No One Lives Forever Rights Vanish Into The Night

[Entitled]

So the people who make the things society values most get the least incentive for doing so, while the people who make things that society doesn't give a crap about get society's ongoing protection so that they can continue to do that? Given that the purpose of the copyright system is actually to *encourage* the creation of things that society values, your system seems exactly backwards.

How is earning $1 billion in five years, less incentive to continue working than $50.000 over 50 years?

My point was exactly that since the most profitable works already earned their incentive in the first years, there is no reason for letting them keep their rights just so they can get proportionally even more outlandishly high profits.

Like progressive taxing. Rich people are already richer anyways, so taking away a larger percentage of their money still leaves them better off.

A personal artist has ten years to make the princely sum of $100 to protect it for another 10 years. If they can't manage to do that, then not only does their work suck (so shouldn't be further encouraged) but they're not invested enough in it to save less than a buck a month to protect their own work. They'll have had 20 years to make $500, total, and 30 years to make $1400 total to give them protection for 40 years. That's still under $50/yr.. and you're saying they can't afford that?

If you are talking about literally these numbers, then sure, they could afford it, but then the problem is exactly that, it gives practically zero reason for anyone but the most obscure writers,to ever lose IP over the centuries, thus make an IP system even more oppressive than the current one.

And lets be honest, for those multi-billion IPs, those copyrights are never going to expire. THe companies are going to buy lawyers, judges, and whatever they have to in order to continually extend the term -- and by doing so, they'll extend the terms of *everything else*.

It's not lawyers or judges who decide a law's extent, but legislators. Politicians. And sure, those can be bought too, especially in the US lobbying system, but they can also be voted out of the legisleture by the people. As we have seen with SOPA, that also gives them a certain incentive. Given that you already proposed a hypothetical legal reform that would need legislative support anyways, I assumed that we might as well propose a more useful one.

 

[AkaDad]

No One Lives Forever is one of my favorite games of all time. Whoever has the rights needs to make another sequel and make HD versions of the original games.

 

[LordLundar]

If I read Fox Interactive's wiki page properly, it's entirely possible Fox Games holds the rights. Just hope they don't turn over redevelopment over to SEGA again but that does seem unlikely.

This is depressing though. There's a wishlist on GOG's community page and NOLF and it's sequel are second in demand only to Grim Fandango.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Haha, what a mess. I still have a boxed copy of both games. They are indeed very good fun, but the final boss of the first game is made of pure bullshit. I can't remember if I ever bothered finishing it.

How so? All you have to do is shoot him. Well, both of them, since there's the bossfight with Dmitriy, and then an identical one with Tom Goodman.

That said, not much reward for winning, since every cutscene in the game was as boring as a bread sandwich. Amazing contrast with all the great mook dialogue during the missions.

"I get threatened by guys like your boss all the time. Fact is, they want a commodity that can only be produced in one place. That place just happens to be outer space, so the distribution channel is very narrow."

 

[Apollo45]

Dibs.

That's how these things work right?

On topic, I may have to look up the game... Looks potentially fun.

 

[Seracen]

Though only briefly mentioned, I consider the only decent videogame to come out of either the Aliens or Predator brands to be the 90's arcade game beat 'em up.

 

[Dfskelleton]

A damn shame. I love Monolith's older games, and I've always wanted to play this one.
Well, nothing's impossible for GOG, right? If they could untangle the hideous, bloated mess of the rights to System Shock 2, surely locating some missing rights shouldn't be all that hard.

 

[LordLundar]

Just publish it and watch who sends the Cease and Desist order?

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. If there's proof that you searched for who holds the rights, it's not negligence which a cease and desist will cover, it's maliciousness and that goes straight to a lawsuit which could at best ruin the re-publisher's reputation.

Besides, if someone is going to republish it, they need the source code. That will probably be with the documentation of IP ownership.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

1) Use escapist to publish an article (or rather a series) about an upcoming almost finished mod that uses both the code and IP
2) Wait for someone to send DMCA
3a) You know who has the rights
3b) No one defends the copyright - it's gone

Better yet, set up a Kickstarter to fund a Sequel. Same process, but you don't need to do any work first, and the pile of money that gets pledged will make the companies involved more likely to actually figure it out themselves.

And if they don't... make the sequel and profit oneself.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well it seems like this game might permanantly become "abandonware" from the sounds of it, albiet for reasons other than nobody wanting to bother to workon it or release it.

That said, I am surprised that nobody knows who has the rights, it makes me wonder if someone who was asked is lying about it (and why they would do that). Simply put it seems unlikely there wouldn't be any kind of paper trail at all among either of the big companies involved with it's "set" of IPs.

If someone puts in the effort though, I imagine it will be figured out. Honestly though, I tend to see "No One Lives Forever" as less a "solution" to the problem of the domination of male protaganists, so much as an evidence that it was never an issue to begin with as even back around the turn of the century you had people making games with female protaganists. I believe I've referanced both this game and Perfect Dark (Joanna Dark) towards that end before.

As far as GoG goes though, I'd much rather see them re-issue the Elvira RPGs, or "Legacy: Realm Of Terror" before another shooter, no matter how "cool". Of course going by their lists I'm one of a very few people who think this way.

 

[Norrdicus]

Seems like Night Dive Studios are on the game's trail [https://www.facebook.com/NightDiveStudios/posts/445503338872134]