The Hotdog Laserhouse

LINK: waypoint.vice.com Nintendo Explains Why They Didn't Focus on Indie Games at E3

Austin Walker: So, one of the non-Switch titles that was here at E3 was Metroid: Samus Returns, a new remake of Metroid 2 coming to the 3DS. One of the responses I’ve seen to this is: Wow, this is exciting, but lots of people just played a fan-remake of Metroid 2 last year called AM2R.

So, look, I want to be an adult about this stuff. I’ve worked in the IP industry before, I understand why Nintendo has to be aggressive in defending its copyrights, I understand why it has to be aggressive in defending its trademarks. But, some people see an opportunity here to work with the fan community and to figure that out.

You’re Nintendo, you’re one of the biggest games companies in the world, you have been the face of video games for a long time. We live in an age where people are increasingly blurring the line between fandom and actual creation—finding ways to work directly with fans. So my question is theirs, which is, why wasn’t there a chance there—or even, has there been a chance—to speak to that, to try to work with a fan creator like AM2R’s Milton Guasti or other fan creators?

Reggie Fils-Aime: So, I think there needs to be clarity in what the line is, and, in our view, the line is when an initiative crosses from being an homage to something that is monetizing our IP. We allow homages to exist in a variety of different ways. And, for me personally, as a fan before I was an executive, I understand the attraction that you could have to our IP. But, when it transitions to something that… now, you’re trying to monetize, you’re trying to sell, you’re trying to profit off of, that is what broaches or breaks through that line for us, where we have to claim our IP protection.

Austin: How are you talking about monetization here, because with AM2R, that was a game that anyone could download for free, and again I think, for fans, there was this notion of, “go talk to that person,” or “go talk to other fan creators” and see if there’s a way to not kill that project, to investigate the ideas that happening there that are exciting, who knows.

Reggie: But again, to differentiate this, we have had conversations with entities that started as fans and became more of a business partner. Those conversations happen all the time, but again, when something transitions to a commercial product, and that’s what [AM2R] was—there wasn’t a charge, but it was now a commercial product.

Austin: I guess I need… what’s the definition of “commercial product” for Nintendo?

Reggie: Well, again, it’s all about… How do we protect our intellectual property? How do our creators, like Mr. Sakamoto, who created Metroid, and Nintendo control that intellectual property so that we can drive where it’s going, versus someone else driving where it’s going.

That’s where the line is very clear for us. And again, we could go on to YouTube and a variety of different places and see fans doing interesting things with our IP. But when it turns to driving the direction of the IP, or somehow monetizing or becoming a commercial project, that’s where for us, the line has been crossed.

Big kudos to Austin Walker for straight up just asking Nintendo’s Reggie what happened with AM2R and being just as baffled as I am with Reggie’s responses. Reggie actually completely dodges Austin’s line of questioning here and never really seems to define how he thought AM2R was “monetizing their IP.” Reggie tells us that the line is very clear for Nintendo but doesn’t clarify where that line is for the public. Nintendo knows where the line is, and if you happen to accidentally cross it, well, that’s your fault and you’ll have to deal with that fallout on your own terms, I guess. Thanks for being a Nintendo fan!

I have to wonder if Reggie was even involved in the AM2R thing at all. His misunderstanding and misdirection with Austin really makes it look like he’s scrambling for an answer he was unprepared to give. The response just raises more questions. Did Reggie think the AM2R thing was some kind of black market bootleg game like Somari or “Pocket Monster” for the Genesis? All it took was ten minutes on the AM2R development blog to know that wasn’t the case. No Paypal donate button, no Kickstarter links, no Patreons, just a few links to popular Metroid fan sites, a link to the forum, and an archive of past blog posts. The game itself even opens with a “This game is non-profit.” message screen.

I’d say this lends credence to my theory that Nintendo considers simply hosting the game at all to be “for-profit” because most free hosting sites have to run ads before they serve files to cover operating costs – except Nintendo issued a DMCA takedown request to DoctorM64’s personal email address when he took to sending people AM2R patches in file attachments. The ads there are built in to the email client (of which there are many, paid and free), not in to the hosting.

Nothing about what Reggie said makes any sense except to confirm that to Nintendo this was an issue of control. They had their own Metroid 2 remake barreling down the pike and needed to clear the way of competitors so the official product could take the spotlight. If Reggie had just admitted that, I would have been satisfied. But he didn’t. He danced around, make vague statements about things that were blatantly not true, and just made the issue even more confusing and dangerous for would-be fan game creators.

Maybe he was trying to avoid the minefield of “prior art” or whatever you want to call it – he didn’t even want to look in the direction of confirming Nintendo knew AM2R existed in any way shape or form. Something I’ve noted in the couple of interviews Reggie’s given where AM2R is brought up is that he seems to be completely adverse to saying the name out loud. There are near-infinite number of very logical reasons why this could be, but it’s also a kind of defensive measure I’ve witnessed other corporations engage in when they are trying to turn a blind eye to fan games and the like. Before Sega outright started encouraging fan games a year or two ago, I remember way back in the day (like WAY back), Sega employees trying to talk around mentioning those topics and those projects by name.

I think there’s a fear of being sued for stealing someone else’s idea – if you say “AM2R” by name, that comes with a certain amount of implicit knowledge of the project. Otherwise, you can claim plausible deniability.

If I wasn’t in the middle of moving 250 miles to another state in a few days, I’d definitely be preparing a video about this because I have more and clearer thoughts on the subject that aren’t suitable for being typed up on a laptop at 1:50am.