[DoctorEldritch]

Hello Legion Gamers!

Epic Games Store continues to offer games for free every week, and the free games this week is...

Fallout: New Vegas - Ultimate Edition

Feel the Heat in New Vegas! Not even nuclear fallout could slow the hustle of Sin City. Explore the vast expanses of the desert wastelands and see the Great Southwest as could only be imagined in Fallout.

Well, this is the game that likely needs no introduction. A very good game and, one could argue, the best of the "New Fallouts" by Obsidian (guys behind KoTOR, Tyranny, or the more recent Outer Worlds and Pentiment). All I can say is, if you like RPGs but have not played this game yet, or want to return to the Mojave Wasteland, grab this chance! And, as a bonus, the Ultimate edition has all 4 content DLCs included too, so you'll get to experience all the game has to offer! Not to mention the in-game radio with some nice music!

I could go on about it for a while, but I think it would be enough to say that the game was so good it inspired Gavin Dunne from the Miracle Of Sound to write a prog-rock song about it:

Try this rock for size, @DracoTarot, @GoLLuM13, and @galadrielmt! If people writing a song about a game is not proof of quality, I don't know what is.

So who's up for a little Vegas (s)trip?

[DracoTarot]

@DoctorEldritch Faalout will and always be a fantastic game. I would like to see more musicians involved in games.

It would also help boost game sales in the long run.

[DoctorEldritch]

@DracoTarot It may be a bit hard to do on an official level where musicians and Fallout are concerned, after all, in the game universe lore, Fallout can only really use songs from a specific time period in history, "before the bombs fell", so it is limited in how much they can use and copyright and all that.

That being said, this is well compensated by mod makers who make mods of new radio stations with the music they like to put into the game, regardless of copyright, it seems. And with games like Fallout New Vegas with built-in Radio functionality, there is a lot you can put in organically.

[DracoTarot]

@DoctorEldritch Copyrights will always be a problem. I also think game studios may have an issue with paying royalties. There are bands out there who would ask ridiculous amounts of money for their songs to be featured.

I still feel some game developers must have a look at new and upcoming artists who are struggling in the industry. There won't be much red tape especially if the artist is not signed to a label. Copyrights do not apply if a specific band has no physical album releases.


Modders on the other hand don't worry about copyrights at all especially if the game is on the market for a while. It seems a bit unfair when an artist doesn't receive any remuneration for being featured in a game. Some mods do contain mp3 and mp4 files in the mod folder and anyone can copy the files to another folder and make their own playlists without purchasing the artist's music.

It's all great for the end user but not for the artist.

[DoctorEldritch]

@DracoTarot I agree. And it is sad that most inspiring examples of studio/artist collaboration seem to happen n a more holistic basis. Like Jack Black singing for Double Fine Studio because he and Tim Schafer are good friends. It is rare for bigger studios to have a collaboration of this level. Though to be honest, it is hard for me to come up with other big examples, so I may need to look into it.

But there are small-scale examples, so small, perhaps, it is hard to notice. Back in 2013, a developer named "amoser" put up a small one-person-made platformer game on Newgrounds called "King's Ascent". It was a simple scroll-up platformer. But interestingly, he is either friends or contracted a "Debs and Errol" singing duo from Toronto to record a credits song for him, which they did, and called it "Life On A Throne". This is a good example, but so small in scale, both game only released Newgrounds and the singing duo being so small, it is hardly noticeable.

About modders not worrying about copyrights, that is true, and a bit of a grey area situation, but that also can be on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Fallout, some modders only added more songs from that era, and as they are from the 1940s-1960s, most of them are in the public domain. And then there are podcasters who put their content (podcast stories, not songs) into the game for exposure, too. In cases like this, they get free publicity but do not pay the game studio for using the game as a promotion venue. So maybe it can work both ways, too...

[DracoTarot]

@DoctorEldritch I found an interesting article about our discussion.

The author wrote:

GAME MUSIC’S ROYALTIES MESS

Royalty shares are a heated debate in the wider music industry, so much so that Sir Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and 154 other artists have just signed a letter to the prime minister calling for a change in the way payments are made by streaming companies.
Music rights are complicated enough, especially as music copyright laws are managed differently across the world, but a lack of understanding of the business of music from game publishers and studios means many composers aren’t being fairly compensated for their work.

The main issue here is buyouts. A buyout is an agreement where the party commissioning the work, in this case, the video game company retains all of the rights to the music created for the game. And in the case of video games, this would mean the composer usually can’t earn any additional revenue from the music they’ve composed (unless their contract states otherwise).

“There are so many [game] companies that just don’t do it [properly] because they don’t know how to do it. They’re not in the habit of getting proper cue sheets from composers. This happens in TV, radio and film, but not in games.”



Buyouts have become another major talking point in the music industry that’s led to The Ivors and Musicians’ Union launching Composers Against Buyouts, a campaign aiming to change the way composers are commissioned.

The same anonymous composer we spoke to claimed that even if composers do agree to a buyout, no company can legally stop them from earning royalty payments through their writer’s share – if their work is registered with a PRO.

“What these buyouts do is stop the composers from earning royalties, and most of the game companies are stupid because they think they have to pay the royalties, but they don’t. It’s the collection societies (PROs) that pay the artists, and if [platform holders] published their music properly, they’d earn their publishing share and the writers would earn their writer’s share. It’s a win-win situation.”



That means video game companies can actually make money if they’re willing to pay a license fee and register with the relevant PRO in their territory so they can collect royalty shares.

Amazingly, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is the only games company to do this. The PlayStation firm entered into a licensing agreement with PRS for Music in 2014, which means both the company and its composers earn royalties on video games downloaded via the PlayStation Store in Europe, paid to them by PRS for Music.

This decision is pretty praise-worthy considering it’s the only such licensing deal of its kind to exist in the video game industry. At the time, PRS announced its licensing team was “currently in negotiation with other games industry leaders” to “work towards similar deals”. We’re yet to see the likes of Nintendo or Microsoft work towards these similar deals, but they probably should, in Europe, at least.
“Platform holders are effectively broadcasters and need a PRO license,” our source told us. “If you’re a software-only publisher, you don’t need one, it’s only when hardware comes into play and there’s still a lot of confusion around this. Under EU law, a platform holder is seen as a broadcaster, because European law denotes the download or sale of a game as a broadcast, which composers can get royalties for.

“What’s happening at the moment is you’ve got companies like Microsoft saying they don’t need a license because they’re doing buy-out agreements which mean their music is owned and pre-cleared. There’s no way that’s possibly true because let’s say they get an EA title with a bunch of licensed tracks in it: Microsoft doesn’t own Billie Jean or any other music that features in those games. They simply don’t wanna pay the license fee, just like Twitch.”

“I just don’t think some companies take game soundtracks very seriously, and it’s a bit of a pain in the backside because it’s like, you’ve done the work, the least you can do is credit me”

You can read the rest of the article @

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/...sic-seriously/

[DoctorEldritch]

@DracoTarot That was an interesting read, and kudos to SONY. Though it makes me wonder, the article is from a composer source, so it does look biased a bit. That is to say, of course, there is an ongoing problem with royalties and how the game industry works, and not only where the music is concerned. Recently @Saka shared news about a mass exodus from Blizzard, and general game dev working conditions have been the subject of complaint for a while. The industry really needs better regulations all around. And this is not even mentioning how badly the recent big releases were optimized.

But what I am getting at, the article suggests that the solution is easy and mutually beneficial, the route SONY, EA, and Activision use. That may be true, but it does make me wonder, if the solution seems to be as easy as that, and Nintendo and Microsoft are not using it, then is the reason purely financial and legal (which I can see), or maybe there are more complex factors involved that we're not aware of.

Any change is difficult, especially in an industry as dynamic as gaming. And other issues, like YT videos, that article talks about, need to be addressed as well...

But, at least, as far as Fallout is concerned and as far as mods go, we gamers have a choice in what mod to support and use, so we can at least make some changes we want to see on a personal level.

[DracoTarot]

@DoctorEldritch I just think all companies must try their best to get rid of all the rolls and rolls of red tape. Not game companies but any company overall. There are too many rules and regulations that seem biased.

True, the choice to use a mod or not lies with the gamer.

[DoctorEldritch]

@DracoTarot This reminds me of the EU description in Tropico 6. They pun that the EU is all about bureaucracy, so faction description has something like this "...some people like cutting corners. But if you cut one corner, all you get is two corners. Fixing cut corners is what red tape is for, el Presidente".

And it also reminded me of Ron Swanson's comment about how complicated business should be, 2:34-2:42 here:

[DracoTarot]

@DoctorEldritch I remember this vid. You've shared it in a previous thread. Funny indeed!!!
😊