Some Questions:
It seems like it's two completely different games here people are talking about, the first post with the screenshots and the video post seems to be quite different. Like the graphics seem to be much better in the screenshot, am I getting this right? Or is it actually just the same game?
Some Viewpoints:
Huge wall of text incoming. Just wanted to give you guys an "(half) insider" perspective on the situation.
Disclaimer: From Hong Kong, considered to be part of China, but with a different legal and political structure.
Quite obviously both (or if they are the same one, the) games are blatant rip offs of Mount and Blade. For the screenshots, the maps are almost identical to the Arena and ruins. For the video, the blocking, punching animations can be considered direct copies of Warband ones. Without doubt, the games are
illegal copied games of Mount and Blade. For those arguing against it, they are either not looking at the evidence provided or just lying to themselves.
Before I go on with my other points, I would like to give some background on the copyright situation in China. China has almost no, or just nearly unenforceable copyright laws - there are much more blatant copyright issues unaddressed which spans across the internet industry to even theme parts and much much more - this MB ripoff, is nothing special and nothing surprising. (Examples http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1998580,00.html). But there are two common misconceptions,
firstly, China does not only ripoff foreign products, this is not an "anti-foreigner" thing. Secondly,
the reason behind these "rip-offs" are not completely commercial, but also political for some cases. I mentioned the first point to point out not only foreign companies are being damage by such a system, plenty of small Chinese companies come up with successful innovative products that get pushed out of the market and 'eaten' by big companies that can copy their product with much more marketing and R&D budget -
small Chinese companies are being hurt by this system too. To elabourate on the second point, China has it's own Facebook (Renren), WhatsApp (WeChat), Twitter (WeiXin or something), Google (Baidu), Google Maps (cant rmb), Wordpress/Blogger/Tumblr (Sina or something), again
the prime motivation is not to damage foreign companies or gain an economic advantage, but to gain more control over the Internet in China due to political reason. Obviously, for MB ripoff, the motivation is most purely commercial, but to understand the whole situation such a digression was necessary.
Building on the last two points, I would like to bring out a new perspective that is often not understood when outsiders look into this issue. Firstly, many Chinese are victims of this system and do not agree with it. The system in the end only benefits 1) the big companies (which is partially owned by the government and other powerful people in the society), and 2) the government's control. And hence, unless mislead by some propaganda, the general Chinese citizen, especially web-citizens actually condemn this system. It is easy to collectively view
the government, the rich, and the citizens as "China", but saying that this collective "China" gives
no ****s about intellectually property and fairness in the market is also blatantly wrong.
While I do completely agree that this system
has to go, and eventually, without this system, China and the world will be better off with more intellectual innovations,
it is not such a simple issue to just enforce copyright laws. There are two issues - one is that the people in power obviously do not want copyright laws, as they are the benefactors of the lack of these laws. You might go on to use this as a point of how democracy is great, or why China needs a better government etc...
but to draw a parallel, the US can be said to be in the same ****ed up state as of now - with the income inequality reaching new highs, the blatant greed shown in the financial collapse,
no true solution in income inequality, to reducing the income of the top 1%, to stop 93% or something of the income recovery after 2009 going back to the top 1% has been implemented. The reason behind it is the same, the powerful (the rich/politians in US, and the officials/rich in China) are gaming the system. So, I feel it is unjust, or pretty hypocritical for people to bash on the Chinese system, when these issues are equivalent severe in other aspects in the US. To bring out a slightly controversial point,
I believe outsiders are being excessively harsh on China, given the social developmental stage it is in. Read this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/04/26/economically-russia-is-roughly-where-the-united-states-was-in-the-1950s/. China is even behind Russia in terms of GDP per capita,
it is easy to look at China and say, wow it's the second biggest economy or even soon to be first, but in terms of PER CAPITA, China is way way way behind, and is extremely poorer than the USA. Current China's Economic develop is just similar to the US in the 1940's, when
US still had segregation, the UK still had highly inhumane colonies. China certainly has it's problems, but it is unfair to judge the progress and develop of China from the perspective of the Western social development stage. In fact, I must say
after studying in the US, given the vast resource US has, the vast ideals US upholds, and the harsh critiques they give to other countries, I am much more disappointed with the corruption, inequality situation in the US than that of China.
I apologize for the huge digression, but generally the points I really wanted to convey is:
[list type=decimal]
[*] The system does only hurt foreign firms, but it's hurting Chinese people just as much
[*] Such blatant copying is shameful. And the general population is ashamed for the firms who do it, and the government that allows it. Please don't generalize such actions from the firms and the government as the representation of the viewpoint of "China"
[*] Finally, The foreign media needs to stop blatant lying to portrait China as some huge threats that are using unfair practices for world dominance. In reality, people are still freaking starving in China, and we are just trying hard to catch up economically to live a happy peaceful lifestyle. It is true that we're ****ed up in a lot of aspects, including copyright issues, but on the scale of things, we have a tonne of other problems to deal with, and reality is, we know it is a problem and we are trying to deal with it, but it is hard, just like the income distribution reforms needed in the US.
[/list]
Lastly, those who think we're "intellectually inferior" so we have to copy things - all I can say is
. We had a few great modulers (e.g. rubik) from China on this forum, and if you care to look at the Chinese forums, the talent of Chinese modulers are immense. It's just too bad we don't have a good system to economically encourage innovative development and hence all the copying; certainly not due to intellectually inferiority
.
Non-politcally Viewpoints:
Taleworlds seriously needs to keep us in the loop for Bannerlord. It's been like 3 years, we're just awesome fans - and yet all the give us is a <10 min interview, and a teaser video that really could have been made in 5 hours...
The community involvement with regard to the development of Bannerlord has been horrid compared to the early days of Mount and Blade and Mount and Blade: Warband. Being a "bigger" company doesn't mean the community cannot be balanced, look at Riot Games, they're still doing a great job at keeping the community in the loop, adding player involvement into the game development.
With all these new competition coming up, I think Taleworlds should try to do more to keep the community excited and invovled...
