As an example, you see with certain countries, they censor things that are subversive. Islamic countries will remove gay stuff as they should.
So that brings me to things like Red Dead Redemption. The first Red Dead Redemption is one of my favorite video games of all time. I also recognize it as utterly subversive.
I love it for the gameplay and skip the cutscenes, but if you don't skip the cutscenes, it's clear that Rockstar was trying to shine their leftist garbage values onto the American cowboy mythos.
What do you do if you're in charge of America? Have the script rewritten and the dialogue redone/revoiced, leave it be, etc?
I'm of the mind that we had the right idea in the 1950s where we opposed subversive communistic/marxist messages in entertainment. If they wanted to get away with it, they had to be subtle enough that most people wouldn't pick up on it back then.
That said, what is and isn't subversive? Is Max Payne subversive? In the first game, I don't notice any subversive bullcrap, but to someone else who considers anything darker and bleaker than the Andy Griffith show to be destructive to the American spirit, Max Payne would be subversive to them.
What's your opinion?
You don't need to cap franchise length, but reforming copyright law to only be like ~15 years would decimate big corps that rely on exclusive ownership of IP to be able to turn a profit.
15 is still too long for many franchises that never bothered to release a proper sequel its fans wanted, like with Half Life and X-COM. Instead of either franchise getting its third game we got Half Life 2 Part 2 onwards and Chimera Squad.
Or put copyright law completely in the grave where it belongs
It served a positive purpose once, back before lobbyists broke it. Just reduce the term length to match patents and copyrights can be good again.
Hard disagree, but i get that I'm in the minority.
I don't consider IP legitimate at all.
It still doesn't really fix the issue of people abusing an IP once they get their hands on it. I'd rather see something that forces corporations to simply conclude a franchise in a proper way rather than the endless churn of Game Title n+1.
Opening up IP to public domain after 15 years would basically anyone can make Mickey Mouse, Batman, Star Wars, etc. Not sure how you envision that abuse to occur, when you could easily have competing / alternative products out there.
I've seen what letting Larian get their hands on Baldur's Gate did. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if any given idiot could make a new entry in the franchise.
Let IPs have a dignified conclusion.