» Fri Jul 22, 2011 11:40 pm I'm Wazz Azzle/Vertigo Fox, the guy who wrote 19 songs to replace the midi music for the official release of Descent Vignettes, in the Descent WiiWare port.
First off, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to get music I wrote into an official Descent release. This is something I always wanted to do but thought I'd never be able to do it, so I'm understandably grateful.
That said, I have a problem with the legal agreement you had me sign a while ago. Nothing huge, but I think it would be best addressed anyway.
To best understand what I mean, I should explain to you the circumstances under which I wrote these 19 songs that I gave you -- they might not be what you thought.
First off, these were obviously not done in a day -- that doesn't need much explaining. With the exception of one of them ("Roc Wurmz"), these 19 songs were written over a period of four to six months, and, when they were being written they really had nothing to do with each other or with Descent, they were written for the sake of writing songs, and because I wanted to try writing some songs in a different style than my normal one. Roc Wurmz was written before I signed your legal agreement, but after I agreed with DarkFlameWolf to hand over some of my original music so that Descent Vignettes would have its own soundtrack in the Descent WiiWare port. I made it when I realized we needed one more song to keep the total at 22 -- including R.a.M. Land's three songs (19 + 3 = 22, of course
).When originally written, these songs were in no way related to Descent Vignettes -- in fact at the time I started writing them Vignettes had already been released six months before. The songs do not have any relation whatsoever to the midi music in Descent Vignettes, and they had never been used in a Descent mission until I gave them to you so that you could use them in a Descent mission. Unless the license agreement for Descent says that "any music written by an owner of Descent is a derivative work of Descent", the songs were never "derivative works" of Descent, until I gave them to you, completely of my own free will, so that you could make them into that.
This is where my problem with your legal agreement comes in. I've grown up expecting politeness in my dealings with others, politeness both from me and from the other parties involved. This holds even for legal agreements like the one I signed with you.
There is no good way to say this, so I just have to be blunt -- your legal agreement was quite rude especially considering the circumstances under which I made these 19 songs and gave them to you. You may have misunderstood the circumstances under which the music was written, which is understandable and entirely forgivable considering the confusing, rushed circumstances of this legal exchange, but even so I would have expected at least some implication of gratitude. What your legal agreement implied instead, was this:
"We'll be taking this music Fox... we've decided to use it now. Since we can, we've decided it always belonged to us... oh don't worry, there's no need for you to thank us, or for us to thank you -- after all, you're just giving us something that we've just decided was ours to begin with."
Think about this for a minute, especially in relation to what I said about how and why the music I gave you was created.
You don't need to respond to this, gamesas, but I would like you to read it, and think about it. After all, having a polite, respectful relationship with your past, present, and future customers, that puts your corporate ego aside, is a great way to stay in business. As a publisher, you have customers on two sides -- clients and buyers -- so I think this is especially important.
Thank you for your time, gamesas. When I die I want to be dissected by some mad genius and used in one of his evil schemes.
It's good to be part of something bigger than yourself.
