And what of selling merchandise promoting a brand based on another intellectual property?
A murky swamp of law. If your unlucky, the rights holder has a trademark and everything (patent, that sort of thing) and will sue the fuck out of you.
If your lucky, the rights holder never finds out or considers it 'different enough' to be considered your work. Fan art and covers are always 'own work' btw, although the characters used might be trademarked.
I mean, up until very recently I had no idea the rights of Marvel Mutants, Fantastic Four and so on, are all owned by Fox at this time ("one hell of a post" ..
) . Which is a real bummer. One thing worth nothing is the concept of say, Superwoman, which DC has made into a single issue for the sake of owning the name and character build.
I don't really buy the 'view versus play' argument, since there is no difference in terms of law. But it is true that a movie is 'viewed' (once) and a game is 'played' (often more than once) and people might still find the product valuable after viewing its content. Even if that leads the game industry to allow it, it's still a murky business because they usually don't own the content used to make the game either (licensed!). You are just as likely to have your youtube movies removed on the ground of music, as you would be on the ground of the complete game or the use of a certain picture or video material in the game that you show. For instance: cutscenes tend to make by another company, meaning they have a claim to your video if you show (CG) cutscenes, even if the publisher of the game allows you to place them without consequence.
In the end, it's really just a matter of "are you being trolled?". No better way to say it really.
(the same goes for the opposite scenario of copyright infringement or downright copying in China though, against which the right holder is quite powerless. Which is a real problem if you have a small company and no funds to sue)
As for DBA and monetizing, I think it's actually quite fair to allow them to monetize it under a sharing-agreement with the rights holder. Which is because I'm now not only viewing their material again (which is rare, by the 'view' argument), but because it makes me more likely to actually buy the original product or related ones. That said, the right situation for DBZ is complicated and so far the owners have been 'good sports'. But the problem, to me anyway, is that they hold the ability to revoke their 'unsaid blessing' at any time. A written agreement or even monetizing, has the benefit of making things far less awkward. But that has other problems, like Toei tying its own company name (brand) to some jokes that might not fit with their image. So yeah, murky.
I suppose video games being 'ludic' also has less social costs in terms of image. I mean: I sure as shit wouldn't want to have PewDiePie anywhere near my brand, if I had any. But nobody connects them in that manner anyway, it would seem. I suppose that's also a reason the game industry has less problems with monetizing. So not so much 'play', but rather the reduction in social cost to their brands as an argument.
Sorry for being so lengthy. But this stuff is interesting social behavior, imo.