Vintage

  While on my rather extended vacation, it appears that PA! made the news and I had not the slightest clue!

Katherine Mangu-Ward writes in the May 2008 publication of Reason:

"At least eight video games inspired by the film have appeared, with varying degrees of official sanction. A mobile phone game released by Disney's Internet unit received lackluster reviews while a popular, unauthorized Xbox game borrowed the tide, The Black Pearl, and little else. But instead of suing the peglegs off their unauthorized competitors, Disney simply pulled alongside and joined the melee with its own (free) Pirates of the Caribbean online role-playing game, fighting it out on the pirates' own terms. Disney has stopped seeing at least some of the world's pirates and remixers as thieves, and started seeing them as opportunities for a vast, multi-faceted marketing campaign.

Using the customizable characters from the role-playing game, fans were soon creating original YouTube videos-digital clips of pirates skewering British officers on their cutlasses, for example--from within the world of Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Some of the best were made by the 10,000 fans given passwords for the beta test of the online game at a pre-screening of the third movie, making them officially sanctioned pirate remixers (many of whom take their role literally, showing up to the screening in eye patches and tricorns).

Lots of these fan-fiction films have developed narratives of their own. They are part of a growing movement of machinima, where fans use video game environments to create their own animated movies, many of them borrowing characters or settings from Hollywood blockbusters. *Meanwhile, the unauthorized Xbox game has in turn become the basis for 14 (and counting) user-modified versions at the PiratesAhoy.com online community. "

The whole article centers around how today's youth are re-inventing capitalism. It's the age old saying of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

The unauthorized version she refers to of course, is the Pirates of the Caribbean game released on the PC by Bethesda, and developed by Akella. As most of you know, Pirates of the Caribbean was originally slated to be Sea Dogs 2, but Bethesda, who owned the rights to the game acquired the license to name it in Disney's favor. Rarely in the gaming world does a game released for a movie live up to the hype - and originally the newly labeled Pirates of the Caribbean game proved to be no different.

To make its delivery window and to appease the Mouse, Akella was forced to scrap almost half of its original plans for Sea Dogs 2. Controversial issues like slave trading were dropped from the final design to give Akella more time to loosely wrap their original concept around the movie.

Pirates Ahoy! was born as a fan-site to Sea Dogs 2, and quickly became the hot spot for all things centered around the game, receiving millions of page views a month to the forum where individuals spent countless hours turning a half-delivered game into an on-going creation.

While we of course put no fault on Akella for the way Pirates of the Caribbean turned out, we do in a way owe special thanks to Akella, Bethesda and of course Disney for an inspired opportunity of making this site what it is today. Great things come from some of the smallest mistakes.

You can read more on it through the link on the forum HERE.

*Source: Mangu-Ward, Katherine. "Pirate Capitalism: Remix Culture Goes Corporate" 2008, May. Reason