.. or a guitar or a mike or.. anything, really. In Star Wars Galaxies, performers can play set pieces on a variety of interesting-looking instruments, but it's set pieces or nothing. Pretty repetitive, although familiar and comforting.
Long have the residents of the Universe wanted the ability to play their own music. Imagine the cacophony! Imagine the events. Cantina Crawl is already a live, travelling performance troupe. There are stages and bars littered across the Universe: mostly empty, begging for home-grown celebrities!
The ability for the players to create and play and perform their own music, in-game, would be nothing short of spectacular. Most of it would be rubbish. Some of it would be heart-liftingly fabulous. Watching a player perform their own music would be intensely more compelling than watching someone macro'ing set piece 3 (like the advert break on TV, healing in a cantina while watching these set pieces repeated is the player's opportunity to go stretch their legs and make a cuppa).
Unfortunately, though, the will on SOE's part is not there.
If we allowed someone to play anything they want, they could play a song by Madonna and then we'd have licensing issues," said Julio Torres, a producer for Star Wars Galaxies at LucasArts. "We don't want to give them the option to try, because the bottom line is, if we open that gate, they will go through it," he said.
Hopefully Fred and Greg can argue how ridiculous this is, for everyone's sake. The artist who is against some happy kids on Endor hammering out their mangled versions of songs on an instrument that looks like this:
.. is an artist with no heart.
Tis a real shame that fear of the "might happen" cuts off innovation and the ability for these digital humans to sing campfire songs and make music together. The force is not strong with this decision.
That's a pretty stupid decision, if ya ask me. Anyone can sing a Madonna song in public. Does that make that person in danger of a lawsuit? Lame.
Posted by: monkeypup | June 06, 2005 at 19:51
If they're singing it to an audience... technically, yes, they are. But a busker doesn't have much money to lose, SOE does..
Posted by: SharD | June 06, 2005 at 20:04
Let’s look at this realistically. The RIAA goes after anything they can. I can’t blame SOE for their decision. I wouldn’t blame the artists either. But come on, the RIAA will take any opportunity it can to "preserve" its income. In my opinion, they'll jump on this before you can say “Happy Birthday.”
Posted by: murple | June 06, 2005 at 20:12
Actually... I may be talking rubbish...
I think that it's "recordings" that music publishers tend to own the copyright to. So as long as the music was being made completely originally (i.e. no sampling), then they should be okay...
How else could all those "not original artist" muzak cd's exist?
I hope someone who knows what they're talking about makes a comment soon! :)
Posted by: SharD | June 06, 2005 at 20:20
Why does music (and to a lesser extent video) enjoy the privilege of special protection, compared to other forms of copyrightable expression?
For example, there's nothing stopping my character from walking out in public and reciting the text of Stephen King's latest book. If anything, that would be a greater infringement since the text would be directly usable, but any music would be mangled through an alien instrument.
So why don't we see authors, poets, etc., up in arms about the ability to parrot text in online forums?
Posted by: Chris Wuestefeld | June 06, 2005 at 20:46
There's a separate royalty for the performance of songs for an audience. In the real world, clubs pay a yearly fee to orgs like BMI and ASCAP to allow bands to perform covers in their venues.
As ludicrous as it sounds, a bunch of SWG musicians pounding out a cover of a Madonna tune *could* be interpreted as such a performance. SWG probably doesn't relish the idea of paying licensing fees for each of the totally virtual bars and cantinas. And I'll bet the licensing orgs haven't even begun to consider how to charge for such usage.
Another example of how our culture is rapidly outpacing our copyright laws.
Posted by: scott@scottandrew.com | June 06, 2005 at 20:47
Meh. If you wanted to actually map out what is wrong with SWG, this wouldn't even make the top 20 on my list. It is, however, a byproduct of our completely broken IP establishment.
Posted by: cooper | June 06, 2005 at 21:29
Man, If what that Lucas Arts producer says is true, then manufacturers of musical instruments, recording equipment and audio software are in deep shit. :\
You can't be that naive to buy it, can you?
Posted by: gerhardt | June 14, 2005 at 20:34
I think it all comes down to greed. Sony is trying to protect their financial *ass*ets
and the recording companies are trying to milk as much money out of the populace as possible.
It's just plain, unadulterated greed.
Posted by: NATF (North American Trafe Federation) | March 06, 2008 at 23:09