Maybe this just hasnt happened yet, but I'm waiting for some pushback against Nintendo and Disney for brainwashing/indoctrinating children with corporate mascots masquerading as classic characters.
It seemed harmless, but now that I see 30 year olds that have an obsession/mental illness with these company's IP/corporate mascots that I think there might be something wrong with marketing to children. Even the ones aware they are being dragged on nostalgia trips have no defense. (Me included, I haven't found a Zelda game since TP above a 7/10, yet I feel compelled to play every single one. This is even more apparent with BOTW/TotK where despite these being different from Zelda, an open world with zelda skinned on it, I still need to play it.)
EDIT: Yes I agree about religion, sports, potentially colleges, and that adults can be brainwashed too.
The Flappy Bird programmer got harassed by people complaining he was a vile predator because a relative of theirs got addicted to it. People need to take some responsibility for their lives, and those of their own children.
Yes there can be predatory practices, but that's what laws are for. Bad behaviour should be curtailed, and I'm sure there are cases where Disney may have crossed the line, but simply becoming or being popular isn't a crime, or certainly shouldn't be.
As a person who has taken marketing classes, yes, I make sure my toddlers have close to 0 Disney and Nintendo exposure.
How about the uneducated people? Or those still brainwashed? Those children are sacrificed to Nintendo and Disney?
Lets not pretend we all have perfectly free will and that humans aren't animals.
EDIT: Flappy bird isnt a great example, because it wasnt marketed to children. Nintendo and Disney go to great lengths to find ways to insert them into children's lives at the youngest possible ages.
>How about the uneducated people? Or those still brainwashed? Those children are sacrificed to Nintendo and Disney?
Who are you to decide who is "brainwashed" and who is merely enjoying something? Who are you to feel entitled to "protect" other adults against themselves?
I'm specifically talking about children, before they are at the age to comprehend marketing.
The prime example is a toddler.
I can't think of any exceptions, but any sort of marketing to children seems to be brainwashing. They don't have the ability to resist bright colors, music, and in-group bias.
I've done this on my own kids to teach them phonics and numbers. Lucky that there isnt any corporation with the exclusive ability to sell the number 7 or the letter F. At age 2, they all know the phonics.
> Lucky that there isnt any corporation with the exclusive ability to sell the number 7 or the letter F.
I'm pretty sure there are. Those letters and numbers were sponsoring shows, and they had to get the money for that somewhere, presumably their corporate overlords.
This practice is particularly horrendous in the food industry(fast food, cereals, etc...). Kids are the prime target for companies that have no morals, because if you can get the kid to nag their parents, its a great strategy. Companies are also banking that those same kids grow up to be lifelong consumers, and then pass that loyalty down to their own children.
Nobody here us saying that actual predatory practices are ok. I’m certainly not advocating for law of the jungle. But within reasonable legal and regulatory limits I don’t see how crating cute character and fun entertainment is a harm.
I’m up for effective fair and reasonable regulation, but banning all marketing to children is bonkers. No children’s books, cartoons, TV shows or movies at all? How do you even define marketing to children objectively? It’s absurd.
Unfortunately it is a fact there are people that find it hard to function in a sophisticated technological society. McNamara’s Morons, while an unfortunate term, is a real issue. That’s why I’m in favour of decently funded effective social services. If people genuinely need help they should be able to get it.
I’m basically a capitalist, because I think capitalism embodies essential individual economic freedoms. But all economic systems have failure modes, and I think it’s in everyone’s interests to live in a supportive egalitarian society.
I've seen hipsters prattle on about how much they looooove certain toys from hipster toy companies that are always bragging about saving the earth. Are they brainwashed? Well, the company says that not using plastics is ecofriendly. Don't pay attention to how many trees they cut down to make their neo-retro wooden toys. I think there's quite a bit of brainwashing going on all over the place. Humans are tribal and love their tribal signifiers.
Uneducated people are not idiots. Coming from peasant family, this infuriates me. My peasant grandma never read anything except Bible but was among the wisest and most respected people in her village. Us, her grandkids, are now working high-knowledge jobs in top companies in the world.
I've seen plenty of people from a low education background, and I also come partly from a family of peasants 2 generations ago. Education gives some ability for critical thinking. Absence of education leaves people extremely manipulable. People with education can't understand how very, very simplistic people can be when they don't have it, until they get dropped right into the middle of it and see it first hand. This is not a criticism of them, it's an endorsement of the value of education.
>As a person who has taken marketing classes, yes, I make sure my toddlers have close to 0 Disney and Nintendo exposure.
Good for you. I didn't take that level of a position, we had a Wii in the house and watched some Disney movies. We've never been a big TV watching family though, we'd only watch stuff we chose to watch, like specific TV shows and movies but never just had the TV on. Of course I ensured my girls were educated in the classics. Sailor Moon, Buffy, Xena, MLP:FIM and such.
At least, unlike religion or football teams, I’m yet to learn about people killing each other over Mario being better than Sonic (are those made by different companies? I don’t know … just replace with another character if they are not).
I say let people obsess over whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt other people, because you know what I find way scarier than a 30yo obsessed with Princess Peach? A government that gets to decide when I’m obsessed with something to the point that I need to be cured or re-educated.
People have many reasons for liking what they do. Just because marketing exists does not mean you can judge someone as being somehow brainwashed.
Some of it can just be nostalgia, and some people might be well aware of that and not, you know, have a "mental illness" because something from their youth evokes nice feeling in them as an adult.
There are plenty of Zelda fans who never played the original or any 2D ones at all, and just love BotW and TotK, even people who are older. BotW was my favorite Zelda since the original, partially since it shared its exploratory spirit much more than any other game in the series (TotK is unfortunately much too similar to BotW, not different enough to present a new experience).
Before that happens, I would expect some pushback against religions brainwashing/indoctrinating children into believing fairytale characters and scenarios are actually true and actively present in the world.
Some religions take 10% of your adult income. Buying a Zelda game or Marvel movie ticket is peanuts in comparison.
I don’t know if it’s so novel; when I see millennials wearing the trappings of their youth, I think of how my parents generation watches their old college’s football games, have the college’s mascot on their desks and on their clothes, and occasionally break out into the school’s fight song when among friends.
You know, there are tons of people out there who loved Zelda as a kid who have no idea what BOTW/TOKT is. This sounds like you being caught in modern marketing/hype cycles, not brainwashing.
No, but don’t act like you have to keep playing. Star Wars has been marketed to me my whole life, and I ate it up for a long time, but I’ve stopped paying attention to the new stuff because I just don’t think it’s good anymore.
In fairness, "above average" doesn't say much... and beyond that the average game review is not too far from 7/10 because of longstanding distortions.
But a whole lot of Nintendo's first party games, including BoTW/ToTK-- deserve far better than 7/10 (metacritic 97 / 96, "universal acclaim"). Even if they are not too much like the first things I loved in the Zelda franchise.
> This is even more apparent with BOTW/TotK where despite these being different from Zelda, an open world with zelda skinned on it, I still need to play it.
A more charitable read of the situation is that you've grown attached to the lore, characters and aesthetics (both visual and musical cues/themes) such that you're looking forward to the next installment of this work of fiction.
That's just Nintendo being good stewards of a franchise. There's millions of alternate pathways Nintendo could start making gobs of money (look at what The Pokemon Company turned that franchise into these days, yeesh!) But by taking their time it signals to me they really do think hard and long about every aspect of the design (naturally, nobody and no game dev team is perfect though).
> Zelda, an open world with zelda skinned on it
That's being deliberately reductive. And whatever the point, according to the creators BotW/TotK is the future direction of the franchise (similar to Link to the Past setting up OoT, WW, TP and SS). I'm not a fan of this "not MY Zelda!" attitude. Zelda II was shit on but it had a lot of cool ideas, and now thanks to the Zelda Cycle it's back on people's radar. Same for Major's Mask and Wind Waker to an extent.
BotW is a triumph and it'd be hard to convince me otherwise. (I did lose interest in TotK after leaving the starting area, but I blame that on the reuse of Hyrule. I don't want to hunt hundreds of Koroks again, I already did that!)
I didn't get the Link's Awakening remake because I'm extremely sensitive to frame stutter and Nintendo never fixed it, but it's an easy recommendation for 99% of Zelda fans who don't like the new direction. I'm hoping they tackle the Oracle games next and include the cut content from the cancelled third game.
To be honest, in today's world of mobile Skinner boxes and predatory microtransactions, I see liking Nintendo IP as one of the best things that could happen to my kid.
They have a rather honest business model: they sell you a console, fun games (IMO most Zelda and Mario games are actually very good) and that's it. There are some microtransaction games as well (the mobile Mario Kart, which they actually seem to have made that way only reluctantly because hordes of uses complained that the mobile Mario platformer had a one-time fee for the whole game) but they're not the worst offenders in this respect and they're far from being a core part of the franchises, at least for now. (*)
I have myself been a fan of Marios and Zeldas since I was a kid and I don't see them as having had a negative influence on my life. Which cannot be said about much of the microtransaction-ridden spreadsheets that pass as games these days, especially on mobile. Or even more legitimate games like MMORPGS (WoW, etc.) which have more reasonable business models but still seem to be designed to cause insane levels of addiction.
(*) I cannot say the same of Disney. At least a few years ago, the only Star Wars game available on mobile was an insanely predatory gacha that extracted literally thousands of dollars from people to buy a single character that would be obsolete in a few months. I spent a few years addicted to it (not buying anything, but still wasting precious time in a repetitive and unfun grindfest), as at that point I didn't know how that kind of designer drug worked, I just downloaded it because it was Star Wars and got sucked in. It's been my first and last game of that genre, and I do hope that my kid keeps well away from those.
Do you think something changed either in the marketing or society that caused this?
Because Mickey Mouse has been around for nearly a century. Multiple generations of kids grew up with it, but the obsession millennials have with this stuff is nearing, what you called, “mental illness” tier.
I’m not sure Nintendo or Disney are doing anything particularly special. People land on the “fanboy / brand loyalty” spectrum about all kinds of products.
Of course it’s a trademark. I don’t think this is contested by anyone. Being able to reproduce the “Steamboat Willie” animated short doesn’t mean you can use Disney’s trademarks in new contexts.
If a book published by Penguin enters the public domain, it doesn’t mean you can start using the Penguin logo on any book you want to publish.
> [John Oliver] also pointed out that Disney has some registered trademarks that include the original Steamboat Willie Mickey, speculating that as the reason they included that version in the Walt Disney Animation Studios opening logo.
The segment is worth a watch. They’ve used the character a couple of times already and probably would’ve done it more if not for the hiatus caused by the writer’s strike.
Disney has prepared for this day. They aren’t fighting to extend copyright instead they’ve wrapped mickey with so many trademarks that their iconic brand will be protected.
Besides, it’s only ‘steamboat Willy’ that enters the public domain which has little relevance to today’s Mickey Mouse.
the speculation (in the very short article) is that Mickey without gloves is in the public domain in 2024, Mickey with gloves is 2025, and Mickey in color is 2035 due to how the character progressed 100 years ago
Is copyright based on the character or on a particular representation of the character? The latter seems utterly stupid to me, but wouldn't be a surprise given the stupidity of copyright law in general. I'd be curious if there is any precedent on this question.
IANAL, but as I understand it, copyright covers things that are 'fixed in a tangible medium', which means the representation of the character, not the idea of the character.
However, if you base your character on the ideas formed when you observed the representation of the other character, that's a derivative work.
For someone like Mickey who has been in many works, if one of the works is out of copyright and you base a new work on that, that's fine (if we ignore trademark concerns). But if your derivative work happens to look a lot like an existing derivative work still under copyright, that's likely going to be seen as infringing the work under copyright. Independent creation is a valid defense for copyright infringemen, but isn't very credible in this case.
Trademark has totally different issues. Which will be an issue for selling and advertising derivatives of works Disney uses as trademarks.
There is a ton of precedent on the issue of how much expression and creativity is required to assert copyright. One of the key questions is whether it is plausible that someone just accidentally duplicated the same thing, or if it is the result of actual copying.
Given how iconic Mickey Mouse is, I would be shocked if white gloves and the exact color scheme weren't copyrightable.
There has only been one copyright extension that affected Mickey Mouse that Disney might have had a role in. That was the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act
There was one other copyright extension that affected Mickey Mouse but that one, as far as I've been able to tell, Disney played no significant role in. That was the Copyright Act of 1976. I have little doubt that Disney was in favor of the 1976 Act, but so was almost everybody else.
That's because the 1976 Act was a major rewrite of US copyright law to take into account the massive technological changes that had happened since the 1909 Act, and to make US copyright law more compatible with the Berne Convention so that the US could join (which happened later with the the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988).
I honestly don't think Disney is going to bother this time. The return on investment for bribing, err I mean lobbying members of Congress for this isn't really there. With their acquisitions of Star Wars and Marvel, they have far more valuable IP to milk.
Be afraid of Disney, the fear keeps you in-check. Show that you are all-powerful and can change laws on a whim, even when they don't need to. Make everyone know you are the only source of classic characters. (Maybe Nintendo too, who also indoctrinates children with their corporate IP.)
That was the past. Recently Disney decided to openly campaign against one of two major parties in the US, effectively choosing to align themselves against 50% of the country. While this has endeared them to one of the parties, it was an open declaration of war against the other making it much harder to gather the bipartisan support they need to change copyright.
This is also starting to cut into film revenues. While park attendance remains high, it's been some time since they had much success at the box office. They're laying off large blocks of people. They just aren't as all powerful anymore.
Refusing to let Gov. DeSantis use them as a punching bag constitutes "openly campaigning against [the GOP]" now? DeSantis represents "50% of the country"?
Disney reacted to a single law in a single state, not "campaign against a major party in the US". DeSantis represents, at best, Florida Republicans, not all Republicans in the US.
> Recently Disney decided to openly campaign against one of two major parties in the US, effectively choosing to align themselves against 50% of the country.
I think Disney can still sue for making something that closely resembles Mickey Mouse no? As in products that make it hard to differentiate between an official Disney product and a copy. As the article states, the trademark is still there.
Not necessarily. The onus would be upon Disney to prove that the new work is in violation. “Everybody knows Mickey Mouse is Disney” is not a legal argument as that’d supersede the entire concept of copyright.
Once the copyright expires, the original steamboat Mickey character and likeness can be used it all kinds of things. Violent video games, horror movies, a like of Mickey Mouse furry costumes, … you name it.
As long as you stick to the original design (sorry, no white gloves!) and do not in any way label your product as “Disney”, it wouldn’t be in violation.
It seemed harmless, but now that I see 30 year olds that have an obsession/mental illness with these company's IP/corporate mascots that I think there might be something wrong with marketing to children. Even the ones aware they are being dragged on nostalgia trips have no defense. (Me included, I haven't found a Zelda game since TP above a 7/10, yet I feel compelled to play every single one. This is even more apparent with BOTW/TotK where despite these being different from Zelda, an open world with zelda skinned on it, I still need to play it.)
EDIT: Yes I agree about religion, sports, potentially colleges, and that adults can be brainwashed too.