DeerDK said:

Apparently it's also the name of his own homepage, so I guess it's pretty much his. 

The name "Fully Ramblomatic", sure.

 

But all the Zero Punctuation trappings are still there in the video. The characters' eyes are drawn differently, the theme music is different, and the imp has been replaced by a dog, but the delivery and overall presentation is still very much Zero Punctuation.

 

Yahtzee said he doesn't own the Zero Punctuation intellectual property; I assume he signed it over to The Escapist as part of their acquisition of the series all those years ago. I hope they changed enough to keep themselves out of trouble.

[DeerDK]

8 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

The name "Fully Ramblomatic", sure.

 

But all the Zero Punctuation trappings are still there in the video. The characters' eyes are drawn differently, the theme music is different, and the imp has been replaced by a dog, but the delivery and overall presentation is still very much Zero Punctuation.

 

Yahtzee said he doesn't own the Zero Punctuation intellectual property; I assume he signed it over to The Escapist as part of their acquisition of the series all those years ago. I hope they changed enough to keep themselves out of trouble.

Ahh. yeah, well, I guess they had a lawyer to look it over. Time will show.

[Arika]

9 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

The name "Fully Ramblomatic", sure.

 

But all the Zero Punctuation trappings are still there in the video. The characters' eyes are drawn differently, the theme music is different, and the imp has been replaced by a dog, but the delivery and overall presentation is still very much Zero Punctuation.

 

Yahtzee said he doesn't own the Zero Punctuation intellectual property; I assume he signed it over to The Escapist as part of their acquisition of the series all those years ago. I hope they changed enough to keep themselves out of trouble.

You will find it is very hard to copyright a "style". Given the overwhelming support of second wind, it would be an actual self inflicted death sentence on the escapist if they tried to claim it. 
 

you can create a painting in the style of van gogh, but as long as you don’t try to pass it off as a Van Gogh piece and only an “inspired by” you’re generally pretty safe

[Kisai]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:53 AM, Needfuldoer said:

The name "Fully Ramblomatic", sure.

 

But all the Zero Punctuation trappings are still there in the video. The characters' eyes are drawn differently, the theme music is different, and the imp has been replaced by a dog, but the delivery and overall presentation is still very much Zero Punctuation.

 

Yahtzee said he doesn't own the Zero Punctuation intellectual property; I assume he signed it over to The Escapist as part of their acquisition of the series all those years ago. I hope they changed enough to keep themselves out of trouble.

Ask yourself, why hasn't anyone else ripped off ZP in the last 15 years it's been around. What makes ZP unique? Is it the humor? The art style? The narration style?

 

I'd say that the reason nobody has ripped off ZP in the first place was because it would still have been a lot of work. It's like the current situation with Vtubers... Lots of them exist and are copying what is popular somewhere else, and failing terribly at it. You only need X many people doing Y content in Z style before everyone just assumes that all Y content is Z style, and won't ever think otherwise.

 

Look at youtube, right now. Look at all the Mr.Beast knockoffs. Do we need 1000 Mr.Beasts? No, because few of these people are actually doing "Mr.Beast" content. It's just people who are creatively bankrupt who think they can just copy whatever Mr.Beast does and replicate the success. Maybe that might work in a few specific cases where the good outweighs the bad caused by creating the content, but overall the problem with Mr.Beast's content is the exploitive nature of it. Similar to what we've seen with reality shows. The first time you see a reality show, it's unique, but then every subsequent show, and the contestants get worse and worse, because they "know" how to game it now.

 

The truth is, ZP was the only thing holding the Escapist up. ZP is not mainstream content, copying a niche, just makes you compete with the niche, it doesn't make it more available. 

 

Most of the people who like ZP, in the first place, use it as a commentary on the state of game development. Not as a review of the game. Most of the stuff Yahtzee brings up in the videos are about gameplay mechanics and over-used story tropes. Anyone can complain about stuff, but unless people believe you have inside experience on game development, those complaints are no more interesting than some person who has never played a game saying the same thing.

 

Yahtzee's game dev experience, is almost entirely of the amateur variety. Adventure Game Studio, and later Game Maker.

 

Nothing wrong with that, but you have to frame what he talks about from the context of "he has made games nobody has heard about", so it's not like he's some industry veteran who's worked on AAA games for 30 years. He has as much experience as anyone else who has opened AGS or Game Maker.

 

[DeerDK]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

Ask yourself, why hasn't anyone else ripped off ZP in the last 15 years it's been around. What makes ZP unique? Is it the humor? The art style? The narration style?

 

I'd say that the reason nobody has ripped off ZP in the first place was because it would still have been a lot of work. It's like the current situation with Vtubers... Lots of them exist and are copying what is popular somewhere else, and failing terribly at it. You only need X many people doing Y content in Z style before everyone just assumes that all Y content is Z style, and won't ever think otherwise.

 

Look at youtube, right now. Look at all the Mr.Beast knockoffs. Do we need 1000 Mr.Beasts? No, because few of these people are actually doing "Mr.Beast" content. It's just people who are creatively bankrupt who think they can just copy whatever Mr.Beast does and replicate the success. Maybe that might work in a few specific cases where the good outweighs the bad caused by creating the content, but overall the problem with Mr.Beast's content is the exploitive nature of it. Similar to what we've seen with reality shows. The first time you see a reality show, it's unique, but then every subsequent show, and the contestants get worse and worse, because they "know" how to game it now.

 

The truth is, ZP was the only thing holding the Escapist up. ZP is not mainstream content, copying a niche, just makes you compete with the niche, it doesn't make it more available. 

 

Most of the people who like ZP, in the first place, use it as a commentary on the state of game development. Not as a review of the game. Most of the stuff Yahtzee brings up in the videos are about gameplay mechanics and over-used story tropes. Anyone can complain about stuff, but unless people believe you have inside experience on game development, those complaints are no more interesting than some person who has never played a game saying the same thing.

 

Yahtzee's game dev experience, is almost entirely of the amateur variety. Adventure Game Studio, and later Game Maker.

 

Nothing wrong with that, but you have to frame what he talks about from the context of "he has made games nobody has heard about", so it's not like he's some industry veteran who's worked on AAA games for 30 years. He has as much experience as anyone else who has opened AGS or Game Maker.

 

Yeah, Yahtz said it himself (im paraphrasing): You can't copyright voice or speech pattern. And the concept of reviewing, swearing a lot ect is not copyright protected either.

 

Jocat did a sweary introduction to Dungeons and Dragons with his Crap guide to DnD and even calls himself out in the Figther vid xD