You’re probably familiar with the YouTube channel “DidYouKnowGaming” (DYKG). For those who don’t know, it’s a channel whose creators are interested in the behind-the-scenes aspects of video games, game development anecdotes, and recently they’ve specialized in stories about Nintendo. They even go so far as to contact former developers to gather information about cancelled projects.
Yesterday, we learned that Nintendo of America invoked its copyright to have one of DYKG’s videos removed, specifically a video about a Retro Studios game in the Zelda series that was canceled by Nintendo. It was revealed that the game would be a tactical role-playing game featuring multiple characters instead of Link. DYKG believes that Nintendo is engaging in censorship, that their work remains journalism, and that it is their duty to inform (especially since their YouTube channel still contains other similar videos, including the one about the Metroid game by Next Level Games that was canceled by Nintendo). I don’t entirely agree with this response, and I’ll explain why.
Creating a video game isn’t simple, and like any media at this level (professional media, I mean, for commercial purposes), it involves a multitude of creative processes, from the initial concept on paper to the first playable prototypes, all the way to finalization and marketing. This requires resources and expertise. We consumers only look at the final product, but everything created and produced during that time that hasn’t been made public remains the property of the developers and publisher, the rights holders, and can even be reused. As an independent creator, I don’t want a third party publicly sharing private contents such as artwork from my projects without my permission.
Generally, when we learn that a game was once in development before being cancelled, it’s because the information comes directly from those involved, the (former) developers. But it doesn’t happen just like that; there must be contracts or agreements made with the rights holders (or when these contracts expire and are renewed). These are called non-disclosure agreements (NDAs, the famous contract that prevents you from revealing information about what you’ve done before a certain period).
I understand the desire to share this kind of exclusive tidbit, but I don’t think it’s in the best interest of DYKG, a third party, to reveal this kind of internal company information, and by that I mean information that a video game company like Nintendo may or may not reuse, even if it’s 20, 30, or 50 years old. It’s nice to learn this, but if the rights holder says no, we need to be reasonable. This isn’t a personal feud between two parties where we need to understand the overall context rather than taking sides; it’s simply private information. Just because something was abandoned yesterday doesn’t mean it’s unusable, and Nintendo has repeatedly proven that an abandoned idea or even a commercial failure can be reused and improved upon to create something new. The Nintendo GameCube was already slated to have the Wii’s motion controls and the 3DS’s stereoscopic 3D (notably with Luigi’s Mansion as a tech demo).
You may not care, or it might even be another excuse to say that Nintendo is out of touch with its community, but make no mistake: DYKG is undeniably playing into their own hands here, and by trying to get people to react to this situation DYKG is contributing to people making “unflattering” comments on the right holder. Today is Nintendo, but tomorrow? It can be my projects and I don’t support that. Either these people are doing this out of naivety, without knowing the context—and that’s not a big deal, we’ve all been childish—or they’re doing it opportunistically, and it’s yet another example of the perversion of social media, the normalization of toxicity. That, too, is debatable, you know.
