Haven’t played the eroge, but the soundtrack is like an orgy in my ear. :o
It’s attracted some pretty good scores. I’m still pretty hesitant, though; mahou shoujo rarely works for me in eroge =P Good music is something I always appreciate in eroge- just one or two exceptional BGM tracks can greatly lift my opinion of an eroge.
I was very sceptical when I first heard about it, particularly because the writer had previously worked on ???, which contains some of the most blatant plagarism (artistic in this case - details here) the eroge world has seen outside of Floating Material. Suprisingly, Akatoki seems to have turned out well and iirc made the Top 10 of 2ch’s best eroge list for 2010, so it’s a possibility.
I was very sceptical when I first heard about it, particularly because the writer had previously worked on ???, which contains some of the most blatant plagarism (artistic in this case - details here) the eroge world has seen outside of Floating Material
which contains some of the most blatant plagarism (artistic in this case - details here) the eroge world has seen outside of Floating Material
Mind explaining the Floating Material plagarism?
Someone’s put together a very amusing video on Nico that covers everything, but in short they stole just about everything from other eroges, including copy/pasting logos, character profiles and tracing significant portions of CGs and tachie from well known eroges, tracing backgrounds (including some where the source material appears to be from an elementary school), and coming up with unbelievable excuses when people noticed. At least, that’s what I remember off the top of my head - I think there were a few other things too.
I don’t have time to go through all the vid since it’s so late, but I got through these.
- Character profiles containing stolen text
- Backgrounds based off of actual photos (Doesn’t every do this nowadays? I’ll give this one a slide)
- Revised character pages having the profile text wiped.
- Typos and errors?
That’s as far as I got.
Yeah; backgrounds that are based heavily on actual places are nothing new- in fact, they’re pretty much standard in eroge. Floating Material pretty much raised the bar on plagiarism, though, to the point where I’d say the majority of the game is copied in some way.
Ah, good point on the backgrounds. I guess ideally, all background artists would be good enough as to have no need to trace, but in practice, with background artists being far less important and well known than character designers, the best people are likely to move onto more important roles.
So I kept watching the vid when I woke up…
- Alleged CG copying
Some of the accused images aren’t even close to whatever images the vid maker claims they’re copies of.
- Hinako-sensei’s comments
Can’t read any of that, until the vid maker plugged in her name in Getchu and only got Floating material as a result, and then apparently dug up some traces that this person did of other peoples’ work.
And I can’t remember the rest…
A bit of help on that?
Seriously, my JP-fu sucks.
There’s some blatant “tracing” going on, as shown on these pages that Lancer-X linked to:
http://komopes.blog54.fc2.com/blog-entry-137.html
http://komopes.blog54.fc2.com/blog-entry-134.html
It’s basically what everyone has already pointed out. Artwork tracing, text copy-pasting, interviews and online posts from the developers that contradict (i.e. lying), etc. The “wordy stuff” on all those links, are posters discussing and justifying their prosecution for the case. Their argument is sound: it’s more than just a coincidence for all these overt similarities.
[b]There’s some blatant “tracing” going on, as shown on these pages that Lancer-X linked to:
http://komopes.blog54.fc2.com/blog-entry-137.html
http://komopes.blog54.fc2.com/blog-entry-134.html[/b]
Ah, those are probably the most obvious ones. Yes, I believe there was tracing and theft going on left and right for this game, but a few of the examples he cited, while somehow similar, weren’t exactly as identical as he had thought. I’ll try to get some caps later.
You’ve summarized the entire outline of http://komopes.blog54.fc2.com/blog-entry-145.html this post, but it’d be better if someone could actually translate the lies that were posted.
[spoiler=“HInako’s lies”]???Floating Material???
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It’s long and boring and I don’t want to, so one-line summary:
“It wasn’t my fault; it was the subcontractors! I had no idea!”
Subsequent posters found much mirth in this explanation.
Some of the CGs and tachie aren’t exact traces, but it’s likely that almost all the examples shown in the video were at least least partially traced, as the vast majority are from the same eroges that they acquired the character profiles and story from. Like Mare Mare Mare, where the artist traced multiple CGs from Leaf eroges, in Floating Material it happens too often and the examples are too close for it to be mere coincidence. Ordinarily, if you picked two random eroges that were from different companies and had different artists working on them, and compared the art, I think it’d be hard to find any CGs that resembled each other.
“It wasn’t my fault; it was the subcontractors! I had no idea!”
Facepalm
How does this even fly!?
Sometimes you can pick two random eroges that are from different companies and had different composers working on them and get a large portion of the background music tracks being practically identical though! coughRefrain BluecoughKusari-himecough
Not defending the guy (I don’t believe him myself), but it could be a possibility. Let’s take myself for example: I’m making a bgame of my own. Now I’m not much of an artist and I sure as hell can’t compose music, so I need to hire people who fill that void. I assume on good faith, none of these people are tracing or stealing their contributions. I play a lot of games, watch a lot of anime, and listen to all sorts of music - but it’s impossible for me to have seen or heard everything. So it’s entirely reasonable to think if one of the contracted people ripped off artwork/music, and it came from sources I’m ignorant or not too aware of, I would use that material with total ignorance. Then the game is released… and the collective awareness of thousands begin to notice something was stolen. All it takes is one person to find one item, then dozens more take a closer look… thus it begins.
I claim I’m innocent, but unless the artist/composer outright admits he stole without telling me, I’m not going to be believed… hell… even then, there would be some who doubt it.
Nonetheless, such people lose my respect… first rule of good leadership: It’s ALWAYS your fault. That’s what being a leader means. 
Which is why the excuse is a lot more reasonable for doujin soft than for commercial soft.
I cannot believe they would subcontract out the website design, the character profiles, the design of the logo, the opening movie, most of the CG etc. etc, have numerous, independent and blatant acts of plagiarism occur in the above and never notice a thing. I mean, really… then again, I couldn’t believe that Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing could ever have been made, let alone sold, so perhaps I’m just naive.
Sometimes you can pick two random eroges that are from different companies and had different composers working on them and get a large portion of the background music tracks being practically identical though! coughRefrain BluecoughKusari-himecough
Oh I remember something like this with two different eroge made years apart. In one hand there’s minori’s “Wind ~a breath of heart~”. In the other, there’s MOONSTONE’s “GIFT”. Now, rumor has it that a track from the latter game is nothing more than a track from the former (Dream), except done on a piano. Now for years, I have not been able to confirm that. While I have played Wind and have the OST, I do not have GIFT, its OST, nor has someone actually provided the track in question from said OST.