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January 28

Copyright status of photos in old magazines that are out of copyright themselves

Here's something I've been wondering about for a while. Archive.org hosts a huge load of old movie magazines these days, but are the photos in the magazines themselves out of copyright? If I wanted to use a photo from some old movie that was featured in an article (and for argument's sake, let's say it was a movie that isn't out of copyright yet), would the studio still hold the copyright to the promotional photos? I expect so, but I was wondering if anyone had a definite answer to this. What exactly is the copyright status of such photos? Snowgrouse (talk) 07:42, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Threshold of originality and sweat of the brow for more details, but generally, in Anglo-American copyright traditions, faithful reproductions of a work retain the copyright status of the original. So a still from a movie which was in the public domain would also be in the public domain, and a photograph of a movie screen showing a movie in the public domain would also be in the public domain. Simply put a photograph of a public domain work is itself in the public domain; the person who takes the photograph does not establish a new copyright. This only applies to faithful reproductions of the original. Artistic modifications, such as L.H.O.O.Q., where a work in the public domain was modified for artistic purposes, would have established a new copyright. Also, the use of a PD work within a larger work (such as a photograph of a street scene where someone was wearing a T-Shirt that had an image in the public domain) does not invalidate the copyright of the larger work. But so long as the reproduction adds nothing substantial new to the original, the original's copyright status (or lack thereof) would carry over. --Jayron 32 15:11, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note however you should distinguish between "photos from some old movie" (by which I presume as I thin Jayron32 does, that you're referring to photos taken of the actual film) akin to what's nowadays likely to be a digital version [[screenshot); and film stills. The later are copyright separately, or perhaps not copyrighted at all. As somewhat mentioned in our article, and has been found through discussion and research at the Wikimedia Commons, (e.g. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Taylor-Burton-Taming-67.JPG, Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2012/03#Diana Ross film still & Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2011/09#Publicity still copyrights) copyright on these is complicated. For older ones in particular often it's unlikely they're copyright as they may have been published under the authority of the copyright holder without copyright notices (when they were required) or were not renewed (at a time when that was necessary and so the copyright expired). But finding solid evidence of that often isn't easy. I presume we aren't talking about film poster which are another thing entirely but probably aren't found in magazines. Nil Einne (talk) 21:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Weird video game genre mixes

Some genre mixes are just eccentric, for example DoomRL aka Doom the Roguelike.

Even the core features conflict (FPS: fast-paced 3D action game, Roguelike: top-down view, turn-based, ASCII art), but still, DoomRL is quite enjoyable if you like FPS and roguelike titles.

Another example: Dating sims. If you take away most of the dating and fanservice, but keep the relations and the pacing, you'd get a game that would fit the 3-word description of Sims: The Roguelike. This has been done, but without sacrificing all graphics, and is known (for certain values of "known") as Kudos.

OTOH, Diablo the Roguelike doesn't sound, nor feel, half as weird – mostly because Diablo is a spiritual successor of the average fantasy-setting Roguelike with graphics and real-time gameplay.

Question: Is there a name for that kind of mix, which looks silly or even impossible at first? I didn't find anything better than "genre mixing", which doesn't hint at the weirdness of the mix. (A quick look at TV Tropes pages with "dissonance" didn't return anything useful either.)

A label like "FPS roguelike" would fit DoomRL, but that would only include one mix. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 15:31, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a mashup or genre bending (movies [1], books [2], games[3]) or genre blurring (games [4], [5])? A genre bastard might be appropriate to convey the odd couple of parent genres. But really, I think you're better of using a whole phrase: "Dwarf fortress is hard to classify, because it has traits of Roguelikes, City-building sims, and sandbox games."

A few other comments: DoomRL is sort of a bad example, because it has very few traits of an FPS. First, I don't think there is any first person perspective (I could be wrong, I mostly play DCSS :) Secondly, FPS usually implies real-time action. I suppose there is shooting though. As far as I can tell, DoomRL only takes plot/concept/style from Doom, and is otherwise a fairly normal RL. Likewise, games like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and UnReal World are usually considered squarely Roguelike, even though they don't have any traditional fantasy elements in terms of plots, characters, or setting. DoomRL, CDDA, and URW are all usually just called Roguelikes, because the traditional high fantasy theme isn't seen as a necessary trait.

My point is, increasingly games (and movies, novels, etc) are described in terms of traits, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into genre labels. Have you ever looked at the subreddit /r/roguelikes ? About every third thread is people complaining that some game isn't a "true" RL, and the same tired points get made over and over again, and it's not very fun or informative IMO. There is another interesting point that (to my knowledge) nobody ever called Halo a "Doomlike" or "Wolfensteinlike", even though those two games largely defined their genres similar to how Rogue did. So maybe "Roguelike" is a crappy name, because the elements of similarity are highly subjective.

There's some traction for the term procedural death labyrinth [6] to describe many RL as well as games like Spelunky that have procedural/random level generation and permadeath, which are seen as many as the key elements of Rogue and RL that many other genres are borrowing. Anyway, it's a very interesting topic but genre classification is inherently problematic (see e.g. [7] [8]), and my opinion is that it's more useful to discuss these hybrid games in terms of traits rather than genres. Finally, the "weirdness" of the mix is itself highly subjective. Some people were surprised Spelunky worked so well. I was not, it seemed like a natural experiment to me, and I'd been waiting for a game like that for years :) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:12, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that's a lot of refs, thanks.

BTW, "Procedural death labyrinth" would be a good name for a rock band.

If we look at DoomRL's features, we find turn-based, tile-based, (<50%)random levels*, randomized items*, top-down view, and permadeath. Unidentified or even cursed items are missing.

*Items are randomized only in the random levels, and there is no name randomization. In a true RL, one would only learn the ammo the weapon uses and have to figure the rest from the way it works.

The major remaining Doom components are the maps, enemies, and items (modern/pomo weapons, armor, and misc. items). In a true RL, you wouldn't know anything about new weapons except the ammo they use, but yes, DoomRL is pretty close to "true" RL, not merely RL-like, and maybe 80% roguelike and 20% Doom. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 12:58, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, hope they're helpful! You know, I had completely forgotten about the "item identification sub-game" part of RL. I guess it's been too long since I've played nethack, which has the craziest BUC status system ever made (something about reading a cursed scroll of increase level whilst confused?) Rogue itself of course had a modest system like that, but I personally hated it. How am I supposed to know that you stand on a scroll of scare monster, not read it? Anyway, item identification meta-games are a very divisive issue, some players seem to think it is very fun and crucial, while others think it should be eliminated or at least minimized (it's still in DCSS, but fairly minimized, so that it doesn't matter much except for potions, but it still allows for hilarity and death in the right situations). Back to the terminology issue there's also some use of the term roguelite or rogelikelike, but those are usually applied to things like The_Binding_of_Isaac_(video_game), i.e. things that break one of the "sacred" aspects of RL, such as turn-based time. Actually, that's a pretty good example of genre blurring. I would describe it as an "isometric action RPG with procedural generation and permadeath", but I suppose we could also call it a "ZL/RL (zeldalike/roguelike)" SemanticMantis (talk) 14:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the "stand on scroll" mechanic is a reference that escaped many, and it came to them as what TV Tropes calls a "Scrappy Mechanic."

One more thing why I didn't accept DoomRL as true RL was that there's no trade nor currency. Economy is, in my book, a requirement of RL (albeit on a less than conscious level – I didn't mention it yet) so much that I backtracked much of the "genre weirdness" of DoomRL and AliensRL to the missing economy.

And I will start calling old-style FPshooters "Wolfenlike", esp. those of Doom's contemporaries which featured a more restricted geometry (all corridors same width, all rooms rectangular & a multiple of the corridor width, no elevation modeling etc). On a related note, abandon "RTS" in favor of "Dunelike" already! ;)

One game I should have mentioned is Fallout (video game). It plays on a grid, it features economy, there's permadeath, but it skips the unID issue and the levels aren't random. A bit like DoomRL, in that it uses an engine which was then typical of a fantasy setting for a post-modern setting. One can make in-game saves, too, so it's probably the closest a main-stream game came to PDL without using any of the core features permadeath and randomaze (a word I just made up). - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 15:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]