Allow deletion/complete hiding of online versions
Currently the versioning system works such that online versions are permanent and unremovable. This isn't so bad for private versions, but for public ones this can be a problem.
If the creation was released publicly accidentally because of a misunderstanding of how the credit system works, etc. then forevermore that creation is public for anyone to use/see/play/remix with no recourse for the owner.
And it can make them hesitant to even make new things using their own assets because now it links to these other public things, any attention their work gets invites the risk of people working through the genealogy maze and finding a remixable asset and using it to make their own things or republishing it as their own--against the wishes of the creator.
If the creation has been updated to fix bugs/exploits, people can still go back and play old playable versions, making the game look bad. Or if they did so accidentally, they may find at the end of a play session that their score did not post.
The reason for making these versions permanent, as I understand it, is to ensure that if others use it in their creations that link cannot break. But what it also removes is the wishes of the creator, which I feel like for a platform all about creation should probably be pretty up-there in terms of importance to design decisions.
If this was allowed, the credit system could disintegrate and cause all sorts of problems. Here I'll go through a few such situations and discuss possible risks there may be:
- Creation linked to from a collection: If the version no longer exists, it does know where to go. But the mechanism for asking if the player wants to play the latest version is already in place, so as long as there's at least one public version remaining this wouldn't cause too much of an issue. And if there are no public versions remaining, there is already a mechanism in place to show it as "private" which could be used for this, or a variant of that.
- Element contained within a scene/element: If the version no longer exists, the creation would be unusable (we used to be able to cause this problem which was a nightmare, and I appreciate that things were put in place to make this impossible). If it ignored the fact that there's nothing left to link to, and allowed the scene to function as before... it would function as before. But after it's already been imported, the only reason that link exists is so that others can find out through the genealogy that the asset was used (which its creator doesn't want) and to update it if the creator publishes a new version (which would still work, or the creator may not want to do anyway if they've deleted all versions, and also most people don't do that for elements they don't own, and in fact it's advisable not to do that because the change may not be what you want for your game).
- A scene contained within a dream owned by someone else: (the scene was originally remixable.) If the version no longer exists, the dream won't be able to send the player to it. But then, the creator has clearly indicated that they want no one to play that version of the scene... so that's spot on for their wishes. If they removed the version just to mess with people using it in their dream, then people will just stop using their remixable scenes in their dreams, can complain etc. if they wish to. But more likely is the original creator simply does not want people to play that version, and I feel like that should be respected as their decision.
The way things currently work make mistakes irreversible, and they're stuck with anything they regret releasing even if they leave the entire platform. This is something very few platforms enforce. As I say, I think I understand the reasons behind such a decision. But also, it seems to me there are some fairly simple ways of adjusting the design to honour and empower the creators that will make them feel a lot safer publishing things in Dreams, without breaking the whole of the dreamiverse.
Please consider these tweaks; I think it would really help people who get into a spot of bother with their published creations.
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"This is something very few platforms enforce."
That's simply not true though. The norm is for creative hosting/platforms to enforce the most permissive usage license you mark your work with. It's not an ideological choice though, it's a necessity defined in copyright law almost everywhere on the planet. You can not walk back a permissive set of usage rights because it sets all kinds of exploitable loopholes up for entrapment and so forth.
It's just how usage rights work unfortunately🤷🏼♂️
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I'm not on *all* creative platforms of course, but youtube is a big platform I can use as an example. I can delete my own youtube videos with no problem whatsoever. Zero legal notices to go through. No signing of documents. The only thing that happens is it warns me that I can't undo it (because it's literally deleting the files or whatever), and so all analytics and comments will be lost. There's nothing preventing me from deleting it at all. How could they get away with it if creative hosting/platforms have to prevent this by law? I don't understand.
I'm not sure how legally binding any of the "rules" are in Dreams, honestly. I think it's simply designed a certain way that made sense at the time, and to work in the most direct way with the way they've designed the credits system. I don't think the credits system was forced upon Mm by law somehow.
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Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer. If you believe there to be some legal problem with one of the ideas, there's not a lot of interesting discussion we can have around that; Mm will be aware of any related legal issues, so they're perfectly able to figure that out, so I would just leave any of that to them. ;P
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I take your point @Matneee, and @Tapgiles: you lay out impressively thorough considerations for when/if Mm considers implementing these greater freedoms.
Where both @Matneee and @Tapgiles agree, I'd like to point out, is that the user must consent to a legal agreement regarding the use and distribution of their work.
Surely the legal agreement associated with publishing can be improved upon, no? Perhaps offer a variety of options for users to decide how attribution and derivation of their works will be enforced (or not enforced). If the creator chooses a license that says the work must remain unchanged, then I would hope -- legally -- a private version of it could exist in a public creation without issue. From a technical standpoint, I agree with Tap that the the resources involved to make this possible would be worth the dev expenses.
To me, the bottleneck restricting creators from more freely sharing work is in large part shaped by the legalities we consent to when publishing.
It is not of course fair or ethical to expect the user to read a long legal document. I'm sure the UX writer could collab with Legal to offer a succinct, Dreamsian explanation of what is being agreed to.
Legal matters are essential aspects of the game dev industry. I'm thankful Dreams is willing to navigate and handle some of that for us. But should we not be taught and tutorialized about the ins and outs of how legal matters impact creators' ambitions to better understand game dev? Same applies for Music, Art, Film industries etc of course.
Now although international concerns could make these tasks unaffordably difficult, I would like to know whether the many Creative Commons (or other such licenses) can -- if implemented -- be presented and taught to us as important considerations when creating art or other works.
I'm not saying the legal aspect is the only area where I think these publishing issues can be resolved... but it seems to me that **at least** giving us the option to understand what we are agreeing to in a more succinct form would, if nothing else, be more transparent and reduce confusion.
Speaking of confusion, why is the credit system so badly conveyed anyway? Especially if there are vitally important legal considerations that need to be made on your (Mm's) end, shouldn't that area be one of the epast unclear aspects of saving/publishing? At least if we understand what we are and aren't doing, there would be less folks needing to retract their work after mistakenly publishing it in the first place.
Fuether, to be rather blunt, the language and menu design for Dreams' saving and publishing operations are, frankly... very very bad. Helping users understand what's going on would be a great first step in implementing a more fair system, IMO.
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Just to clarify something - deleting a YouTube video does not change the usage rights. Most folks appear unaware you can actually change the license on YouTube videos in fact, although you can mark them cc-by. However, deleting a video does not change the usage rights and there's no requirement for a creator to actually make a resource publicly *available*. You have no say over existing copies already acquired though - the user still has the same rights to use and share it that they got it under, including any requirement to provide creator credit.
Tap us not talking about deleting things though as far as I can tell. They're talking about retrospectively changing rights granted to use and distribute an asset as acquired. It's not something MM are likely to get into legal strife over themselves, although individual users probably could. It's admittedly unlikely, but the possibility creates certain PR and usability liabilities. Being "The game that bod got sued over” is not a good look. Ultimately, the fact that you didn't realize the rights you were granting were permanent, or some odd notion that you had to sign licensing agreements (hint - read EULAs and don't click I Agree before seeing what you agree to) doesn't change the rights you granted . There's also the potential for a lot of administrative and public fallout taking up resources🤷🏼♂️
Arguably more relevant here - and personally my concern - is the ethos of Play Create Share. I'm seeing a few mentions of protecting the original creator, respecting the original creator's wishes if they change their mind. But very little concern for the rights of users making further creations, or their ability to access resources previously made public being rescinded because someone changed their mind. It's a very monocentric approach that I'm inclined to think runs against the spirit of creativity and openly sharing. Certainly against the ethos of innumerable Share Alike licensing formats, which it's worth noting have enabled phenomenal acts of creativity and advancement. Including both Dreams and the Playstation you run it on, I might add. As a system it's proven to work very well and is one of the cornerstones of collaborative works.
I'm not totally against the idea, but there needs to be nuance to it. You could, for example, give creators the option to effectively disown prior works they do not want to be directly associated with - everyone would still have the same rights to use and share it but I *think* that would remove the need for creator attribution (i.e what genealogy currently does) As it stands, what's here strikes me as leaning heavily toward 'proprietary' as opposed to 'share' as written. I do appreciate that might be unintentional, but at the same time I think it's important that we fully protect and enshrine the general userbase's right to freely use assets once made public. This is, after all, one of the defining features of the creative freedom Dreams enables.
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Currently we're not allowed to delete. Youtube lets us delete. In that way youtube works differently; that's what I was referring to.
Sounds like on the "rights" front, youtube works a lot closer to what I was suggesting in my post in the first place. People who are already using an asset in their scene can still use it with no problem whatsoever. But we can limit access for new people. That's the main idea.
The case that's most common where people want to un-remixable something is where they accidentally/intentionally/are forced to publish it as remixable and almost immediately want to undo it. In such situations it's normally very very unlikely anyone has started using it anyway, and would affect 0% of anything for anyone but the owner's own peace of mind. And for the slim chances someone has started using an asset, they would be unaffected. That's whole point of this post.
This isn't just about remixable stuff either; there's also the side of publishing as "playable" which is also currently not undo-able. And gives no "rights" to anyone whatsoever. This suggestion would apply to that also.
Something that's interesting regarding this is, publishing a scene or dream as "playable" used to mean anyone could import it into their dream and use it. You might put it that publishing as "playable" gave people the "right" to include that scene in their dream. Mm changed how that works, so that now you can only do that if you're a collaborator on the creation, or you're importing a remixable scene. They changed the "rights" that everyone has to be able to use those playable creations, for the benefit and protection of creators. If I recall, dreams that already had other people's playable scenes/dreams in them weren't affected and they still ran just fine.
That is a very similar change to the kind of change I'm proposing here.
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