Yes definitely. All you have to do is download them, not buy them
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That stuff is bloody awful. It’s so frustrating to see someone bullied like that. It’s amazing how toxic fandoms can get over the dumbest things.
As far as the flipping of the cast’s genders that they’ve been doing lately, it’s not my favorite. The first thing you are going to do is compare it to the original cast and that’s just unfair to the actors and the writers. Ghostbusters did this the worst. They added more jokes/improv without a lot of great character and relationship building, at least in my opinion. Honestly I’m sick of remakes in general and the same genre/world being done with a fresh coat of paint. It isn’t bad (certainly not deserving of the amount of frothing at the mouth that these movies get), it’s just boring to me. However, as far as a remake done right with a female protagonist, I loved the new Tomb Raider movie. Her struggles, her motivations, her changes and realizations, that’s what every strong character should have.
That’s what drives me nuts about Rey from Star Wars. They don’t give her anything to work with. Her character is more about just being ‘the female’. I don’t know what Rey is doing or why she’s doing it. Her goals change constantly. The only thing consistent is she is just awesome all the time. I think Disney got it right 20 years ago with Mulan. As a little girl, I loved this movie. She was brave, cunning, and protective. But she was also kind of a doofus and unprepared. She worked her butt off to get into shape and even when she was told to go home, she worked harder and proved them wrong. It was so inspiring to girl like me with similar interests and struggles. It felt like it could really happen. It meant more to me because Mulan was a woman but I didn’t just like her because she was a woman. And I think that’s what a lot of studios get caught up on, the simple identity, like that’s all there is to them.
Companies just love dropping it everywhere like its a badge, it’s mentioned in every interview and marketed like crazy. An even better example would be Captain Phasma. They made it sound like she’d have this big part in the movie, the ‘first female Star Wars villain’. In reality she had like 2 minutes of screen time. That’s what I mean about these studios just cherry picking things and tossing them into a stew without any thought. It feels like they just want the brownie points without the work involved. Take this known property, change a few names and faces, get blockbuster movie. I mean, I guess it works in most cases so why should the execs care.
Not to get too far off topic with movies though. I just feel like we’re getting into this territory in entertainment where there’s a lot of box ticking rather than making significant changes. It’s kind of like a half step in the right direction.
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Wtf? It is literally Pride and Prejudice why the hell would anybody complain about it being from female perspective. My problem with the game is that it is literally the same as the book and I can as well read the book in that case as it is better.
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What annoys me is that the reviewer seems to imply that the genderlock choice comes from “rushing” and not “perfecting” the game—lol, no, it was a deliberate choice, not a mistake from half-assing, and also how/why would a retelling of Pride and Prejudice feature a male protagonist, anyway? 
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Is it? Here’s the PDF of the actual book if anyone wants to do a word-by-word comparison:
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“A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished” - Rembrandt
It is most certainly difficult to successfully breathe new life into a classic. I have played through several times, and found that Gray truly paid homage to Austen’s work. There were several noticeable differences between the two. As this is not the proper thread for such dialogue, I will leave it at that for now. I would concur that the original is a masterpiece that cannot be supplanted by a rehashing, however I do find merit to the work. An audience that otherwise may not have acquainted themselves with fine literature such as Austen’s work, may find themselves captivated by the themes carried over into Gray’s retelling, thus spurring interest in the original. Additionally, to the point of this thread, it indeed speaks in a voice different from those mentioned in earlier discussion.
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If you think there is plagiarism in a published game or WiP, please contact @RETowers directly.
Making claims of plagiarism is very serious in the business of publishing and it can cause harm that will be felt for years, true or not.
Please do not throw ideas that a work is exactly (literally = word for word) like another lightly.
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If this is in relation to Pride and Prejudice, I think the copyright on it has expired and it’s in the public domain.
What can you do with public domain books? Republish them as they are, or add your own material to create new works. Recast them in new media, remix them with other works, translate them into new languages … the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
For example, Jane Austen’s 1816 novel Emma became a Gwyneth Paltrow movie in 1996. 1995’s Clueless was based, albeit loosely, on Emma, too. And countless works have been based on Shakespeare … let’s see, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, to name one. And let’s not forget Walt Disney — he reworked the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm (making them less, well, grim) and built an empire.
Here’s another case in point. Broadview Press recently republished an 1887 novel, She, by H. Rider Haggard, in its original serialized version. (It was a novel that both Freud and Jung loved, by the way, and it sounds fascinating.) And since it’s in the public domain, anyone can republish the original text, or write a screenplay based on it, or … whatever.
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All of what you say is true - there still is one thing you may not do: publish a “new work” that is word-for-word ( the meaning of literally ) the same as the original.
To the best of my knowledge, the game just published is a new work with added material and changes that make it clear the game is not the same as the original.
It’s like your WiP dealing with Oedipus - your work is your own and not word for word the same as any other’s Oedipus story or legend or mythic tale.
The distinction made is very important to acknowledge, especially when the ethics and reputation of a fellow writer is at stake.
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Well said. We must be responsible in our use of language.
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I’m going to chip in, as the author of a story with a male protagonist.
It’s worth making the point that the authors posting stories here are volunteers, giving up our free time to write for our own pleasure and the satisfaction of sharing our work with others. Constructive feedback’s generally very welcome - but no one should expect us to stop telling the stories that interest us most, or to add content that doesn’t fit with our authorial vision.
If you aren’t interested in playing as the protagonist of a particular story then that’s fine - don’t read it and move on. And if you aren’t happy with the range of stories that are currently being produced then the obvious solution’s to write one yourself.
What isn’t acceptable is to harass writers. I remember Vendetta being given a particularly hard time for writing a “gender-locked” story, to the point where he abandoned a very popular WIP and quit the forum. From what I’ve seen, the forum’s got a lot better at cracking down on that sort of behaviour since then - so it’s incredibly disappointing to hear that female writers have been on the receiving end of it.
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What? That’s absurd. The Courting of Miss Bennet is very obviously a derivative work - a remix. Playing it in no way resembles reading the actual book Pride and Prejudice, and writing it is no more plagiarism than any of the multiple movie and TV adaptations are.
What’s also significant is that the nature of the story is radically influenced by the protagonist’s gender and social class. The plot of P&P is set in motion by the fact that the Bennets’ estate Longbourn is entailed, and can only go to a male heir. If there was a Bennet son instead of Lizzy, there would be no plot. Writing a game with gender choice would involve basically writing two different games. If you do that, you might as well… write… two different… games? And personally I think a game from the POV of a young Mr. Bennet would be fairly dull.
Now, if someone wanted to write a hosted game that was a remix of Persuasion from Cpt. Wentworht’s POV, I would be all over that. Anyone?
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Let’s not forget Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which does take the majority of the original book and edits in zombie fighting references. It is credited to both Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. It has also been made into a movie. So, I don’t think The Courting of Miss Bennett is stepping on any toes there, legally or otherwise. Did A Midsummer’s Night encounter this same criticism for the being derivative of Shakespeare, or does it get a pass because we’re all just so used to being inundated by retellings of the Bard’s works? That’s not an insult in anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed that game, I’m just wondering if there is a double standard and why.
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Not sure about Midsummer’s (not to my knowledge), but you’re probably right. We get saturated with Shakespeare based derivatives and quotes, and he’s been gone for a lot longer compared to more contemporary authors, so it’s probably expected as ok. I have seen complaints in reviews about images that have been used in promoting HG’s which I think are in the public domain unless I’m very much mistaken. I think it’s just unless you look into it, most people aren’t really aware of how of how public domain works. They mean well, even if legally what is happening is technically acceptable. (In theory, you could probably take P&P, put a few fake choices in it, and then put it up for people to read without legal problems as I think it is in the public domain now. Definitely plagerism to use it in that way, but legally at least I don’t think you would get into trouble for it with the law.)
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Must admit, I don’t really understand why so many people think they’d have difficulty writing from another gender’s perspective.
We all write about things we can’t experience. If we couldn’t do that, there’d be no science fiction or murder mysteries. If people could only write about murder if they’d actually killed someone, they’d soon have the police knocking on their door… and none of us has been to Mars.
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Well, I don’t think any murderers or their victims will be upset about how their experience is being misportrayed either. Whereas, I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about female characters that were written by men. Same for a lot of different representations. The more people you are representing with your writing, the more potential difficulties, especially when you can’t fully understand that experience.
That’s because those writers tend to only focus on one aspect of the characters, and then the characters become defined by it. It’s like reading horrible stereotypes. And while I will concede this:
It can be hard for people to be able to fully relate to a perspective they aren’t familiar with and have not experienced, yet we are all still people—people who get angry, people who get upset, people who feel love and lust, people who feel joy for themselves and others, etc.
So if an author takes the time to address the different facets of characters and not just paint them as being one thing, they may find that they have a better handle on it than they think they do.
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For fiction writers, I would say that’s just part of the job description. If I limited characters to the sum of my lived experiences, then it wouldn’t make for a terribly interesting story – if only because I don’t find my life terribly interesting. 
As far as “genderlocked” games go, it comes down to the reason for me. If it’s setting out to paint a realistic depiction of a real-life historical setting where a woman just wouldn’t be afforded the same freedoms, I can understand when it becomes a choice of restricting the reader’s agency or stretching the suspension of disbelief. If the author just isn’t confident about their ability to write from a female POV, it does raise the question of how comfortable they are writing female characters at all. I understand that a few lines of dialogue from a minor NPC is a much less daunting prospect than ~100,000 words from a major character’s perspective, but it’s not a bad practice for writers to learn how to “get in the heads” of all sorts of different folks.
This is just an excuse; it has been debunked many times here and elsewhere - the simple fact is: about 45% (according to the BBC as of yesterday) of the general population of gamers are women and most companies in the modern game market think it is better to reflect that reality then offend a shrinking minority that continues to focus on the past bias and erroneous beliefs.
If Assassins Creed can evolve from having 4 playable male characters in 2014 to having both male and female characters on an “Oddessy” type of journey, our community can do even better … and normally does.
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I counted 8 9. And a girl for liberation. Though I’m just going by protagonist and not counting the three faceless modern protags from rogue, unity or black flag, or multiplayer or brief side quest. And from then the series would have a bi guy and girl sharing a spot (mostly the guy and then a third girl in his granddaughter for side quests), a black guy for the last entry, the company would have a possible lgbt cac in South Park and now they have Odyssey.
My count
Desmond (1-3)
Ezio (Ezio Trilogy)
Shay(Rogue)
Arno (Unity)
Conner (3)
Altiar (1, Altiar Chronicles, Revelations)
Edward (Black Flag)
Adewale (Freedom cry dlc)
edit
9 forgot Haythan
Probably the most prominent reasons why I don’t bug every single author here. If you’re not doing it right, you’re not doing it at all and I don’t expect anyone to learn or do that much work.
Ooh, ooh, can attempt victims complain? What about their families? The (attempted) murderer’s family?