Kalle said:
Making games is a collaborative effort, how do you define "key" developers?
Usually it's anyone with "lead" in their title. Lead artist, lead programmers, lead designers etc... Beyond that, key developers are those without which, the game either wouldn't have been made at all or at the least, wouldn't have been made the same. As a simple example: A key or lead designer will come up with the idea of making a turn-based post-apocalyptic game based on a certain set of rules. That designer (or designers as the case may be) may then further define those rules to their own whims and desires. A non-key designer will then take what has been created (the setting) and create something within that environment - such as a specific Vault once he knows what a Vault is or a specific group of raiders, once he knows that raiders exist in this theme.
It's similar to how cartoons are made. The Simpsons (as I understand it) are atually drawn by a bunch of hacks in Korea because they're cheap labour but the original characters were created by Matt Groening. Without Matt, you wouldn't have "The Simpsons". Their names would be different (they were named by Matt after his own family members), they wouldn't look the same, their hair might've been normal and so on. They might've been called "The Smith Famiy" and it may not have done as well. Even the style of humour would be different. So the key or lead designers, artists and programmers set the tone and make those decisions which the rest of the team then follow.
Kalle said:
Why would one of these "key" developers own the whole work while background artists # 1, 2 and 3 get nothing, isn't their contribution valued in this little morality play you are devising?
As you can see explained above, the difference between a key person and "background artists #42" are that the key artist (lead artist in this case) created the overall look and theme of the game. The other artists follow his style and lead and develop based on that. While a non-lead artist would develop a sense of the setting and an understanding, he or she may not be aware of why certain decisions were made (such as why the monster's hair is purple) or what affect they have on the game (IE: it's purple because it looks cool vs it's purple because that's the affect FEV had when he was created, as the hair colour cells aren't divided properly during the dipping process).
Kalle said:
Leaving aside that you either missed the point here or ignored it completely, what would those moral rights be again? The right to sell your cookie and demand it back? What moral rights are at play here and *why*?
Selling a cookie back is probably a bad example (actually both sides of the debate so far have come up with some pretty God awful examples). In the case of our computer game, Fallout, it boils down to setting and theme decisions. Many of these decisions likely weren't documented. The reasons behind them kept solely in the mind of the lead designer or artist or prorammer who made that decision. Therefore, only the "key" people who worked on the project have a full and proper understanding of the setting. It then follows that those same people would be the best to create another game based on that setting because they have this information.
This of course doesn't preclude others from making games or books or other content in the same setting. The same way you or I could write our own fan-fiction. However, we wouldn't have access to all the nitty gritty details and may slip in something which makes sense to us but doesn't fit in with why a certain decision was made, or it may not fit with what the original creators had in mind (such as the exact details on how Darth Vader was actually created, for example). So while our story of Darth being the son of Joe Bloggs the carpenter might be acceptable, it would clash with the immaculate conception idea of the original key creator - a detail which only he would've known for a long time as that background information was not necessary to the original "game" (or movie in this case).
So legally, your purchase of the Star Wars license may be quite legitimate but morally, you've done something "wrong" because you've inadvertantly (even perhaps without meaning to) altered a key element of the franchise (an element I personally think sucks but we'll leave that out of it for the moment). That's the issue we now face with Bethesda. They may have quite good intentions with regard to the Fallout franchise but information or events they construct in their Fallout 3 may clash with what the original designers had in mind for certain aspects of the game.
That's why Troika - the game company where the majority of the key people went - has a "moral right" to the Fallout license. They know it better than anyone else. More importantly, the fans trust them more than Bethesda to make a game that not only keeps in line with the original Fallouts but also breaks new ground and reveals more information which helps flesh out the background of the setting. New ground which only the key developers would be aware of. Plus that and Bethesda's games really, really suck in terms of their linearity, quest structure, dialogue and remarkably cliched monsters and setting.
The only caveat is that this all presumes Tim Cain and Co actually remember a damned thing about the Fallout setting at all, given it's now almost been 10 years since they first came up with the concept. It also presumes they're not going to pull a George Lucas and make some really shitty follow-up because it's been so long and they really just want to add some cool stuff in and while they're there, they re-release Fallout 1 and stop Ian shooting you in the back even though it breaks his character completely, destroys years of legend and denies the fact that the Bounty Hunter NEVER shot first, Lucas you dumb fuck.
