This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Duckluck: So, does anyone know why this trope exists? I mean I've seen it plenty of times, but I've never been clear on why developers do it.
Phartman: Probably to avoid paying for the license to use the guns in-game. As I pointed out, in many instances the appearance of a particular gun is also trademarked, so it seems to me developers do it for fear of being sued rather than in response to any actual infringement suit.
Mister Six: Or possibly the gunmakers object. The names (but not appearances) of the guns in Hitman changed between the demo and the full game. The AK-47 is an odd example, though, because as far as I was aware a few different manufacturers make it. Is it a licence that they pay for?
Phartman: As I understand it, the Soviet government owned whatever trademark the Kalashnikov had. Since the U.S.S.R. went bye-bye, its design seems to be in the public domain; the Chinese SKS, Dragunov SVD and the Saiga shotgun all copy the appearance of the AK without any co-branded license. On the other hand, the SW99 isn't considered a knock-off of the P99 because it's licensed to Smith & Wesson through Walther. The AK-47 doesn't need to do this as it really doesn't have a parent company anymore; Mozambique was even able to put it on their flag with no objections.
But I still think that developers are worried that firearms manufacturers may object, so they pre-emptively Brand X the names to stay out of trouble.
Silent Hunter: According to the Wikipedia article, the Izhevsk Machine Tool Factory patented the AK design in 1999 in Russia.
Phartman: So it's been out of the public domain for 8 years, but that hasn't stopped any manufacturers outside Russia from copying the design. That might also explain how Norinco gets away with all those knock-offs of U.S. made weapons; taking legal recourse would be far more trouble than it's worth.
Can'tRememberMyName: The Saiga wouldn't violate the patent anyway since Izhevsk/Izhmash makes it. They may just be harassing former Soviet Bloc countries with these patent claims. (There's definitely a time limit on filing claims, no matter what the Russian government says.)
Phartman: The GLOCK 7 example is a good demonstration of something, but I'm not sure it belongs here because it's a made-up weapon and not a real weapon with a made-up name.
Haibane: Actually Die Hard 2 showed the terrorists using GLOCK pistols. At the time the movie was released the profile of a GLOCK pistol was unmistakable.
Phartman: Not quite, the GLOCK line debuted only a few years prior to the movie and wasn't well known in popular culture. In any case, McClane describes a model number and type of GLOCK that has never existed; there is no model 7.
Silent Hunter: Speaking of Chinese knock-offs, Russia is threatening to sue China over the latter offering copies of the Su-27 for foreign export (as the J-11), contrary to their agreement.
Michael: Logically, when programming guns into games, game balance requires that the guns be given limits which might or might not be below their real-life limits, be they accuracy or range or whatever. I could believe some gun manufacturers might disapprove of that.
We could expand this to aircraft too.
Mattock: Just curious, but does anyone know what a Glock 7 would be? Some kind of towel rack or shower fixture? It's 'Glock 17' because it's his 17th patent, and he was supposed to be doing household goods before then...
Sabre Justice: Presumably they do it with public domain guns just to keep with the theme of the renamed ones. And we could do one of these for cars as well, Grand Theft Auto alone could have an entire category.
Martello: I did some cleanup of this article to support the new standards. Natter that I removed outright is preserved below in case the original authors become irate and want to rephrase it into something that adds to the discussion or post it elswhere where it belongs.
From the Die Hard 2 example:
- The weapon wrangler for the film even pointed this out (along with the fact that there's no such thing as a nonmetal gun — so far), but the director decided to leave it in anyway.
- Any anyhow, the BULLETS would still be metal...
- Maybe it takes place 20 Minutes into the Future. Or it's so secret, the real world has never heard of it.
- Yet an NYPD detective knows all about it?
- The "Tenifer" finish which Glock uses on their guns is iron nitride, which is technically a ceramic, though this knowledge isn't that widely circulated. Given the relative obscurity of this fact, it's quite likely that the "ceramic" thing is just a coincidence, and was pulled out of some writer's ass.
- But ceramic finish does not translate to constructed completely from ceramic; the steel underneath is still 100% detectable. The Glock 7 was an Ass Pull meant to capitalize on exaggerated "plastic pistol" hysteria surrounding the then-new weapons.
- Actually, McClane says that the fictional Glock 7 is a porcelain gun. God knows how they got porcelain to contain a gun blast, but what do I know? In the Line of Fire also used a non-metallic gun, which seemed to look sturdy enough since it was hand-carved from a solid block.
- Justice League Unlimited also had an episode with a pair of ceramic pistols, but being JLU, it's far less out-of-place.
More natter on the Real Life Examples:
- How do you use a barrel shroud?
- It's a shoulder thing that goes up.
- That guy calls his pistol "Glock 40". But then, he's "the only one in the room that he know of that's professional enough to" carry it (...though not in his hands, evidently).
- How do you use a barrel shroud?
Maybe this one should stay, but it's still written too much as a Troper Tale. Maybe with more generalized terms it would work.
- One of this editor's friends thought the (100% real) AK-74 was an example of this trope. It was the Soviet successor to the AK-47.
- Something the free downloadable game Soldat has to point out in its FAQ (point 19).
- He wasn't the only one... *ahem*
- Something the free downloadable game Soldat has to point out in its FAQ
This is just a confusing entry. How does JA 2 "somewhat avert" this? Such a vague description should be backed up by an explanation, but instead the editor went on to discuss a mod.
- Somewhat averted in Jagged Alliance 2, and almost completely in the v1.13 mod for it, where almost every gun at least on Realistic is accurately named, or uses both real-life names and designations (whether or not they would be used together). If a name is inaccurate, it's most likely outdated and can be 'corrected' by updating one's copy of the mod. (For example, the in-game "Barrett M468" was accurate in this — and incidentally in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 as well — up until the company renamed its real-life counterpart to the "REC-7.")
