Captain Stiffy, on 10 November 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:
as I understand it they actually were not the original purchasers of the artwork they just bullied FASA or whoever held it at the time
FASA stopped using the Macross, Crusher Joe, and Dougram art because of what HG did to Playmates. They even stopped using the Victor Musical art that originally appeared in TRO 3055. As a small company, the people running FASA knew they could not afford legal battles. HG, otoh, was, iirc, primarily a real estate company at the time, and had money to spare.
Hans Von Lohman, on 08 November 2013 - 02:11 AM, said:
The phoenix mechs we are getting are the only 6 they can do, as they come from Crusher Joe and Dougram anime series.
The rest of them are from Macross/Robotech anime, and the owners of that series are a LOT more lawyer happy and make it not worth the while to add them.
Crusher Joe and Dougram were apparently a lot less of a problem as those two series are not in production anymore and there doesn't seem to be any people who would care anymore to sue over it.
Macross is still very popular in Japan and they are still making new Macross series to this day, like Macross Frontier, Macross Plus, Macross animated movies like Macross Wings of Goodbye, ect.
The phoenix mechs we have/are getting are not the only ones they can do. The problem however is that they cannot look like the Macross designs. And people expect them to look like Macross designs.
I would love for the community to prove me wrong on this, but every time someone makes a new design for these 'mechs, even when it comes from official sources, the peanut gallery opens up with "That's NOT a Marauder/PhoenixHawk/Wasp/Stinger/Warhammer!!!". From a business standpoint, it makes it seem that there is no possible way to please the community by bringing in new designs for these mechs and if they do they'll just throw the community into a ragefit, so why should they even try? <NO BALLS>
DarkDevilDancer, on 08 November 2013 - 01:38 PM, said:
They may no longer be similar but the patent system in the US is a mess and you can sue for stupid reasons look at apple and sony arguing about who owns the right to a rectangular shaped phone, Harmony Gold will sue if they can so its just not worth wasting the money for PGI.
Even if they win blood sucking lawyers will drain their coffers.
If HG was all about trying to sue anyone regardless of similarity then Topps would have pulled the images they've been using for these 'mechs for the past TEN years. (and as recently as ONE year ago)
Captain Stiffy, on 08 November 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:
They would have to be completely balls bouncing karate bananas ******** not to want to sell us Marauders.
Whatever their hangup with the new versions or with making their own version is they need to get over it and take our money.
The hangup is not necessarily with PGI, but PGI's perception of the community, which so far, is not totally off base. PGI cannot make images that look like the Macross images. However, PGI CAN make new art/designs for these mechs. The problem is, as Bryan Ekman posted on Twitter (re: Marauder) "What are people's expectations?"
If your expectations are the Macross images, you are part of the problem.
Hans Von Lohman, on 08 November 2013 - 10:47 PM, said:
They did make a re-designed Warhammer for their very first trailer in 2009. Guess what? it got them some legal action from Harmony Gold.
I bet PGI knows the Warhammer and Marauder would sell better than anything they've made to date. They would love to make them, but the fact they have not ought to tell you something about how the real world works for them.
The "legal action" was a Cease and Desist letter sent to IGN for their article on it. HG did not send the C&D to Smith&Tinker (who were working on the MechWarrior reboot in 2009 before it sort of morphed into MWO at PGI). As far as I know, HG did not send a C&D to anyone else, either, and as recently as a year ago, that video was still on Pirahna's company page (I think they switched over to actual MWO stuff when Open Beta launched).
Machinima.com still has the video on YouTube, btw. Guess they didn't get a C&D either:
Captain Stiffy, on 09 November 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:
The key is that they need to CALL it something else. And it needs to be different enough.
Um, no, there is nothing in a name but a name. The only thing HG cares about is if it looks like the Macross stuff. Not what we call it. They don't even call those images by the same names attributed to the Battletech stuff.
WandiXXL, on 10 November 2013 - 08:51 AM, said:
Hmm I don't think that is PGIs problem at all, it is Catalyst Game Labs Problem. The general Battletech rights are not with PGI, CGL owns that rights, if PGI would creat their OWN mechs, i don't mean Mech variants, i mean whole new mechs, they have to check that with CGL, even Microgarbage needet to do that,
Topps owns the rights to all Battletech/MechWarrior imagery in print and physical media. Catalyst (and I guess by extension, Iron Wind Metals) license the art from Topps. PGI does not license art from Topps. All art in MWO is new art created for use exclusively in MWO (which is why they can't "sell" MWO posters/tshirts/minis/toys). None of the mechs we have in-game are using the same images as the sourcebooks.
Captain Stiffy, on 10 November 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:
as I understand it they actually were not the original purchasers of the artwork they just bullied FASA or whoever held it at the time
Escef, on 10 November 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:
FASA stopped using the Macross, Crusher Joe, and Dougram art because of what HG did to Playmates. They even stopped using the Victor Musical art that originally appeared in TRO 3055. As a small company, the people running FASA knew they could not afford legal battles. HG, otoh, was, iirc, primarily a real estate company at the time, and had money to spare.
I think the most important lesson for everybody to learn here is: DON'T USE LICENSED ART!!! Everything goes so much easier if you just use your own in-house designs. When FASA made Battledroids/Battletech in 1984, they didn't have artists, but they needed some pictures that visually described their "giant robot tanks", and those Macross images fit the bill. And most people in America probably didn't solidly relate to those images with Macross yet. But the IP has grown, they've got artists now and can make their own images for those mechs now (IMO, they SHOULD have done this back in 1986 when they made TRO:3025 instead of sticking to the licensed art, but they probably didn't think it was going to be an issue back then)
Âs I said : CGL has solved that problem by the TRO Project Phoenix... NONE of the Phoenix Design Mechs are looking like the UNSEEN, thats why they are RESEEN, !SAME NAME DIFFERENT LOOK! Most of the mechs in the game look like the TRO mechs, , except for the Phoenix Mechs atm. Orion looks like TT Orion, Cicada looks like TT Cicacade etc, the JMechs has the "garbagebin" as torso as the TT JMech ... it just looks better in the game but you see the similarities.
DarkDevilDancer, on 08 November 2013 - 01:38 PM, said:
They may no longer be similar but the patent system in the US is a mess and you can sue for stupid reasons look at apple and sony arguing about who owns the right to a rectangular shaped phone, Harmony Gold will sue if they can so its just not worth wasting the money for PGI.
Even if they win blood sucking lawyers will drain their coffers.
Yet another reason that the US should switch to a loser pays system. But... not really the proper forum to go into it.
Âs I said : CGL has solved that problem by the TRO Project Phoenix... NONE of the Phoenix Design Mechs are looking like the UNSEEN, thats why they are RESEEN, !SAME NAME DIFFERENT LOOK! Most of the mechs in the game look like the TRO mechs, , except for the Phoenix Mechs atm. Orion looks like TT Orion, Cicada looks like TT Cicacade etc, the JMechs has the "garbagebin" as torso as the TT JMech ... it just looks better in the game but you see the similarities.
Compare the TRO Centurion to the MWO Centurion:
TRO Kintaro to MWO Kintaro:
TRO Quickdraw to MWO Quickdraw:
A lot of the TRO mechs have to be redesigned to work in-game anyways, just because they wouldn't work in a 3D environment where these things have to move. The TT Jenner's legs came out of its shoulders (couldn't torso twist), the TT Catapult doesn't even have a waist to pivot on. The Orion's cockpit is completely different so you're not looking at a solid metal bar in the middle of your viewport, and while the torso has all the right weapons in the right places, they're designed differently than the TRO art. The Victor (as with almost all humanoid mechs) thankfully doesn't have a rotating cockpit in MWO (horrible weak point and risk for failure due to damage).
All of MWO's mechs are new designs. The similarities are in the form of "callbacks" that offer some familiarizes to previous designs, but these are all still new designs. As PGI does not license from Topps like Catalyst does, they can't use the actual sourcebook designs for any of the mechs here anyway. They can make designs with some "familiarities" like the ones we see, but they still need to be new designs. I submit to you that if I had a Marauder/Warhammer/Crusader/PhoenixHawk/etc. that had the same amount of similarities to the TRO:Project Phoenix versions as the MWO Centurion has to its TT counterpart, I'd still be really happy even though I hate the TRO:Project Phoenix art*.
*although like I've said previously, I think that's primarily due to the artist on TRO:Project Phoenix and not the designs themselves. After seeing other artists take on the same designs, I don't think most of them are actually too terrible, but the images from that book are horrible.
Edited by DirePhoenix, 12 November 2013 - 10:44 AM.
Captain Stiffy, on 08 November 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:
They would have to be completely balls bouncing karate bananas ******** not to want to sell us Marauders.
Whatever their hangup with the new versions or with making their own version is they need to get over it and take our money.
It doesn't make sense if you risk a company-destroying lawsuit to do it. There are plenty of mechs that won't cause a firestorm if you use them (like the Banshee 95 tons with Sunglasses).
Well if Blizzard had to pull the Warhound from StarCraft... I don´t think anyone else would be inclined to try and take the fight.
After all is a Mad still a Mad if it is in name only... Or rather how much does the looks of the mech play in to the name. Going by the redesign thread looks are very important.
I really need to stress again it's not the name that matters if the mech looks even a little like a robotech design they will start legal action, any unseen mech would have to look so radically different from the original to pass that fans would reject it.
We will have Marauder and Warhammer mechs in the future. They're called the Timber wolf and the Hell Bringer.
As far as the Inner Sphere is concerned I think we need to content ourselves with having PGI have mechs that work as stand ins like the Firebrand = Rifleman, or a new 2 energy weapon per arm Cataphract to be our faux-Marauder.
Locationclimbing Mt Tryhard, one smoldering Meta-Mech corpse at a time
Posted 15 November 2013 - 11:11 PM
Captain Stiffy, on 09 November 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:
The key is that they need to CALL it something else. And it needs to be different enough.
Harmony Gold has no legal rights to those names.
The issues is those names are related to the lawsuit era mechs, and as such are alarm bells for HG. Any little similarities, they will file a lawsuit, even if they would lose it in court, because they know the other companies can't afford to fight it, and so will fold. (Shame Hasbro didn't do the world a favor and destroy them).
Truth is, even totally redesigned (which most fans would revolt over) HG is still likely to press a suit over, mostly because HG is largely just a company of lawyers with nothing to actually offer anymore, so they pretty much only exist to sue people over "robotech".
It would be more accurate to say that Harmony Gold could start a law suit, not that they will.
Long story short, the costs involved if there was to be a legal case are not worth the risk, so just be happy with the 6 Phoenix Mechs we have and move on.
Bishop Steiner, on 15 November 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:
... HG is largely just a company of lawyers with nothing to actually offer anymore, so they pretty much only exist to sue people over "robotech".
I just checked, and they are active in the real estate business in California. They have several properties available for lease right now, starting at US$1200/month. So apparently they DO have something to offer. They also own a theater and seem to be involved in indie film production. I'm guessing that their schtick is that theu use the real estate business to fund the movie thing. Much as how Studio Gainax (Evangelion, His & Her Circumstances, The Wings of Honneamise, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, et al) was known for a time more for computer software than anime.
However, HG's rabid defense of their Macross license has hurt a few companies and the fan community, not just the Battletech/Mechwarrior related companies and community.
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Captain Stiffy, on 10 November 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:
