The past few days have been slow, which is hardly a shocker, given the holidays. But there's at least one new release that's somewhat the talk of the town: Tweeria.
Advertised as the "Laziest MMORPG ever" by its makers, it wasn't long before word spread of unique attributes. If you want a full rundown, then The Verge has you covered. But long story short, it's a MMO in which every action performed on Twitter is translated into game-like actions and attributes.
Every tweet, retweet, and reply is turned into an attack, movement, and weapon. Basically, if you think gamification is cute, then Tweeria might be up your alley. Too bad it's a concept that has long worn out its welcome amongst most.
Even worse is how the game itself has also exhibited another less than noble trait, one that's totally absolved from one's opinion of gamification: theft.
According to Kotaku, assets from the game has heavily stolen assets from the World of Warcraft trading card game. When Mike Sacco, the creative director of the WoW spin off sought a statement from the game's creators, they responded both directly to Sacco and public at large via their blog.
Their response is as follows:
Tweeria was planned as a small, private, non-commercial and mostly experimental project of twitter-based RPG. Frankly speaking, we did not expect the popularity that we experience now. No wonder, there are some questions on the copyright to artworks we use in the game. Please be assured that we do not want to violate copyright and we greatly respect any kind of art.
So, should the makers of Tweeria be absolved for any criticism for borrowing copy written material, since the game is not for profit? Some to believe so. Though others will also point out that stealing is stealing. Period.
