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Why Kotaku is wrong about Capcom's design competition

Why Kotaku is wrong about Capcom's design competition

Posted on 01 Jun 2020

It seems online magazine Kotaku is continuing to engage in rage-inducing hit-pieces in a desperate bid to get clicks. Their latest, a diatribe on why Capcom shouldn't run design competitions when they could pay professionals to do the job instead, is wrong on so many levels it's embarrassing. 

The central tenet of their argument is that Capcom's competition is exploiting the artistic community. The summary goes thus:

"Exploiting someone’s passion when you absolutely have the resources to compensate them for their labour is pretty questionable, and unfair to artists trying to make a living with their art."

This is ignorant to the point of offensive.

1. A ludicrous grasp of what a competition actually is

Esports photographer Robert Paul is quoted as saying: "Capcom could easily seek out artists in the community or make a call for portfolio submissions and commission them the same way they’d work with any third party. To me, that would be a true show of good will, and gives artists the same, if not better, exposure and opportunity."

That's not a competition then is it? It's also ludicrously nonsensical. So Capcom, a company that already has in-house artists, is going to individually fund every artist they approach to do "on-spec" work? How does that make sense?

How is a "true show of good will" to exclude thousands of budding artists and plain ol' fans from having their entries considered? Does it occur that Capcom might not pick the best technical drawing, but rather the most fun or inventive idea, no matter how badly drawn? Probably not, because Ian Walker's sources for comment are a photographer and an artist he commissioned once. These are not credible "sources" and quoting them in an article like this is actually damaging them as much as Walker - the editor should really have stepped in at this point.

2. Why would a "professional" artist enter a competition open to the general public anyway?

Every comment in Kotaku's article assumes that Capcom is expecting professional graphic artists to submit their work for free. No graphic artist I know, comic, graphics or otherwise, would spend the time on it. There's ample evidence on this very website that I interact with professional artists on a regular basis, not one of them would have time for a competition entry - they're too busy with paid work. On top of this, I doubt any of them would think it remotely fair that they would compete with non-professionals even if they had time to do so. Not very sporting is it? I might as well have a wrestling match with The Undertaker.

Street Fighter V Costume Competition

3. All entries, by nature of the contest, will feature copyrighted characters

Another issue the author has is that Capcom will own the copyright on entries. So clearly he has no idea about copyright law either. Allow me.

The competition calls for entrants to imagine a costume for an existing character. That character is owned by Capcom. Copyright, by design, is not automatic, and even if granted, it must be seen to be enforced. Failure to do so can lose your copyright status and open up your IP to exploitation by anyone. I work extensively with British brands in foreign markets, trust me I've fought these battles on behalf of my clients.

"In the end, the developer will basically be sitting on a vault of crowdsourced costume ideas that it can pull from any time it wants, without having paid anyone."

Yes, and in doing so be seen as correctly protecting it's own IP when it has offered out it's copyrighted characters for the public to use in an art competition, which it must do to protect it's assets. That Ian Walker doesn't understand this shows a huge lack of qualification to write the article in the first place.

As an aside, this is a practice employed outside of art too. For example, anyone entering The Apprentice must sign away anything they come up with on the show for a penny. So if they take the toy challenge and create the next Ninja Turtles, they'll only ever make a penny out of it. You understand this going in and only make the effort if you accept that limitation.

4. Entry is not mandatory

The rules for the competition are clearly written. Capcom is offering the opportunity to take part in a worldwide brand for fun. I know Kotaku doesn't seem to understand what "fun" entails these days, but not everything is a patriarchal construct devised by the alt-right to fleece the noble and impoverished artistic community. My 4 year old niece could create a design and submit it and it would be every bit as valid as an entry by Babs Tarr or Matt Moylan.

To Conclude

I don't like having to write counter-pieces to idiots looking for cheap clicks (I'd never sleep if I did) but Ian Walker's hit-piece is so fundamentally objectionable on almost every level that I felt compelled to spend 15 minutes over a coffee literally spelling out the bloody obvious.

It's a competition. For fun. It is not an underhanded plot to entice professional artists to send in their work for free. That Kotaku would publish this rubbish says far more about them than it does about Capcom, their legal obligations, or reality. For a corporate publication, that's inexcusable.

Images used in this article are Copyright Capcom

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