Forget Fan Fiction, Create Fan Video Games

Culture

from the now-that's-super-geeky-dedication dept

Fan fiction is a story that’s been well covered. People who become obsessed with movie, television or book characters go on to write their own books or scripts just because they simply can’t get enough of what was officially written. Of course, anyone can write. When it comes to video games, it appears that there’s a group of somewhat programmers who are so into some classic video games that they’ve created the video game equivalent to fan fiction — writing prequels, sequels and offshoots of various games. Often, these appear to be games that are a decade or so old. So far, it sounds like the companies that hold the rights to these games don’t seem to mind so much — but it’s not clear from the article if that’s because they think it’s okay, or because they just don’t know about the games. Either way, there appears to be an eager audience for them. While more modern games are obviously more difficult to program, what would happen if someone actually did figure out how to make a “fan video game” of something that was still a relatively new game? At that point, it’s likely the lawyers would come out — though, perhaps they should take a lesson from the comic book culture in Japan, where publishers usually encourage fan versions of certain comics, knowing that it increases the popularity of the original.