Zombie Wars: Dawn of the Dead Producer Sues Over Dead Rising Game
While I didn't love Capcom's Dead Rising as much as some—I thought the demo was cackle-inducing genius, but hated the punitive advancement system in the full game—there was no doubt that it was inspired carnage. Inspired by the Dawn of the Dead movies, clearly. I mean, it's set in a mall filled with zombies. It may not have ripped off the plot, but it clearly borrowed its setting, and to great effect.
Unfortunately for Capcom, the producer who holds the rights to the Dawn of the Dead movies didn't like their homage and is now suing them for intellectual property infringement.
"Both works are dark comedies," the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New York on Monday reads. "In both, the recreational activities of the zombies and absurdly grotesque 'kill scenes' provide unexpected comedic relief."There could be some interesting fallout from this suit. Videogames often lift settings from movies to give players a chance to recreate similar situations. Dead Rising isn't quite a parody of Dawn of the Dead, either, so those protections may not apply."Both works provided thoughtful social commentary on the 'mall culture' zeitgeist, in addition to serving up a sizable portion of sensationalistic violence," it said.
Producer, game firm in rights battle over zombies [Reuters.com]
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Like Dawn of the Dead hasn't stolen everything from previous movies ... riiiight.
Just like Disney is all for extending copyrights NOW, but if they were that long when it started in the 30s, it wouldn't have been able to steal all that shit from Anderssen and others.
Scum-sucking copyright hoarders ...
@#1 From previous movies, perhaps, but not from one single movie.
This review suggests Capcom knew what they were getting themselves into.
I'm sure this case will get thrown out. IP infringement occurs when it's reasonable to assume that consumers will confuse the infringing work with the infringed work; for instance, when Negativland released their "U2" album, and designed the cover specifically to trick consumers into thinking that it was a new U2 album called "Negativland", rather than a Negativland album called "U2".
Dead Rising is certainly reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead, but it is unreasonable to expect that a consumer would confuse the two.
The Dead Rising play mechanic is what I characterized as oddly Japanese. The concept that if you played through the game multiple times and restarted once you failed... your levels stayed intact was tough to come to grips with.
This was really hard for me to grasp, as I think one should be able to advance through the game from the get go, and achieve 100% completion with some level of dedication- but it's nearly impossible in this game. Instead, play through the beginning game 4-5 times, and suddenly you're at level 12, and progress through the rest of the game now becomes feasible.
It's a almost an extension of the RE game concept, where the best ending requires that you finish the game while wielding only uncooked tofu and a fuzzy slipper, all the while never utilizing any of the savepoints.