The mentality that encourages originality

I'm interested in this - why is original always better?

I'm not saying that it inherently isn't, but I'm intrigued by the mentality that encourages originality at the potential expense of quality.

1) The vast majority of music out there is copyrighted and re-using it without permission in your game is illegal. (Will you get a C&D for this? Probably not at this level, but that doesn't make it right.)

2) Recognizable music is associated with the game it was created for, and creates a dissonance when used outside of that context. (Both emotionally, and players will consider your game cheap and sloppy that you didn't go the extra mile)

3) Music that was specifically designed for a game will tend to fit it better than music that wasn't. This applies particularly for music that syncs to a particular scene order or changes dynamically to a situation, but still applies in general too.

4) Consistency

Of course non-original can work in a game's favor as well. Little King's Story for instance used classical music to great effect. But even there a composer was at the wheel to carefully arrange the music to make it fit together with a consistent sound.

Well, in response to point 1, there's also a lot of non-copyrighted music out there, most of which is under Creative Commons. There's Jamendo, or CCMixter (the latter of which I get music from) which both have a lot of CC and PD work.

On the other hand, I agree that recognizable music won't work, because once someone hears said music, they think of the game where it's from rather than the game they're playing.

That doesn't however mean, I believe, that games are the only place to get music. There are songs out there that have never been used in games, but could still work in them with enough sifting. Still, SDHawk is right that music specifically for a game will more often than not be superior to music that wasn't.

All that said, I don't think there's anything wrong per se with non-original music (so long as it's not copyrighted somewhere else) so long as it can evoke an adequate emotional response from the player while still maintaining the same feel throughout.

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

Willy wants original music. That's what he wants for his game. We don't need a debate on the pros and cons of original content (though everything Hawk says is correct)

While this is completely correct too it's also irrelevant to what the guy who posted this thread asked for.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Mickey Mouse is a quality character. Why should anyone try to come up with their own, original character and risk not meeting the same quality-level that Mickey Mouse has already established?

If you think it's okay to rip other people's artistic expressions in the name of "quality," then it is you who has an intriguing mentality.

Poor guy asks for someone to help him with music and is answered by people debating the value of originality.

But since the topic intrigues me I'm going to join in.
There's really no question whether original music would be better to do than ripped music. This goes for graphics too. Basically, anyone arguing the fact is just rationalizing ripping content for their projects.
If you really think it's better to rip content than to make it yourself than why are you even here? Why aren't you hanging out over at some NES rom hacking site? You could hack an amazing game like Super Mario Bros. and just change mario's sprite to a nake fox lady and get millions of downloads easily. Then you'd unarguably be the greatest game making genuis in the whole world.

Sorry, I was going off on a tangent. Anyways, I'm not saying ripping content is evil or something. But there's no way it's better.

Both of you (especially 8bit who shouldn't be so aggressive) misunderstood. Non-original music does not imply ripped music (ie. used without permission). BMR said it best.

Sorry I don't have anything constructive to add, as I'm not a composer. This debate has attracted quite a few though, so I guess it's a good thing for Willy!

That's an ill-considered facetious comment which I don't want to spend much time on, but I certainly am going to address it; I was referring to CC or PD materials, and furthermore I was thinking of Wandering Hamster, whose use of musical works from the canon is excellent. The use of the Mussorgsky and Gounod is clever, interesting and possibly even quite original in this context - despite the fact that the material itself isn't.

Let's take a hypothetical scenario: OHR Game X is well respected in the community for its original story, well crafted dialogue, engaging battles and so on; yet has poor graphics and worse music. If one were to take OHR Game X and replace all of the graphical and audio content with PD resources, how does that diminish the overall game?

I've read Hawk's comments, and I don't necessarily agree with 2) and 3) outright, it's much more nuanced than that, but I can't argue with the principles.

I feel like I ought to put another disclaimer (because somehow the first one didn't work - no one cares for debate for the sake of clarity?): I'm not encouraging anyone 'rip' material, and I'm certainly not attempting to discourage originality or creativity, I'm just interested in pursuing this line of argument further, because it is the default response when someone asks about wether they should have original content in their game or not.

I also feel bad for hijacking this read somewhat, so I'm going to suggest the relevant posts move elsewhere?

If it's useful: http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Mozart/dice/ can give you unlimited galant style minuets - presumably this isn't ripping?

Yup. 2 and 3 have a whole bunch of exceptions to them. You can place a recognizable tune in a situation you wouldn't normally place it which will end up having the listener re-evaluate it entirely, rather than just find it out of place. You can also sync a scene to pre-existing music, which will end up having the music inform the scene and feel just as natural together. But this is still the basic reasoning that people tend to elevate original music above existing works.

Of course the deep dark truth of the matter is that most people who use existing music do so in a poor fashion: illegally ripped, placed thoughtlessly, disparate styles, etc. Combined with the fact that there just isn't that much varied PD/CC stuff available (most PD pieces are associated with copyrighted performances), and the whole idea becomes seen as low class in general even if it's possible to overcome the perception.

I second moving the conversation into a separate thread, though I'm not sure if there's much left to discuss.

There's no need to move this to a different thread, unless people are going to start offering help to Willy. If anything this discussion is just keeping Willy's thread active thus given him more of a chance to be noticed by someone who'll potentially help him.

As far as ripping goes, I may have used the word harshly. As said, ripping would be using music without permission, and as creative minds ourselves we really should see at least a bit wrong with that. But I guess the discussion seems to have gone down another level than ripping vs non-ripping and is instead original vs non-original. Non-original being made up of not just ripped music but music used with permission but simply made for other purposes originally.
There is of course nothing wrong with someone going through the process of getting permission for a song or series of songs for their game and using those. There are in fact several websites that feature composers that would love for their chiptunes to feature in even the caliber of games that we at the OHR make. And who make them for just that reason.
So yes, THAT type of non-original music is of course acceptable and you wouldn't see that many people making a big deal about that sort of thing. However when you mention non-original music, or content for that matter, you have to realize that most of the time it's of the ripped varity, and it's normally not even ripped well.
That being said Original content is ALWAYS superior. If you're saying that poor graphics or music are holding a game from being good, what you're failing to see is that non-original content isn't the only answer. Even if the developer can't deliver original content that would be up to par with the rest of their game's standard, getting someone else to produce original content would be better than using non-original content. This is exactly what Willy is trying to do here. So, it goes like this.

Best: Original Content

Better: Carefully choosen non-original content used with permission

Bad: Ripped junk

Yes. It's aggressive to disagree by framing one's argument against them.

Kumbaya, everybody!

I'm splitting the threads because this is exactly the kind of horrible derail everyone always gets into here and it's banal and largely pointless, especially in the context of what the original poster requested. Debate this here instead of there, or better yet, not at all.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Come now, this is just bickering and name calling, and the exact reason people loathe these internet debates.


Anyways, to summarize what I said before, people tend to look at original content in indie games as better. Though non-original content used with consent is acceptable, original content offers more to a player who possibly could have experienced the non-original content before. Original content provides a 100% chance of a new experience for the player.

To the question of the difference of quality between non-original content versus original content, I argue that it should not be considered a factor. If the quality of a project's original content isn't to the standard the developer deems suitable, steps could be taken to improve the current original content or to start over making completely new original content. Using non-original content is basically giving up in this case.

But rather than continue arguing all the many ways original content is better, I'd like to hear a few convincing arguments for non-original content being better.

Glad to see this split into a separate thread.

I am glad that the OHR community has a healthy disdain for ripping without permission, but it is pretty puzzling that re-using resources with explicit permission sometimes produces the same negative response.

I think most of the time it had to do with the context of the re-used resources more than the fact that resources were re-used.