Shout Out vs Ripoff - where is the line drawn?

This is something I've been thinking about for a while.

We all know those games that are rife with Shout Outs to various other media. For example, Borderlands and its references to movies, other games, etc. For most of these, like the Boomstick, it's obvious that they're simply paying homage to the things they're referencing.

However, when does a Shout-Out go too far and go straight into ripoff territory? For example, say you want to reference Star Wars, so you make the Big Bad look and act suspiciously like Darth Vader. Is that a shoutout, or is that just stealing another characters' design?

I ask this because often when looking at a certain work's Shout-Out page, I see examples where the creators basically made Expies of pre-existing characters or took story elements from another work. At what point does this stop being a simple homage and becomes straight-up theft?

(I'm putting this in the Video Game thread because I don't know where else to put it, and also because I'm more interested in cases of this in games anyway. If it shouldn't be here, sorry about that)

I'd say the difference is whether it's intended to be noticed

Shout out is when it's a small part of it. Like if one weapon is rather like a light saber and hand-loss is mentioned, or if there's a ship named the Century Crow. Small things, generally.

A Rip off doesn't present the idea as someone else's, and makes use of many others' ideas. They're have a revolt fighting an evil kingdom which has built a death planet with the power to destroy stars, and a plot that doesn't at all match one movie while using the setting of another.

Then there's a Parody, which is basically a shout out that would otherwise be a ripoff, but doesn't take itself seriously and it's obvious it's in jest towards the original.

Pretty much this. It's all on intention and scale. Whole-Plot Reference is a thing as well which falls somewhere between, depending on medium and your personal view. IE, while a TV show can get away with one episode being a blatant star-wars take off and it's acceptable, Many complain about Avatar(blue people, not benders) basically being Pocahontas IN SPACE!!

edited 28th Feb '15 10:04:01 PM by Joesolo

Though to be fair, Pocahontas was an old and tired story when it came out too.

Anyway, there's a line between homage and rip-off, which is usually a lot farther away than is typically used. Sometimes it seems like people cry "rip-off" (or on here, Expy) for nything that is vaguely similar to anything else, though even without that often series are more interested in using the tropes popularized by another work than actively copying that work itself.

I agree that the line comes from both scope and intention. If something is respectfully or satirically taking off from something else, then that should be obvious - but at the same time, a Whole-Plot Reference has its risks: even a parody should be original in its own way.

As someone who flagrantly rips things off in his writings and other works and just doesn't care, a shout out is something that invokes the idea or spirit of another work, while a rip off just files off the serial numbers and calls it a day.

It's a small reference pool that means nothing to anyone, but I have a character named Seno. In his original setting, he only carries one sword but breaks into occasional bouts of Engrish (he speaks English just fine, he does bad accents because it's funny) and has earned himself the nickname Dragon of Hinata. In a forum RP I play him on, I've tossed all pretenses to the wayside and given him six swords, near-omnipresent abuse of Engrish and blue-tinted ki powers that do nothing at all to even try to look different from Masamune Date's various moves.

Yeah a shoutout is a small refrence and nothing huge.

This little NPC would be a shoutout◊ to Kantai Collection, however if she was fully playable and such then that would be far greater than one.

People have been arguing about this kind of thing since cuneiform came out. I'm sure the Greek Tragedians were punching each other's teeth out over it.

For me, the line is drawn when a film or a game is completely indistinguishable from another save for the title.

In most cases it's best to remember the old saying "there's nothing new under the sun". I can't think of a single product in existence that doesn't borrow some or most of it's ideas from another source, and even that source probably got it's ideas from an earlier example. Furthermore, just as this site would say, "Tropes are not bad": sometimes a re-used idea with a twist or two is all that's needed to spark some creativity or fun into a product. People don't always have to be innovative.

That being said, there are plenty of total rip-offs that make absolutely no effort to be creative or even try the slightest bit of innovation. Most of the games you'd see on the Android marketplace (or the older non-featured I-Phone games) would be good examples. Many didn't even bother trying to change the art or sound assets they'd use, and would have the same gameplay format you'd see in a lot of those Facebook strategy games. One really eregious offender was this Chinese-made strategy game ripoff that probably didn't have a single original idea or asset to it's own name (most of the art was stolen from the Call of Duty games, Starcraft and Command & Conquer 3 and probably some other stuff I didn't recognize), was clearly not spell-checked, felt obviously rushed and incomplete, and allowed you to buy virtually everything with real-world currency if you wished. Combat was nothing more than building a bunch of units and making sure they had a greater overall attack rating when attacking an enemy player's base: strategy was not involved in any way. It basically existed only to take your money, and nothing else. Bizarrely enough, it's still available for download on the Android market.

Going to have to agree with one of the first responses: If it's something small or fully intended for comedic purposes, it isn't a rip-off. I've never seen any confusion on the subject, but I think OP forgot the "parody" point in-between.

If she was fully playable, the character would have gotten the full okay from the owners of the parodied work (confirmed process from the devs), so I'd argue it's not a rip-off at that stage. Otherwise, the example works.

edited 1st Mar '15 3:19:06 PM by burnpsy

Well that's obvious: if you like a reference, it's a Shout-Out. If you don't, it's a ripoff. Simple!

Where do I draw the line? Personally I don't have a line because of Spiritual Successor. For example we get Hugh Jackman in Dead Island: Riptide. John's obviously Wolverine. That doesn't detract from the game, that's cool. Then we get The Lost And The Damned, the best Sons of Anarchy game ever made. Even if it is a rip off they do it in such a way the game is cool because of the basis of reference it's from.