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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

Conflicted about this. Why is it that people with such great talent continue to throw huge amounts of time and effort at messing with other people's IP?

It's one thing to do a bit of fan-art, but on so many occasions, tons of effort go into fan projects only to to be killed off by the inevitable cease+desist letter.

As an art project, this one's very cool. But if there's a real desire to turn the fantasy console into real hardware+software, then plastering 'Nintendo' all over it probably wasn't the best idea?

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Why is it we live in a world where someone creating something they release for free, for fun, for other people to freely enjoy, based on a character or idea that some corporation owns is against the law?

A large fan project existing is arguably a net positive for everyone. It's not like these projects take sales from the company, in some cases like the am2r guy or the sega fan game people, it leads legitimate careers in the game industry, it's free exposure that keeps people interested in a brand or characters.

I've seen a lot of big ip based fan projects come and go over the years, i've yet to see one that would have seriously damaged the owner's business or ip in any significant way.

To be honest though, i've personally refused to purchase things specifically because of dick move ip enforcements. I refuse to ever play metroid returns because of what nintendo did to the am2r guy and that is a game I would have bought. I would have bought a ds just to buy that game, was planning on it.

Strongly agree with you regarding IP. Especially when we live in a world where many of the biggest corporate IPs are shared fiction myths that incorporate public domain material, or where a lot of new IP is inspired by existing IP to the point where it could be part of that property.

The author does acknowledge this problem, though way down towards the end of a long article:

> IP: Another problem is that I'm using a lot of IP that's not mine as basis for the mockups. Because this is designed as a Nintendo console, at the same time being a nice product for people who would definitely want it, at least marketing would take care of itself.

There’s no intention to create anything here, it’s all just daydreaming.

Familiarization with brands is strong for global audiences, and can also be used for quick recognition for fantasy projects. Imagine if it was "Samsung" branding, then how much more effort would it take to associate this brand with heart-warming video games?

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