Game Music Videos

[Thrythlind]

What is the stance on matching music to gameplay videos?

Edited May 25, 2021 by Thrythlind

[GM Impervium]

So, this is a good question, and it's one that we need to have an internal discussion about. That said, take this post with a grain of salt, and err on the side of caution. But for now...
 

It depends on the song, and how you want to use it. I'm going to say, for now, try to avoid using any music already popularly associated with existing characters. This is because the temptation would be too great to feature those characters (or something close), and you'd probably end up breaking our CoC, and we'd have to bring down the banhammer. Here's a few examples:

Any theme from any Superhero movie or TV show. If you want to use the Avengers theme (movies) or Justice League tv theme, that's okaaayyy, UNLESS you plan on showcasing characters that look like the Avengers or Justice League (respectively or not, doesn't really matter!) This goes double for theme songs with lyrics, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, etc. Anything with lyrics that mentions/is about the principle characters is going to be very hard to divorce from the source material. There's actually a very nicely done video from the Live days that uses the Power Rangers theme, and has guys that look a LOT like the Power Rangers fighting Putty-looking dudes (the disposable minions from that show, for those who don't know) made in AE. It's great! But we cannot allow such a video to be made here, and we'd have to ban your account.

Existing songs that were used as the opening theme of a TV show, like "Save Me" from Smallville or "Carry on My Wayward Son" from Supernatural. These songs are not about those characters, but the songs are tied to them because of how they were used. You can use songs like these, but don't have characters that look like the ones from those shows.

Songs that mention existing characters. "Kryptonite" from Three Doors down (mentions Superman, duh), "99 Red Balloons" by Nena (mentions Captain Kirk), "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies (mentions Sailor Moon) should be fine, UNLESS you plan on splicing in a character who looks like the mentioned character in at that point. Then that's a NO.

 

Some songs are tied to specific scenes or character moments. "Holding out for a Hero" was used in Shrek 2, but would still be fine to use, so long as you're not making characters that look like they're from Shrek (Shrek himself either in regular or human form, giant Gingerbread man, Puss in Boots, etc). There's actually a really good old-school CoH video that uses this song, BUT, it has some copyrighted characters in it (Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, pretty sure there's a Wolverine in there, too. Amusingly enough, it avoids showing any "Hercules" or "Superman" like characters when the song literally mentions them, so it gets a bonus point there), so we wouldn't allow it as-is. "All Star" by Smashmouth was used for the Mystery Men movie (and also Shrek), so avoid making characters who look like THOSE characters with these songs.

TL;DR: While you may use whatever songs you'd like, avoid any that are linked in any way to any existing characters, especially if your brilliant idea for those songs is to have those characters (or something close) in your video. We will take action against any account blatantly displaying their copyright-infringing (or other CoC rule-breaking) characters in such videos.

Edited May 25, 2021 by GM Impervium
typos

[WanderingAries]

And remember that you have to watch where you're uploading to to store the vid because you might get a smack for the song alone.

[Hyperstrike]

One note: Most of the zone music in the game is ALREADY available on various copies of the Wiki.