Tuesday 29 March 2011

Plagiarism, penalties and punishment

Now as I sit on the back row of the computer I can usually cop an eyeful of others students progress and something I’ve started to notice more frequently is the use of downloaded textures.

Now it clearly states at the bottom of every brief, in bold red text, that downloading textures is plagiarism and you may fail, but quite frankly I don't think this is quite getting across to everyone and the punishment that should follow has yet to be demonstrated.

I have a couple of non-game art friends who have witnessed a fellow course-mate kicked out of uni for plagiarising a mere 300 words.

Culprits on this course use the excuse that 'well industry do it' but this is a university course not a games company.

It infuriates me because at the start of every project I carefully plan outings to gather photographs and textures for my own library, this process can take up to a week as I patiently wait for the perfect overcast day. Whereas a few fellow course-mates never leave the comfort of their room and just happily click away taking a whole 5 minutes to complete the process.

It just annoys me to think that there students who are going to better marks than me, when I put so much time and effort (which doesn't always show btw) into sourcing my own materials and experiencing the brief in the real world, I mean I rarely even use google for reference.

I know it might take time and effort to cross reference all the sources, but a quick loop around the labs are even a quick look through their texture folders will be more than enough evidence.

Source, live and experience it.

3 comments:

Michael Powell said...

Hmm, we've been having much the same conversation in the office this past week. We've uncovered a couple definite cases which would be considered plagiarism.

The problem comes in proving beyond all reasonable doubt that there has been a deliberate intention to mislead, rather then 'bad academic practice'.

I'd be very interested in getting you and a few others together from various years to see if we can discuss a solution.

Would you be interested?

KwazySheep said...

Of course!

i know i agreed to in person but it looks cooler on here too :P

Blair said...

I agree Rach, I don't think you need to worry about people getting higher marks than you though because your own photographed textures will look better than internet sourced textures anyway. Plus diffuse textures are only a small part of having a successful scene really, if you have awesome shaders set up etc I think they will do a lot to show your work to its best potential.