Since the Marathon plagiarism controversy came up, questions about the extent of the plagiarism came up for debate. We’re going to try to explain some aspects of this debate, before diving into some new, very damning allegations.
As we reported last week, an artist named fern hook, who uses the handle 4nt1r34l on Twitter, alleged plagiarism of her art by Bungie, on Marathon. While Bungie admitted the plagiarism immediately and promised to fix things with fern, fans ended up becoming so furious that they have been publicly swearing to boycott the game. But how did it get this far? And are these accusations fair?
We would like to clear up one thing now. There was some early confusion that fern hook invented the entire aesthetic that you can see in Marathon, but that is not necessarily the case. As explained by Tim Soret, poelll, and Riloe on Twitter, and also discussed by YouTuber Jake the Alright, one can trace the graphic design inspirations and precedents for Marathon, many of which existed before the 1st Marathon game released, and before fern hook was even born.
Of course, some of those inspirations would have been obvious to some fans. We can easily see how the anime franchise Ghost in the Shell and Psygnosis’ Wipeout video game franchise are recognizable inspirations for things we can see in Marathon. But perhaps the most important graphic design trend in display is graphic realism. As applied in real life by the F1 and Moto GP racing associations, and shoe brand Nike, this trend focuses on making easily recognizable symbols using shapes and colors. This runs in complete opposition to how Apple used to make iPhone apps that copied the appearance of real life objects and items.
Graphic designers would then make those shapes and colors interesting, by using bright hues or evocative imagery. The Nike swoosh logo evokes the idea of motion, and the new F1 logo does the same thing. Of course, artists like fern, and Marathon’s art designer, Joseph Cross, do a lot of other things do, but this should give you an idea about the general direction of their designs.
So it wasn’t like fern invented how Marathon looks like on her own. But that still does not explain the full scale of potential plagiarism on display. Another artist, Billiam, revealed that he was with fern in the art collective antireal.
In a thread on Blueksy, Billiam shared even more evidence to bolster the claim that Bungie was guilty of even broader plagiarism of the work that antireal has been doing for years. Even more damningly, Billiam revealed that Bungie staff, including Joseph Cross himself, had been following antireal and their works for years as well.
The circumstantial evidence really is damning, and it’s clear that Cross and Bungie has to address not only fern, but Billiam and potentially other artists in antireal. This may be part of the reason why Bungie hasn’t shared their intended solution, and we may need to wait a while before we do find out their course of action.
