#luke stephens

Y’all hear that Sony closed Bluepoint?  The company that did the PHENOMENAL remake of Demon Souls, as well as Shadow of the Colossus.  Both games were phenomenal.  This company staked their claim on being able to take old games and bring them into a new generation spectacularly.  And yesterday we learned that Sony pulled the plug on them.  No assistance.  No “thanks for your service.”  Some bland…

Okay, that is great. Genuinely, I'm happy that you recognised it early. But that is so, so hard to do nowadays. There's genuinely so much plagiarism out there, and it's incredibly exhausting to try and spot it.

Not just because a lot of plagiarists hide it with a lot of effort. But because there is so much stuff out there, it's impossible to be able to recognise it all. That's what makes it so easy to get away with it for so long - there's a decent chance it just gets lost in the noise, and nobody ever hits both your content and your plagiarised sources close enough together to notice.

How do I know this? Because I used to enjoy two channels run by the same person - one about media (primarily gaming, mostly sci-fi and horror), and the second channel was a "tales" channel, dedicated to recounting true stories, or urban legends. Think the Franklin expedition, the Bloop, or Dyatlov pass.

Well, I say "recounting", but during the video about the Donner Party I realised that I was listening word for word to the Wikipedia article about the incident. I'm not kidding, I pulled up the article and just. Read along. For the entire rest of the video.

Turns out almost all of the videos on that second channel are like this. No, there is never a single source cited (which I didn't realise because I was watching on the PS4 and didn't see the description), and a cursory glance at the comments showed nobody ever mentioning this. I know I only noticed because I'd looked up the Donner Party earlier that week (which is why I was watching the video), and recognised some of the specific phrasing. Until that point, the video had been presented as if the Youtuber was reading from his own notes, sort of like a half-freeform presentation based off of bullet points. Which it very clearly wasn't, now that I went and checked half a dozen of his videos and found the exact same thing happening in every single one. A few minutes of intro written (hopefully) by the Youtuber himself, and then just a reading of the Wikipedia article with no attribution whatsoever.

So now I can't enjoy either channel anymore, because I have to assume the main channel is also 100% just someone else's words read out loud without the original creators' permission. And even if it isn't? The whole thing is soured for me now regardless.

My point is that a lot of systems today are set up to enable this kind of behaviour, from the absolute deluge of "content" to the easy to replicate tricks like flipping footage and applying filters to trick people into not recognising it as stolen. And then the piece moves on too quickly for the average viewer to stop and wonder why something might feel familiar.

Defense of The Order 1886 | Creator Highlight | Luke Stephens

Luke Stephens Video Essayist, Luke Stephens, just released a video defending the critically panned The Order 1886, developed by Ready At Dawn. He highlights the unique, artistic decisions made to help the game reach peak, visual fidelity, while bucking the harmful, monetization schemes that were becoming the norm for the games industry. The video also exposes the political motivations that…

Sad to hear the other day that Shady Grove Marketplace will be closing it's doors for good. Sequestration and cutbacks in government spending really hurt the small shop; they lost their lunch crowd which put a big dent in their revenue.

The cozy cornershop stocked up with local produce, sandwiches, and other goods you wouldn't normally find in the chain supermarkets. In addition to the inventory, Luke and Emily are good people; I hope their next project is as well received as the market was.

Check out some photos from their anniversary event a couple years ago.

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