I would agree with @No_This_Is_Patrick . Maybe the old cast would make a cameo appearance in the next game instead just to see how they are holding up? Though we also have to consider the ending the the reader got from the previous game which would be nice. XD I would love to see how my MC’s married life with Frank is doing. 
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@Gower Thank you so much for this game!! This is my most favorite game in all the choice games!!! I’m looking forward for your next stories! T w T
Oh um is it okay for me to draw comics of the route I did in the game? I’ll make sure to credit you! ; v ;
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@Karen_Fong That would be amazing to see comics of your route! I’m so glad you enjoyed it!!!
; u ; !!! I’ll do my best! I’ll post it once I got it done!
I wish you a super duper happy day!!! and more so many happy days!!
You deserve it since you made many people so happy with your work! :'D
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Read the long, long, negative review that was just posted on Steam for Tally Ho. (click the picture, not the “buy this”–uh, unless you want to buy it. I won’t stop you.)
I have a few bones to pick with it, but I also think they have a point; the publicity or the store pages or something should reference or thank Wodehouse. Wodehouse is still in copyright for a few more years (it’s not like Midsummer, where I also didn’t have a “thanks to Shakespeare page”) but I don’t know if that’s the issue so much as a perceived “too-closeness” to source material.
What do you think about this question of fan fiction/plagiarism/original work as far as CoG goes?
“How can you justify aping a set of texts so thoroughly and neglecting to mention them in either your introductory text or the ‘About’ section? It is presumably an attempt to avoid the possibility of a legal dispute, if it isn’t an attempt to present this work as original in its conception,” the writer asks, and I really can’t argue with that point of view.
There is a lot that I would change in the introductory text that I understand cannot be changed, or only changed with great difficulty, once the games are published, and I didn’t write that text or see it before publication. I don’t know if that is the case for the “About” text that also appears on the store pages, but at least I wrote that and that might be a good place to offer an acknowledgement.
I’ve read the review and refreshed myself with all the “teasers” I could access at this time.
When this was first released, I remember reading that your work was based on another’s worldverse… and I had thought you acknowledged this somewhere.
I do think a reference as you had in your first game (In this Shakespearean comedy adventure, ) would have been enough - as it is, having no reference is throwing shade by omission.
As to the charge of plagiarism, it is my belief that your game does not fall near that category - it attempts a different commentary purpose and teachable lessons from the work than the original works. Fanfic is harder to refute just because it is based on the other person’s worldverse.
I, personally, do not see Jeeves in the MC unless a conscious effort to follow that path is taken and it truly seems to me that the reviewer was more put out that their Jeeves was not the same Jeeves they perceived in either the books or the tv show.
Even so, the reviewer acknowledges your ability to update the worldverse and bring the subject material into the 21st century as to social-awareness norms.
As a tester, I would suggest a simple sentence as found in Midsummer’s saying something like: In this Woodhouseian adventure … be placed to show you acknowledge and embrace what was done before as part of your game’s heritage and DNA.
I hope my post helps you, if you want to discuss something further, just direct the discussion to that area you wish to explore.
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Thanks, @Eiwynn. I’ve written to CoG and asked if they would add a sentence, if only to the “About the Author” bit if it is too difficult to update the store page.
Yeah, it was in the interview:
Q: Tell me about the world of Tally Ho. This is inspired (maybe even a little more than inspired) by the works of P.G. Wodehouse, with a touch of Dorothy Sayers.
A: The world of Tally Ho is very much the idyllic world of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster novels and short stories. The setting will be utterly familiar to anyone who has read the novels or seen the TV adaptation, but also very easy to ease into for people unfamiliar with the source material.
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An update should allow you to record such on the store page - and so, I’d talk to whomever you need to in CoG about adding that to the Store Steam page so, technically adding a sentence in the intro of the game, then having CoG “update” the game to Steam, then record the update on the store page should let you get this in …
Edit: Your interview question and answer is exactly what I would copy-paste to the update: that is both concise and perfect acknowledgment - heck, you might want to “update” the game with the interview as “bonus” end-game content… that will go well with fans.
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If you’re concerned about it, I wonder if it would be easier to release a patch that would make all appropriate references (Wodehouse and otherwise) come out at the game’s beginning?
I imagine it could also be accessed via the stats menu?
About the review… if the IP holders have a problem, I’m 99% sure they’ll find a means of communicating their concerns in a way that doesn’t involve posting a discombobulated review on Steam.
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I’m not concerned about the IP holders; I’m more hoping to avoid the misperception that there is intent to deceive.
Then it’s simple. I would just add a (Transparency Notice) option in the stats screen so that players cannot possibly believe that you had such an intent.
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The accusation of plagiarism seems a bit spurious. After all, we all have our influences as writers (e.g. Wodehouse certainly didn’t invent the clever servant/feckless master comic dynamic). And, to my knowledge, you haven’t directly copied any scenes or characters from Wodehouse’s work.
My reading of Tally Ho was that it’s more of a pastiche, not just of Wodehouse but of novels of the era more broadly. For example, the “parlour room” scene seemed far closer to to Agatha Christie than Wodehouse. Similarly, as far as I could tell, the spying subplot with the teenage detective character didn’t owe anything to Wodehouse’s work (and, to be honest, I found it a bit incongruous… although I also understand why others enjoyed it.)
I very much doubt that anyone could reasonably conclude that you were trying to pass off Wodehouse’s work as your own.
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Translation: that review was trolling. 
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By that margin, any generic Fantasy Story would be a Tolkien ripoff. And Tolkien himself just robbed his way through Germanic folklore and presumably someone’s travelling diary. And Wagner, inexplicably enough.
Everything is derivative in this day and age. The difference between plagiarism and being influenced by something is in the details.
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Yea, if you want to change the full description, add to the credits screen, or whatever, just tell Becky or me what exactly you’re thinking and sure (It will require me to hard patch things, so it will take a bit to do, but whatever).
That said, from the constant skimming of reviews (since we have a feed for it at work, and I have to obsessively read everything), I’m inclined to say that people (mostly) come to the point of whether or not they like the game first, then look to justify it afterwards (although I’d have to build hard numbers to actually say that with relative certainty).
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As a fan of Jeeves and Wooster, I wouldn’t exactly call this plagiaristic. Especially considering, right from the start, you can take the dynamic of being a reserved and sly servant with a foolish wastrel employer and twist it, bend it, break it or toss it out of a window entirely. The reviewer also explicitly didn’t mention the points of divergence between your story and Wodehouse, selectively filtering out things like the servant-based politics of the Cadbury Club, Valentine’s espionage, and pretty much everything about Haze. Which leads me to believe they were deliberately fishing for ways to lambaste you and take the high ground.
Their review put up something interesting however: did plagiarism slip by COG? Because according to their account, they played a plagiarized game and their report helped in taking it down.
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Yes, I wondered about that too. That was news to me, and I have no idea what game that could be referring to.
I’ll read the review, but, if the writer is saying you are plagiarizing Wodehouse’s work, I’ll have to disagree with him.
Isn’t plagiarism copying one’s text until the point where the original and the plagiarized work are indistinguishable? Like, say, creating a hero named Ultraguy eho came from the planet Derty, fights Nestor Nurwer and is weak to Dertynyte in the same types of stories Superman has.
What you seem to be doing is working around similar tropes, but not following them, necessarily, to the end. The mc doesn’t need to be a Jeeves-esque character, for instance. Like how Kurosawa’s Ran is inspired by King Lear, Tally Ho is inspired by Wodehouse, but both these works are also autonomous. They’re their own stories.
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There was a WiP that mirrored the Deathless games quite closely. I just wish that person raised their issues here in this thread when your game went live instead of doing the Steam review thing; Steam reviews are problematic in several ways as they are.
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Maybe someone could nudge them on steam to tell them?
Though if they take pride in getting stuff removed…
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