Why do people make fangames?

[DerVVulfman]

Sorry, but it's not RMXP. They used Oblivion to do it. Not quite the same.

[Victor Sant]

the chrono trigger and morrowind fan remakes aside, ive never seen a good fangame that could stand alone without the source material. i used facemaker because im a pretty sad artist. Thomas Jefferson (i think) said men should strive to emulate socrates and plato, not stephanie meyer and xerox.

http://rpgmaker.net/games/2852/
http://www.santuariorpgmaker.com/forum/i...topic=4325
http://www.santuariorpgmaker.com/forum/i...topic=4825
http://www.atelier-rgss.com/Project/Mana...Story.html
http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/inde...opic=49016

There is fangames that are great...

Thomas Jefferson (i think) said men should strive to emulate socrates and plato, not stephanie meyer and xerox.

People should emulate what they like, not what other people tell them to do. If someone want to make something based on stephanie meyer, if it's not a copy/paste, so be it, the fans of this kind of content will love it (gladly, i'm not one of these)
Many people make great doujin that are as good or better than the original story.

Generalizing saying that people who make fangames are automatically uncreative is totally wrong.
Many people that make fangames are really genius with more creativity than me and you together. (okay, it's not hard to have more creativity than me...)

[KasperKalamity]

so then why don't they just come up with their own ideas? the end if western civilization comes when creativity dies.

ooooook so, i don't read/speak portuguese, so the zelda game is out, ditto on the mana memories and naruto game. the fighting system is cool, but i can't tell what maker it's done with. (why are these all in portuguese?) final fantasy is more of a flavor than a franchise, so that could easily be its own game with different 'spices', and i think the ff7 hype is overblown. i can appreciate the ambition of any 2d remake (aside from ocarina of time 2d, dampe is a cancer), but if you're going to spend all your time on such a huge undertaking, why not spend the time on your own ideas?

on the topic of Jefferson, what i infer he meant was that we should emulate the habits and teachings of great thinkers and doers, and strive for more than appealing to the broadest demographic, or just copying copies of copies, but that's beside the point.

[yamina-chan]

so then why don't they just come up with their own ideas? the end if western civilization comes when creativity dies.

I have no idea what the second half of this is supposed to mean, so I will focus on the first half; the question.
Why don't they just come up with their own ideas? Because in that situation, they don't want to. They want make a tribute to something they love verry much and share that love with others. That does not necessary rule out the possibility to never make a game that its not a fangame. Of course, some people are really bad at this. Like, really bad. But you will find that with original games as well. I'll just say Ankluas.
But there are also those who are good at what they do and if they decide to use that skill to make a fangame, so be it.
Of course there is no guarante that it will turn out to be good or liked by other fans. But again, that can happen with original material as well. Think of Remakes of games. Or Movies. Or adapting books to movies. Sometimes it turns out fantastic, and sometimes not so much.
That can happen from the "official" side as much as it can from the "Fan" side.
Also, as someone who writes original storys as well as fanfictions, besids teh challenge factor that I allready talked about, sometimes you have really no say in the matter of what you work on. What I mean by that is that sometimes you'll just get an idea. Uncalled for, not purposely. You just have this idea suddenly, and it is strong. You think about it for a moment, and you find it to be really good and interesting. And possible to work with. And then you'll get excited and want to explore that idea further, work with it and you want to find out what the finall result will be like.
Those ideas won't leave you alone. It might take a while to get it done, but those ideas stay. And you simply have to work with them.
About 90% of the storys on my own list came up this way. I write about things that I'd never thought I'd write about simply because I had an idea that wouldn't leave me allone.
You can't chose what ideas you have, you just have them.

-I know, I'm saying you a lot. I speek from personal experience only but I belive this is the same with many other people out there.

[Victor Sant]

so then why don't they just come up with their own ideas?

Becase of something named free will. There is no rule that says that people MUST do 100% original things to show their creativity. I can use my creativity for what i want, not for what people think would be a "good use" of it.

As yamina said

They want make a tribute to something they love verry much and share that love with others.

If you can't undestand this, then there's no point dicussing that.

Also, the whole idea of making RPGs on maker isn't original from the start. It's just a rehash of alredy old concepts. So you can't say that some people have less creativity than others, just because their ideas was clearly base on an exhisting thing, since even "orignal" games do exactly the same thing. They just use other names. In fact, there's no original games these days. Only a few genius are capable of make REALLY original games these days.

You talk like people making fan games are necessaryly less creative than people that make original things, but sometimes it's totally the oposite, when making a fan game you are limited to the original concepts and there is all the fan base that expect something good, and to work with these limitations and make something really worth you need a LOT of creativity.

but if you're going to spend all your time on such a huge undertaking, why not spend the time on your own ideas?

Because of something called LOVE, when you love something, why not use your creativity to honor that thing?
What's is wrong to put your ideas into use on something you really like?
Also what universal rule says that people must use their creativity working on original games instead of fan games? otherwise they're less creative?

but i can't tell what maker it's done with. (why are these all in portuguese?)

Because they're from brazilian communities duh! -.-, And they all are from RMXP, excetp the FF7 remake.

[AGAFURO]

so then why don't they just come up with their own ideas?

Actually... in most cases, "coming up with their own ideas" is exactly what they ARE doing. The characters and worlds might already exist, but everything else - new locations, possible new characters that can interract with the already existing ones, the whole storyline and every single event that occurs in the game are all still original ideas that requires the imagination of the creator.

People who make fan games - including myself - are usually attached to certain characters/stories and want to make a "tribute", or something similar. Why do people make fanart and fan-fics rather than drawing their own, original stuff all the time? Sure, there's usually quite a difference in time and effort spent between a picture or a 5-page fan-fic and a whole game, but the "reason" is still pretty much the same, usually.

Sometimes it's just more fun to use characters that already exist, but that you really love, than coming up with ones of your own that you personally don't anywhere near the same level of affection for.

...and just like others are more likely to click on and check out a "Flandre Scarlet x DMC Dante" fanart, thinking; "holy-crap, it's Flandre and Dante!" than checking out your completely new and original character fan-art, I believe especially people who are making their first games are more likely to get their games recognized than people making something completely new.

Finally... especially when making a multi-fan game that's not simply "an FF fan-game" or "Bleach fan-game", but more like a; "Super Mario x FF x Touhou x Xenosaga x Shakugan no Shana fan-game"... then, it's REALLY a creative challenge to make it all go together and make the characters interract while remaining true to the originals.