Credit where credit is due

[MrDo]

This is an odd stance to take… that’s just part of how things go when you post things publicly online. Since I started with MAME Artwork in 2006:

• arcadeartwork.org scraped my entire site at one point, so a large majority of the “high quality” artwork you can download from there came from my site. The other part came from the artwork that was originally purchased from a group of people at BYOAC.

• That same artwork is now used all over the internet by dozens of people today, to “make” their own “new” artwork files. Including the majority of the game files in this specific thread.

• Artwork that originated from my site was used in at least two commercial video game releases.

• I’ve spent thousands of dollars myself over the years on purchasing arcade artwork, and thousands of hours scanning, cleaning, and releasing said artwork, not to mention all of the other people that contributed to my site over that time, with their own money and time. In 20 years, I’ve received zero compensation for anything, other than a few years into it, when my flatbed scanner broke down, some people pooled together so that I could purchase a new one.

Why am I saying all this now?

• MAMEWorld is gone… so I have purchased my own domains and webhosting, and my site will be back online soon. (Besides MW being gone, the artwork download page wasn’t working correctly for at least the last 18 months).

• And I came back over here to make sure I am crediting people properly for various things… I’m right now in the middle of adding a new page to my site, so that people know there are other sites out there besides mine, that have excellent artwork to use in MAME. Including OA.

I just find it ironic that someone that takes artwork from somewhere else, then makes their own files with it, now has a problem with someone using their new files. In the beginning of his YT channel, OA never credited anything for the longest time… best I could get was for him to give a generic credit to “The Community at MAMEWorld”… because it was too much trouble to read the LAY file in each game file used, and credit the actual people that worked on the artwork each time.

Which is also crazy, because:

• Anything created/cleaned by Ars Invictus… OA will take the time to give him a credit, both on this page and on the YT channel.

• You can read through this entire thread here… no notes for credit for anything from my site, or from NightVoice’s Google Drive page. I guess that’s because I’m not a big enough member of the “Libretro” community?

For OA… not necessary to credit MW people anymore… the site is gone now… if anything, it’s going to mess up your algorithm having a dead link in the video description.

And put your links back up… what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen… it’s not fair to the people that actually enjoy the work that you do, to have to be punished for something that someone else is doing wrong, and that you literally don’t have any control over.

I didn’t stop releasing artwork or take down my page when I first saw your YT channel… same thing. (The whole almost six-year hiatus thing… that’s a whole different story )

[hunterk]

Clarification: Orionsangel asked that I move this post out of their thread as being off-topic, though they made clear that it wasn’t because they wanted to suppress the sentiment, which they affirmed @MrDo has every right to make.

I had been reluctant to act on their original report of being off-topic for the same reason, but OrionsAngel suggested moving it to its own thread, which seemed like a good compromise, as it is indeed an important topic.

---

Proper attribution on the internet is a tough nut to crack, even when we try to enforce it with watermarks and signatures, etc. It gets even harder when we want people to take our work and build on it / remix it, and the reality can often differ from what we envisioned when we first shared the work.

I want someone to take my work, freely given, and make something else cool with it, also freely given. But often someone takes my work, freely given, and charges for it, either unchanged or with a slight twist. And that’s a bummer. It makes me not want to share things in the future, or to only share them with additional restrictions. (I usually liken this to offering free sundaes and someone shows up to sell spoons; they’re within their rights to do it, but it doesn’t feel good)

Even when someone does the “right” thing, if they don’t credit everyone involved in the creation, that doesn’t feel good either

Even when the proper credits are included, end-users often don’t pay attention to them, and then will start comparing your original work unfavorably with something that only exists because of your work, and that doesn’t feel good, either.

This sort of thing is especially common with work like @MrDo’s extensive, foundational work in the arcade artwork scene, since, as they mentioned above, once something has been copied/rehosted so many times (usually losing any credits somewhere in the process), people often don’t think of where it came from at all, since it’s just from “the community.”

However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in two decades of contributing to open source, it’s that there is no such thing as “the community.” Anything done by “the community” was actually done by one or a few people who cared enough about something to make/fix it.

[MrDo]

No worries… after I clicked that reply button, the first thing I thought of was "I wonder how long this will last here. Three days is close to what I was expecting

I just couldn’t believe that he did the whole “took his ball and went home” thing by taking down all his links… SUPER ironic, considering past conversations we had.

Way back in the beginning, like 2006-2008, there was one person on the team that was also real uppity about worrying if other people might “steal” his work, totally forgetting that actual artists worked at all these arcade companies to create the work in the first place. Come to find later, that he initally took credit for someone else’s cleanup work in the beginning days of MAME Artwork… so reading this here again just brought back the same memories from before. (OA is actually the THIRD person to be like this).

I kinda feel bad for calling people out, and I normally keep that kind of stuff to myself, but sometimes things need to be said. Like the pic below… I saw that the week it was posted, but haven’t said anything for over six years about it. That comment was made AFTER I initially talked to him about this kind of stuff, then he goes and tells someone else that “he has no idea where this stuff comes from?” Like, what?

[Drybonz]

This isn’t anything new, though… there are fierce battles over crediting in the pinball (visual pinball) world too where people are designing entire pinball tables and often using the original table creator’s work to upgrade a table… people don’t get credited, or someone won’t be online for ten years and then realize someone didn’t credit their work and come back and a new fight ensues. Also, people will take the works intended to be free for the internet and package them in some kind of paid-for collection.

It really is right and proper to credit someone for resources you have used that were their work, but also the reality is that once you release something onto the internet these things are going to happen. If we think about it, now when we release our work it is instantly being consumed and re-packaged by AI without any hope of credits, which makes the issue even deeper. I do believe, though, that people should make every effort to credit previous artists for resources they use.

[Duimon]

As the topic says, I would like to take the time to thank you sir.

Over the years, my HTPC evolved, generation after generation. In each of these generations, artwork from your site played a large roll.

The contribution isn’t quite the same since I developed my Mage Bezel pack, but the inspiration provided by you, by making the artwork available at all, for judiciously maintaining your site for so many years, cannot be overstated.

I have shared many times, my gratitude for OA and his work, because I had his ear once he posted in my thread.

Now that I have yours, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done, and through you, hopefully, all the nameless contributors that got us where we are today.

In some way, all artwork is derivative.

Derived from the beauty of nature or the beauty of a system (Like the FM-Towns) that is as beautiful as any nature scene.

We all stand on the shoulders of the many before us.

[MagicHat]

Mr.Do - I just wanted to say, I’m a small fish in this scene with just enough knowledge to put together what I’ve done so far on my own thread here. I personally never even intended to do this but I spent a lot of my own time learning how to package up OA work and combine it with Hyperspace Madnesss shader. After I invested my own personal time on it, I figured I would document it here in case others wanted to put together something similar to what I ended up with. Personally, I’ve never been in this for fame or any type of recognition so I wanted to be sure I cleared that up.

I’m very big on giving credit where it’s due and I even reached out to both OA and hyperspace madness before I even made my thread to get the green light from them on what I planned to do. When I customize each game, I make sure to reference the source that I’m using and put that directly in each game.params file in my file structure. OA in my case is “my source” for the art so I use exactly what he has included on his side.

Example

blueprnt.params

I currently have 244 game.params files and include credits in each one based on what OA had in his equivalent overlay files for credits.

Above all, I just wanted to thank you for all the time and effort that you have done over those years. It sounds like you’ve been a key figure in the scene that was such high level that many others have used your work to keep the ball rolling and making other spinoff projects. I’ve only been around for a short few years here and not as an artist but more of a repackager to help make things easier to install and configure for those who want a setup like I put together.

[Cyber]

I just want to say thanks. I don’t rely on your bezels at the moment but just in case I use them sometime in the future, thanks. Also, I do admire your original work, even if it might be in the form of a derivative or downstream project so thanks again!

[damageinc86]

Mr. Do, you are a pioneer and a godamn MAME artwork hero! I for one, appreciate the OGs out there immensely. I think I’ve sent you some messages on the old mameworld forums asking for help with a few bezels, but I understand why nothing came of that now lol.
I understand where you’re coming from. All of this stuff is a thankless task. I’ve spent several years doing my own artwork projects, and I’m sure someone out there is taking credit for a file or two, or hundred lol. For me personally though, I’m just happy to have given back to the emulation community, after having benefited so much from it. I think everyone in this community deserves to have the best artwork they can possibly get.
But of course, you should do your best to give credit where it is due. It can be difficult to keep track of stuff you find, especially when a project spans the course of multiple years, but I try my best. I’m sure I wasn’t paying enough attention when i found certain pieces, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot,…but I wouldn’t straight up ignore the fact that so much of my stuff came from the fabulous Mr. Do artwork sets, I mean,…at this point, isn’t that sort of a given that you should be crediting Mr. Do? haha.

[MrDo]

Thank you everyone above… very kind of you.

Apologies, though… something was brought to my attention… so it looks like some clarification is in order:

• The screenshot above was captured from a public post on Launchbox Forums: https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/47724-orionsangels-realistic-arcade-overlays-for-mame-retroarch-updated-10222026/page/17/

• After re-reading that screenshot, I could have mis-read the intent of the reply… after reading it again, he could just be saying “No, that’s not a stupid question.”

• If that’s the case, then that’s valid.

And if that is truly what happened here:

• He didn’t “straight out” tell that person that he didn’t know where the original work came from…
• He still knew…
• He just didn’t actually answer the OPs question at the end of the day.

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

[damageinc86]

I’d say the most valid answer to that question would have been:

Yeah, of course you can get these bezels on their own. I can point you to Mr. Do’s work, and the mameartwork forums, where you can download most of them, and find more by others. Or, since I’ve already compiled everything in order to do my realistic work on them, I can just send you a mega.nz link to the raw versions of everything I’ve worked on so far.

But, that’s just me lol.