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Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:38 pm
by AndyC
From an English language perspective, no they wouldn't count as authors. A better word would perhaps be contributors.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:07 pm
by Rorthron
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:53 pm I'm not sure we share the same understanding about "written code".
Perhaps not, but that's not relevant. We are discussing the meaning and usage of the English word "author".
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:53 pm For the sake of argument, if it was a printed book, do you think the artist that created the illustrations appearing inside the book can be included in the list of authors? What about the artist that illustrated the book cover?
These questions perfectly illustrate your misunderstanding. The answer to both your questions is "no". An illustrator cannot be an author. They are entirely separate. In English usage "author" (writer) and
"illustrator" (graphic artist) have different meanings. To be author of a book, one has to have written the text. If, for example, someone wrote and illustrated a book, they would be described as author and illustrator, not just author.

To use "author" in the way you are is not standard English usage. You will see from dictionary definitions that "author" relates to written output (except when used metaphorically). An artist cannot be an author.

If you want to take the examples of people contributing graphics or sound to code, then a case can be made that they are authors, because the ultimate output is written code. Otherwise these also need to be excluded from the list of authors.

Perhaps "autor" is used differently in Portuguese, but in standard English "author" is not used in the way you describe.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:08 pm
by Rorthron
AndyC wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:38 pm From an English language perspective, no they wouldn't count as authors. A better word would perhaps be contributors.
It would be better still, in my opinion, to separate authors and inlay artists. "Contributors" is very vague. An author would not normally be considered a contributor. An author is more than a contributor. A contributor's role is usually quite small.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:24 pm
by Einar Saukas
Rorthron wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:07 pm
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:53 pmI'm not sure we share the same understanding about "written code".
Perhaps not, but that's not relevant. We are discussing the meaning and usage of the English word "author".
If your definition of author is based on "written code", then the meaning of "written code" is very relevant for this discussion.

Rorthron wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:07 pm
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:53 pmFor the sake of argument, if it was a printed book, do you think the artist that created the illustrations appearing inside the book can be included in the list of authors? What about the artist that illustrated the book cover?
These questions perfectly illustrate your misunderstanding. The answer to both your questions is "no". An illustrator cannot be an author. They are entirely separate. In English usage "author" (writer) and
"illustrator" (graphic artist) have different meanings. To be author of a book, one has to have written the text. If, for example, someone wrote and illustrated a book, they would be described as author and illustrator, not just author.

I can assure you, Einar, that to use "author" in the way you are is not standard English usage. You will see from dictionary definitions that "author" relates to written output (except when used metaphorically). An artist cannot be an author.
Again, your argument implies everybody should be excluded from the list of authors except programmers.

Rorthron wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:07 pmIf you want to take the examples of people contributing graphics or sound to code, then a case can be made that they are authors, because the ultimate output is written code. Otherwise these also need to be excluded from the list of authors.
A case can also be made that, if the book illustrator designed all drawings using a computer, then the ultimate output is also written code as part of the resulting PDF.

What's the difference?

Rorthron wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:07 pmPerhaps "autor" is used differently in Portuguese, but in standard English "author" is not used in the way you describe.
I don't think this discussion is related to idiom at all.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:28 pm
by Einar Saukas
Rorthron wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:08 pm
AndyC wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:38 pm From an English language perspective, no they wouldn't count as authors. A better word would perhaps be contributors.
It would be better still, in my opinion, to separate authors and inlay artists. "Contributors" is very vague. An author would not normally be considered a contributor. An author is more than a contributor. A contributor's role is usually quite small.
If you mean a load screen artist is an author but a cover artist is not, what if the load screen was based on the cover? What if the load screen was taken from a scanned cover, with minor changes? Where do you draw the line?

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:41 pm
by Rorthron
Einar, I have just boarded a long-haul flight, so am not in a position to respond in detail and take this discussion further, but please take it from a native speaker that your use of "author" in this way is not established English usage and causes misunderstanding.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:24 pm
by Ralf
It will be a bit philosophical but I would agree with the guys saying the inlay artist isn't a game author.

Is a person doing a book cover a co-author of the book? No, let's take an example. The only author of "Hobbit" is John Tolkien because he has written the text. "Hobbit" is a text. You can publish this text with different covers and it will remain "Hobbit". But leave the cover and replace the text and it won't be Hobbit any more. So cover is a part of some peculiar edition but not a book.

Book <> edition, right ? ;)

A bit different story would be with comics. There pictures are an intergrate part of the work, you cannot freely replace them like the cover

The same would be with a game. It can be with different inlays. You can copy it to another cassette or disk without the inlay. It will remain the same game.

And what if you use, let's say some historical painting for a game inlay? Will it make Micheleangelo, Goya, Rembrandt or Van Gogh a co-author of some game? ;)

So just call it an inlay artist and everything will be all right.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 4:46 pm
by Einar Saukas
Again, the same can be said about load screen artists. It happens sometimes that a certain game is re-released with a better load screen (or receiving a load screen later when it didn't have one).

I'm trying to establish a point here. If we adopt a more strict definition of "author", we would probably need to remove load screen artists too, but I'm sure nobody's defending this idea. Instead, we should be aiming for a more flexible criteria, that would include all relevant information about a game. And cover art is certainly a relevant part of a game, otherwise why are we preserving and discussing them?

Therefore my proposal is, we can ask Spectrum Computing to rename "AUTHORS" section and call it "AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS" instead. Would it solve the problem?

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 6:30 pm
by AndyC
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 4:46 pm I'm trying to establish a point here. If we adopt a more strict definition of "author", we would probably need to remove load screen artists too, but I'm sure nobody's defending this idea. Instead, we should be aiming for a more flexible criteria, that would include all relevant information about a game. And cover art is certainly a relevant part of a game, otherwise why are we preserving and discussing them?
From a purely English language perspective, I wouldn't expect someone doing the load screen art to be listed as an author either. Likewise for a musician who produced in game tunes, although they could be the author of the music playing routine in which case they might well count as a co-author. I'm not entirely sure it's entirely useful to try and completely categorise the details of everyone's specific contributions - aside from probably being quite difficult, eventually you end up needing a category for "Guy who drew the Dizzy playing card that was included in the box".
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Feb 25, 2018 4:46 pm Therefore my proposal is, we can ask Spectrum Computing to rename "AUTHORS" section and call it "AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS" instead. Would it solve the problem?
I'd say so, it's a nice broad term that covers a multitude of sins. :lol:

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 12:11 pm
by Rorthron
Using the caption "Authors and contributors" would solve the language problem. In my opinion, though, there remains an underlying problem that we should not in any case be grouping these people together. Software and inlay mateial are two different things. Shoe-horning the producers of both into a single category is unhelpful.

Take, for example, Catacombs of Balachor (which I have obviouly chosen as I know it well). ZXDB and SC now list the authors as Morkin, Rorthron and Olli Hihnalla. I do not know and have never met Olli Hihnalla. I even had to look up his name. CoB was released without any involvement from Olli Hihnalla. He* was brought in afterwards by Graz for the box cover art. He no more deserves to be listed as "author or contributor" than I deserve to have my signature on his marvellous painting.

It would be better to have separate categories for people involved in producing the software and those involved in producing the inlay materials.

Otherwise, it would be best to omit the cover artist names altogether. Their current inclusion in the archive actually reduces its information value. Yes, there are more names listed, but this benefit is more than offset by the obfuscation of roles. Before it was possible to identify authors on SC. Now it is not.

* I don't even know for certain Olli Hihnalla is male, though I presume so from the name.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:10 pm
by richl
I may have skimmed this thread a bit quickly so apologies if I've misunderstood anything but I pretty much agree with Rorthron. The people who worked on the game should be in one group (programmers, graphics artists, sound/music, etc) and people who worked on the cover art or in any other capacity should be in another.

Also, what happens when you get a re-issue of a game? Quite often the cover art was completely different so it could look like you're crediting someone who didn't deserve any credit whatsoever - tch! In fact, some titles had different covers whilst still full price because the companies involved revamped their house style at various times or just changed the artwork when producing new batches of tapes. Off the top of my head you've got publishers like Level 9, Mikro-Gen, Artic etc who knocked out titles which may have one of several different covers and they're all full price releases.

When you get a novel the author is always credited but you often get tons and tons of different covers depending on which edition it is, which country it came out in etc. I think you need to credit the cover artist as a separate entity and ideally mention whether it relates to the original release of a game or a re-issue and all that sort of malarkey. Otherwise you're just getting in a bit of mushy mess really.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:13 pm
by Einar Saukas
To be honest I don't see too much of a problem here. At Catacombs of Balachor page, it says "Inlay/Poster Art" right after "Olli Hihnalla" under AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS section.

However I certainly don't mind having separate sections for AUTHORS and CONTRIBUTORS! Since that's the preference here, and nobody raised any objections, then let's do it!

But first, there are a few details we need to decide:

What should happen if an artist created both load screen and cover? Should they appear twice, in both sections? Otherwise, won't it be harder to find information if cover art is credited under AUTHORS for certain games and CONTRIBUTORS for others?

What if certain artists were already credited as co-authors from sites without role information (such as old WoS archive), later we identified that these artists created the cover art, but we don't know if they also worked on something else? Should they only appear now under CONTRIBUTORS but not AUTHORS?

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:18 pm
by Rorthron
Einar Saukas wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:13 pm To be honest I don't see too much of a problem here. At Catacombs of Balachor page, it says "Inlay/Poster Art" right after "Olli Hihnalla" under AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS section.
Not for me. I am on mobile, though (Edge on Android).

I would suggest:

SOFTWARE CREDITS: programmer, in-game graphics, loading screen, sound

INLAY CREDITS: cover artist, internal artist, writer (eg Robert Holdstock for The Dark Wheel)

Multiple roles (eg cover art and loading screen) should be recorded separately.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:28 pm
by Einar Saukas
Rorthron wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:18 pm
Einar Saukas wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:13 pm To be honest I don't see too much of a problem here. At Catacombs of Balachor page, it says "Inlay/Poster Art" right after "Olli Hihnalla" under AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS section.
Not for me. I am on mobile, though (Edge on Android).
Chrome on Android works for me.

Rorthron wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:18 pmI would suggest:

SOFTWARE CREDITS: programmer, in-game graphics, loading screen, sound

INLAY CREDITS: cover artist, internal artist, writer (eg Robert Holdstock for The Dark Wheel)

Multiple roles (eg cover art and loading screen) should be recorded separately.
OK, I like this idea!

What about credits for hardware and books?

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 2:38 pm
by richl
Definitely agree on the multiple roles being recorded separately. It's pretty common if you watch the credits on a movie to see people getting namechecked tons of times if they've worked on several areas during the production.

I'm not sure if it's what you're suggesting but I think trying to categorise people's roles as specifically as possible is a good idea. A lot of the credits on WoS currently lump a load of people together and it's not easy to know who did what. I know sometimes the info is either vague or just not available but if someone did the coding, someone else did the graphics, someone else did the sound etc then it'd good to know this.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 5:21 pm
by Ralf
Definitely agree on the multiple roles being recorded separately.
Yes, it's often a case:

Johnny did a code and some graphics
Billy did rest of graphics


So we need:

Johnny: code
Johnny: graphics
Billy: graphics


Is it possible currently to have the same person at different roles at ZXDB?

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 6:08 pm
by Einar Saukas
Ralf wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 5:21 pmIs it possible currently to have the same person at different roles at ZXDB?
Sure!

For instance, see X=Y=Z:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=30139

Bob Smith and Chris Cowley worked on multiple roles each, also several people worked as level designers.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:52 am
by Juan F. Ramirez
My opinion about this is that cover artists and programmers should be included in different fields for every DB entry.

But loading screen artists should be included with programmers (pointing out who made the loading screen).

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:04 pm
by Rorthron
Einar Saukas wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:28 pm
Rorthron wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:18 pm Not for me. I am on mobile, though (Edge on Android).
Chrome on Android works for me.
Incidentally for me this information doesn't show in Chrome, either. Perhaps it's a function of screeen size and page responsiveness. I am using a Galaxy S8.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:10 pm
by Nomad
Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:52 am My opinion about this is that cover artists and programmers should be included in different fields for every DB entry.

But loading screen artists should be included with programmers (pointing out who made the loading screen).
If this information exists, and its possible then some really interesting analysis can be done. Like for example you can now know the average size of a games development team, how common it was for one man bands doing all of the duties in production - to how common it was for multiple developers and fully separated tasks.

I always wondered if it was really true that spectrum software development was driven by bedroom coders doing everything themselves. (over the whole of the software library sure probably a great deal was written this way and brought to market. But what about the games everyone talks about and loves? I think not so much.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:18 pm
by Einar Saukas
Rorthron wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:04 pm
Einar Saukas wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:28 pm Chrome on Android works for me.
Incidentally for me this information doesn't show in Chrome, either. Perhaps it's a function of screeen size and page responsiveness. I am using a Galaxy S8.
When you look at this page, do you see a big square called AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS, right after another big square called RELEASES? What kind of information is visible to you?

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:28 pm
by Ralf
I always wondered if it was really true that spectrum software development was driven by bedroom coders doing everything themselves. (over the whole of the software library sure probably a great deal was written this way and brought to market. But what about the games everyone talks about and loves? I think not so much.
I would say it's 50/50. There is a lot of software made by one man in his bedroom mostly for fun. And there is a lot of software which was created by teams of people who actually each day went to work, worked there and got a salary.

The teams were small by current standards however. Usually about 3-5 people, not over 100 people like in modern superproductions.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:30 pm
by Rorthron
Einar Saukas wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:18 pm
Rorthron wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:04 pm Incidentally for me this information doesn't show in Chrome, either. Perhaps it's a function of screeen size and page responsiveness. I am using a Galaxy S8.
When you look at this page, do you see a big square called AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS, right after another big square called RELEASES? What kind of information is visible to you?
Yes, I do have that box and it includes the role descriptions. I was looking at the general info box, which doesn't have it. Thanks.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:07 pm
by Rorthron
Einar Saukas wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:28 pmWhat about credits for hardware and books?

I don't know about hardware, but books shpuld probably be split between author, editor and/or illustrator. If they need to be bundled together, they could perhaps be described as BOOK CREDITS.

Re: Cover artists

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:13 pm
by Einar Saukas
Rorthron wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:30 pm
Einar Saukas wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:18 pm When you look at this page, do you see a big square called AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS, right after another big square called RELEASES? What kind of information is visible to you?
Yes, I do have that box and it includes the role descriptions. I was looking at the general info box, which doesn't have it. Thanks.
You are welcome!

I believe Peter considered that putting all authors and roles, in a single field inside the general box at the top, would look too cramped and confusing.

Anyway I like the idea of separate fields for main credits and contributions. I will prepare the proper SQL for him.