Real pictures

Abdulkump

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What are the risks or relevant implications in developing games using photographs (pictures of real things or people)?
 

anschwww

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several laws, but i don't know, in which county u live and which laws they have.
but i'm pretty shure, that there are some laws in america and since u using patreon....
 

anne O'nymous

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Just copyright, in case I didn't take them myself?
Er... yes and no. You can be sued by the photographer (who obviously own the rights), the model (who can dislike what you did with her public image), and the site(s) who bought the right to display the pictures.


but i'm pretty shure, that there are some laws in america and since u using patreon....
Using Patreon doesn't mean that you depend of US laws. Patreon depend of them, which mean that they can take you out by fear to be sued for complicity, but you depend only of the laws of your own country, and obviously international laws like the Berne Convention regarding copyright and legal property.
 

Zippity

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Typically international Copyright laws may apply to all real life photographs and/or videos taken by a individual person and/or company, so to use their property in a project usually requires legal permission... There are some real life photographs that may be offered up by their owners as being royalty free for use... That means they are free for use based on a royalty free license for use by someone without owing royalty fees to them... But usually that costs a one time fee of some sort... There may also be public domain photo's/video's, but those are usually stated as such by the originating owner/creator...

If you are using real life photos/videos you yourself created, and as a result of their use you are profiting from them, if it is of a person or people, you may also be legally required to have their written permission to do so... Even sometimes when you are not profiting, or in the case of being part of a public news writer, and so on... It all depends on the purpose of use....

If you are taking real life photo's and/or videos from someone else's source location, be it website, book, and so forth... Depending on their use, it may require either permission and/or inclusion of source location information posted with in the body of work... So lets say you are writing a paper for school, and included copyrighted photos in the paper, then it will require information about the source of the photo in the paper somewhere (usually at the end)... If it is for an adult/erotic visual novel/game, then the use of copyright material from another website/source, then usually written permission is required, especially if the product is being used to make money/profit, depending on the website/source...

By using copyright source material without permission of one form or another, you will run the risk of being liable to not only local/international laws, but also will open yourself up to civil type lawsuits directly from the copyright owners themselves...
 
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Prokopije

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I was wondering the same. I mean sure, theory is one ,and as said above in few posts, laws are what they are. But on the other hand, there are lot of games (especially those twine html games) which use real life pictures (drained from porn sites mostly). I can be wrong, but I highly doubt they got all permission for usage they should. Is there any case someone actualy beeing sued for that?
 

Zippity

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I was wondering the same. I mean sure, theory is one ,and as said above in few posts, laws are what they are. But on the other hand, there are lot of games (especially those twine html games) which use real life pictures (drained from porn sites mostly). I can be wrong, but I highly doubt they got all permission for usage they should. Is there any case someone actualy beeing sued for that?
Typically, if a law suit does incur, and a settlement is made, there is usually a gag order about talking about it... But really the risk is that somehow the copyright owners get wind of it, and decide to make a stink about it... Usually it starts with cease and desist orders, or letters threatening legal action first... And that is only if the owner gives two hoots or even knows... But in my book, why take the risk...
 

DarthSeduction

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Lack of interest from the audience to to inconsistency of the art. Lack of interest from the audience because if they wanted porn images they'd go watch porn. Don't get me wrong. The porn images used for adult games thing had its time, but with all the tools at our fingertips to create games with consistent art and a flowing visual story, I don't even give anything without such a second look. Same goes for games that have an interesting premise, but then use random Hentai/Ecchi images they pulled from some Danbooru clone or another at some point. The images in a game should be telling the majority of the story. And I say that as a writer.
 
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muttdoggy

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You should check out the Creative Commons licenses and use those that allow you to use them for the purpose you want and you'll be fine. But that narrows the pool of photos you can safely use.
 
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Zippity

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Lack of interest from the audience to to inconsistency of the art. Lack of interest from the audience because if they wanted porn images they'd go watch porn. Don't get me wrong. The porn images used for adult games thing had its time, but with all the tools at our fingertips to create games with consistent art and a flowing visual story, I don't even give anything without such a second look. Same goes for games that have an interesting premise, but then use random Hentai/Ecchi images they pulled from some Danbooru clone or another at some point. The images in a game should be telling the majority of the story. And I say that as a writer.
I'm of a similar opinion with regard to real photo's in this genre of visual novel/games... If I personally wanted to watch real porn, there are literally millions of videos and so on I could go watch to get my jollies... But when it comes to visual novels/games, I don't want normal porn... I want an immersive story with creatively drawn/created art in the form of a adult/erotic visual novel/game...

Real Photo's in a visual novel/game doesn't feel or look any different from all those b-rated porn movies that have been generated since the development of the camera... So why on earth would I want to play/read an amateur VN/Game with real photos, usually used without any permission at all, when I could go to Pornhub or one of hundreds of other porn sites, and watch all the free porn I wanted...
 
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Prokopije

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Well, because of story, which you can't find in porns. If story is good I don't care what kind of art (or "art") is used in game (there are few exceptions, for example summertime saga, for my preference that's just most "awful" art(I'm not saying it's bad, it is just repulsive to me) I ever saw and I really couldn't force myself to play that game) - is it real or created.
Beside that, created art is hard to find these days. It turned into pure recycling of something we already saw. Over time it became just boring. I'm not sure what is "smaller evil" - real photos or constant repeating of created characters, environments etc.
 

DarthSeduction

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Well, because of story, which you can't find in porns. If story is good I don't care what kind of art (or "art") is used in game (there are few exceptions, for example summertime saga, for my preference that's just most "awful" art(I'm not saying it's bad, it is just repulsive to me) I ever saw and I really couldn't force myself to play that game) - is it real or created.
Beside that, created art is hard to find these days. It turned into pure recycling of something we already saw. Over time it became just boring. I'm not sure what is "smaller evil" - real photos or constant repeating of created characters, environments etc.
See, none of the characters in my two games that are based on original concepts are the same models you've seen 100 times. It's not that difficult to make the models more unique, the problem is more that people aren't editing the models after they get them.
 

Zippity

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Well, because of story, which you can't find in porns. If story is good I don't care what kind of art (or "art") is used in game (there are few exceptions, for example summertime saga, for my preference that's just most "awful" art(I'm not saying it's bad, it is just repulsive to me) I ever saw and I really couldn't force myself to play that game) - is it real or created.
Beside that, created art is hard to find these days. It turned into pure recycling of something we already saw. Over time it became just boring. I'm not sure what is "smaller evil" - real photos or constant repeating of created characters, environments etc.
When I try to reason why we sometimes see certain character models used over and over again, I think it stems from a mix of availability, developer experience/inexperience, and costs...

Some models may be more freely available for use, which usually shows up more in how we see a repeat of backdrop use... And for folks who are new to developing these sorts of projects, freely available models means it's easier for them to get started, or cuts down on the initial costs of starting production... Then you mix in the fact that perhaps the developer just isn't experienced enough with the tools used to modify a model, that they do the best they can, yet in the end they still look very similar... Or perhaps they just don't care enough to modify them much, or at all...

It's really a mix of factors that come into play when it comes to why we see some models used so much, or some backdrops appear too many times... But I think we see more backdrop re-use then character model re-use... I personally get sick and tired of seeing the swirly lined clothing shop backdrop in a lot of Ren'py based visual novel/games, and I think it's even worse when I see that same swirly texture used on clothes and other objects... But I think that stems again from it being more easily available and probably costs little to nothing to acquire/use...

I wish every character in every VN/Game I read/played was unique... But with the tools available these days, and the amount of publically available resources being abundant, seeing repeating and/or similar characters and backdrops now and then, is bound to occur...
 

Prokopije

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It is all like that. I guess that also people who can't (don't know how or don't have proper equipment) or just won't (simply too lazy) create their own arts - they start to use those real pictures in their games. And by me, that's all ok. Every of those options have their audience or otherwise those games wouldn't exist on first place.
I also can understand that, let's say, asset repeating - maybe it's just simply : dev like that character or room, place and want it in his game no matter what, or some of the reasons you mentioned. And it's also ok. One who create game have all freedom to do whatever and however he wants. We as players can play or not to play, if dev is "user friendly" than we can advice and influence. If I like story and genres included I'll play even if I'll saw inside repeated created art or RL pics. Will not be completely happy and thrilled but surely won't skip game just because of that.
But at this point, for me, I'd rather to see new good game with RL pics than one with DAZ or Honeyselect(somehow, those characters are all same to me even more than DAZ) or some other models I saw in lot of other games.
It would be new and refreshing.(But I don't like those RLpic games who uses 10 different "models" to represent one in-game person. Hell, that's ridiculous.)
But again, that's just me :angel: