Hey friends,
Welcome to a new rant from me. I’m an EPIK (English Program in Korea) English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and I recently made a shocking discovery.
Rant Map
Setting the Scene
Let me give you some context first in case you don’t know:
What is YBM Cloud?
One of the most popular English textbook series in Korea is made by the company YBM. YBM provides a supplementary website with the textbooks called YBM Cloud. To have an account, you need to be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to YBM services (in my case, my public elementary school). YBM Cloud provides lesson relevant worksheets, PPT games, interactive web modules, and access to the online textbook. Personally, I only use the online textbook and none of the other resources because I find they are not as good quality as other materials I can find online or make myself.
Who is Tay?
Tayler is the owner of the website Tay’s Teaching Toolkit and is an absolute legend in the EFL community in Korea. Just like me, she is a graphic designer who became an ESL/EFL teacher in Korea! She creates incredibly high quality PowerPoint game templates that can be adapted to any lesson and provides a lot of them for free on her website.
So now you have the background info. Moving onto…
The Incident
I was recently looking at YBM Cloud 2022 English curriculum resources for Grade 6, Lesson 7 and found a couple of PPT games that are incredibly similar to some of the games from Tay’s website, just reskinned into poorer quality versions with a couple of Korean translations.
Now, of course games are copied and reskinned in TEFL communities all the time, and personally I believe borrowing and transforming creative ideas is completely okay and even necessary as a creator. But here are the specifics on why this rubs me the wrong way.
The Timeline
One of Tay’s games in particular that YBM’s version strongly resembles is called Buried Bells. If you’re familiar with the popular game series Animal Crossing, you know that Buried Bells was inspired by Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which was launched in March 2020.
From what I can tell, Tay created and launched her PPT game as early as 2021. The new YBM curriculum is labeled 2022.
*** also update: I’ve been informed that while the curriculum was approved in 2022, the YBM elementary Grades 5 and 6 books actually launched this year, so it’s actually closer to 5 years between Tay’s release and the YBM book release ***
The same English instructions from Tay’s game appear word for word in the YBM PPT game of the same name, Buried Bells. The gameplay is also identical.
However, the visuals have been changed to generic shape designs, with horrible low quality graphics and typography, and no sense of compositional balance (I’m just ranting about design now).
But since the visuals are now completely generic, the whole concept of “Buried Bells” makes NO SENSE, because bells specifically exist within the world of Animal Crossing.
Let me show you what I mean.
The Receipts
YBM’s Buried Bells
Tay’s Buried Bells
It’s as if someone at YBM worked off of Tay’s original work slide by slide without considering how the story IP impacts the game at all.
The fact that the YBM version refers to bell bags as “bags with bells in them” is just strange, especially without the Animal Crossing theme.
Everything is a Remix
Like I said, I don’t mind the idea of reskinning a game. Actually, Tay borrowed the concept of this game from Adam Groff’s PPT game, Rabbit Hole (she credits him on her site), and Adam Groff borrowed the game mechanics from the classic game Minesweeper to create Rabbit Hole (he also mentions this on his site).
So clearly, the docu-series Everything is Remix had it right. People have borrowed, reused, repurposed, and transformed the same creative ideas over and over since the beginning of time.
But this content from YBM is just lazy, uninspired, and plain ugly. I couldn’t find any attribution to Tay or Adam.
The difference is, Tay and Adam borrowed existing game mechanics and came up with their own creative twists on the same idea.
A Sad Truth
It’s possible that some Korean users of YBM Cloud may never realize where these games originally came from or have the chance to use the much better, much more high quality original versions created by Tay and Adam.
Most users of YBM Cloud are Korean-speaking teachers who don’t use Tay’s website. I assume mostly English-speaking teachers use Tay’s Teaching Toolkit. The Korean teachers, maybe not quite as much, and not every school has a native English-speaking teacher on staff who can provide resources taken from English language websites.
I’m not sure how many people have already noticed that this happened because a large quantity of EPIK teachers actually don’t have YBM Cloud accounts. It’s a bit annoying to get registered, so they either don’t use the site (some use a downloaded e-book instead) or they borrow a co-teacher’s login (this is what I do).
Even Sadder
Keep in mind that both Tay and Adam provide their content for free, whereas YBM Cloud is a subscription service.
This feels like an example of a common issue in creative industries, where huge, established companies are profiting off of small creators who generously contribute their time and energy to their communities and are genuinely passionate about their work.
Maybe others have already noticed this exact issue and just weren’t as bothered about it as I am. Or maybe they just weren’t crazy enough to write a whole TED Talk script about it online.
*** another update: a KorShare community member apparently pointed out last year that a different well known textbook company in Korea also appears to have borrowed from Tay’s other work, and Tayler is aware of the situation. ***
To me, it certainly looks like a blatant cut and copy maneuver from a massive, trusted corporation, which is frustrating as a creator and teacher myself. It is clear Tay and Adam put a lot of thought into the student experience. Whether because of production deadlines or other internal constraints, the YBM materials feel rushed in comparison.
Further Evidence
I think I’ve made my point, but just to drive it home, here’s another example of a YBM Cloud PPT game that looks remarkably similar to the game from Tay’s website.
This is an English speaking game called Knockout Game, also published around 2021. I didn’t include all the slides so the instructions won’t make sense, but I wanted to show the comparison.
I think it’s fine for teachers to make their own versions of games like this because it’s so commonly done and everyone just wants the students to have fun. Since this game is so simple, maybe it’s not such a big deal that YBM reused the idea. In this case, I’m more annoyed at the clear lack of effort to create a more high quality design for a paid product.
YBM’s Knockout Game
Tay’s Knockout Game
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Ok, that is all. I think I’m spent.
Please let me know what you think of all this, especially if you are familiar with YBM and the creators I mentioned. I’m really curious about how other people feel. Contact me or comment here with your thoughts 🙂
In addition!! I very recently started a mailing list for anyone who wants to follow my journey with this whole Sidewalk English project. I’ll send email updates whenever I post something new, so feel free to subscribe and support me that way!
Love,
B.
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