Activision being sued again over represenations of musicians in game

Seriously? I mean, it might not be bothering you, but you really don’t understand why others might find it weird how deceased artists are being used to sell a product?

Maybe they should just do what Singstar does and put the music video in the background. This shit just gets out of control.

Nobody seems to have a problem with Beatles Rock Band or a myriad of other games, commercials, TV shows and movies that have dead celebrities in them. Why is Cobain such an exception to something that’s been going on for decades?

Nobody seems to have a problem with Beatles Rock Band or a myriad of other games, commercials, TV shows and movies that have dead celebrities in them.

Personally, I always found commercials with dead celebrities shilling some product weird. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

Beatles Rock Band

Both, McCartney and Starr were somehow involved in the process as were other members of the families, if I’m not totally mistaken. The Beatles RB is a tribute to the band and the songs they’ve created.

If they had Harrison and Lennon fooling around, posing and singing Ice Ice Baby or whatever, ya know, that would be something different. Sure, we don’t know whether they’d be thrilled to be in a videogame to begin with. But they might not have appreciated being used as a playback puppet. Cobain probably would habe objected that according to his fellow band members, who don’t seem to mind ATVI using him to sing Nirvana songs.

Nobody seems to have a problem with Beatles Rock Band or a myriad of other games, commercials, TV shows and movies that have dead celebrities in them. Why is Cobain such an exception to something that’s been going on for decades?

No, no … I have no problem with Cobain in the game performing Nirvana songs. That’s awesome and totally cool and exactly what Nirvana fans would want. It’s when they have him singing everything else where it starts to get dumb and, IMO, a little disrespectful.

It’s even more disrespectful when Grohl and others come forward and ask them to change it and they don’t. That’s spitting in the face of the artists who you are relying on for your game content.

I don’t think hardcore fans would be behind the Beatles performing No Doubt or Metallica songs.

So the objection isn’t that they’re represented, it’s that they could be singing some other person’s/band’s song? Really, that’s the horrible objection here, a game based on virtual performances could have a dead artist’s avatar sing a song that they didn’t perform in real life? I’m still not understanding why this is an issue.

Actually it’s not just the dead artists, you may not have known this but the members of No Doubt are still alive and are pretty unhappy about it.

Then the hardcore fans don’t have to do that. If they feel it’s somehow disrespectful to have one band perform another band’s songs (which should be the case the whether they’re dead or alive) then they can easily avoid doing that. I’m not sure why the onus should be on the developer to deny what some players might not want to do.

Sure, but they signed the contract. They should have known what they were getting into.

My concern is specifically with the Cobain issue though. Considering the same things have been going on for ages I don’t understand the objection. If hardcore fans don’t want him singing non-Nirvana songs then they don’t have to have him sing them. What’s the problem?

You can set Cobain not to sing other songs? If that’s the case then I don’t see a problem.

Pretty sure you can change avatars whenever you want, though admittedly I’ve never played the game.

No you can’t. Dr.TheTrunk is saying you can choose not to do that of your own free volition, as a fan of Cobain.

I only have experience with Rock Band, admittedly, but I don’t get control there as to which avatars sing which songs in Free Play mode. It just picks random ones. Does this game work the same way? If so, it’s inevitable that Cobain is going to pop up in some song where you don’t want to see him.

In the guitar hero games, you can unlock other artists, and then use them instead of your pre-made avatars. So you can unlock hendrix and then be him. Or you can unlock Cobain and then be him while doing any of the songs in the game.

So it is a non issue, everyone who wants him to just sing nirvana songs will only see that.

It’s a non-issue unless he gets randomly chosen to sing songs in “Free Play” mode like what happens with the avatars in Rock Band. The user has no control there.

Or I guess when folks post stuff to youtube.

This is pretty much what is going to happen here, as well. From what I understand, the contracts in these kinds of games are quite thorough and don’t leave much room for interpretation or misunderstanding. I think this is just another case of somebody signing something without understanding all the implications of said contract.

There’s a new DirectTV ad with magical undead Chris Farley inserted into current David Spade’s bedroom. I find it super creepy, but Spade seemed okay with it, so who am I to argue?

Regardless of whether the contract gives Activision the right to do this, it seems very shortsighted that they would thumb their noses at the artists like this. Who will want to work with them again after seeing them basically say “Screw you, you signed the contract, we can do whatever we want with your image” to artists foolish enough to try?