Category: General

Zorro, the Public Domain, and Derivative Works

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 3/23/2007
16 Comments on Zorro, the Public Domain, and Derivative Works

The other day I was thinking about Zorro. Frankly, I love stories about Zorro and The Three Musketeers. I have only recently started playing Dungeons and Dragons, and when I created my character, I decided that he should be a fighter with high dexterity and speed. He also gets a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. B-)

Anyway, I was thinking about the possibility of making a game based on Zorro. If Zorro was created recently, then the copyright might prevent me from making such a game, but if it was an old creation, then it might be in the public domain, which means that I would be perfectly within my rights to create a game based on the stories of the masked legend.

So I searched online and found out that the earliest copyright date for Zorro was 1919 for the pulp fiction serial called The Curse of Capistrano. Shortly afterwards, a movie adaptation followed, and the successful silent film The Mark of Zorro brought the hero to the big screen for the first time. That link will take you to a page that will let you watch the film as it is in the public domain.

So the original story and the first movie are definitely in the public domain. So, anyone has the right to make a movie, video game, or story based on Zorro, right? I would think so, but apparently I might be wrong. I found a post at derivative work which linked to a BBC News report that Sony sent a cease & desist letter to Sobini Films for trying to make a movie about Zorro. Sobini sued and I haven’t been able to find anything about it being resolved, although imdb.com does list Zorro 2110 as being in production.

And I would totally go see it, too. It would probably be like seeing the remake of Planet of the Apes for my birthday…shut up.

Anyway, the point is, how does Sony think that it has the right to tell someone NOT to make a film based on a public domain work? And where does Sobini Films get off talking as if it has aquired the rights to a book in the public domain? EVERYONE has aquired those rights. That’s what the public domain means!

But is Zorro in the public domain? Is there anything about Zorro that isn’t?

I’m not the only one who has these questions. You can’t just trust that Wikipedia has it right, but Zorro is on the list of public domain characters. But what exactly does it mean that Zorro is in the public domain, especially when Zorro Productions exists solely to license the trademarks and copyrights in the name, visual likeness, and character? How can this group exist when Zorro is in the public domain?

I learned that the character of Zorro may have been inspired by people or stories that ARE in the public domain. The Scarlet Pimpernel is an older story that pretty much set the stage for the super hero genre. The hero was a rich person hiding his true identity with disguises. Zorro, Batman, and a number of other characters, especially in comic books, would follow this archetype.

But history also has some influence on the character of Zorro. Joaquin Murrieta was considered the Robin Hood (another legendary hero in the public domain) of Mexico, and “the fictional character of Zorro was in part inspired by the stories about Murrieta”. Now, Murrieta the person may have existed, but the legend surrounding him may be more fiction than fact. His story resembles Batman’s in that circumstances in his life charge him with fighting back against what he considered evil and protecting others from those same evils.

Can I create a game based on the original story of Zorro which is known to be in the public domain? I obviously can’t make a game that was inspired with recently created films, but couldn’t I make my own interpretation of the original story? Couldn’t Sobini Films create a Zorro of the future without a Sony coming after them? Why does Sony believe it has this ability, or specifically why does Zorro Productions believe it has exclusive rights to Zorro?

I did find this San Francisco Business Times article detailing the family behind Zorro Productions. It seems that if they control nothing else other than the trademarks for merchandising, movies, books, games, slot machines, etc, then they pretty much control new creations based on Zorro, even if the copyright status of older works has expired. I had emailed the company, and President and CEO John Gertz responded to say that even if some works are public domain in the United States, the copyright may still be valid in other nations. Interestingly, I learned that a number of the trademarks for things such as video games, board games, role playing games, candy, and all sorts of merchandising were registered fairly recently. Some trademarks have expired, but others have apparently replaced them. Trademark searches are definitely not for those with weak hearts.

So, what’s the status of Zorro? Is he in the public domain, or does some company actually have the exclusive rights to him? It seems that an indie game developer might be taking on a lot of legal liability by trying to make a game based on Zorro. Besides the existing trademarks, the copyright status in the country of a customer might turn that sale into an infringement that costs you big. Unless you are prepared to discuss the matter with a lawyer (and pay for such a discussion!), it might be easier creating your own characters and building up a following. I imagine it might be possible to create your own version of a character like Zorro, but then you would have to step around trademarks that simply use the text “ZORRO” on a video game. Batman is pretty much a Zorro-like character, but he is different enough that he can become his own trademark. No one really owns Robin Hood as far as I know. And there are plenty of other famous legends that are probably not locked away from the public through exclusive rights such as copyright and trademark.

Games Geek / Technical General

Engraved Note to Self

If you are a tourist in the Mazes of Menace, and you find a shopkeeper, do NOT, under any circumstances, take his picture with your camera. He doesn’t like it very much, and he has a problem with overreacting.

*sigh* YASD.

Game Development Games Geek / Technical General Marketing/Business Personal Development

Great Games Experiment: Social Networking for Game Players and Developers

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 3/21/2007
3 Comments on Great Games Experiment: Social Networking for Game Players and Developers

What you see there is my badge for the Great Games Experiment, the social networking community centered around video games. It was created by Jeff Tunnell of GarageGames fame as a platform to get game players and game developers together, solving at least part of the problem of finding an audience for your games.

Since joining, I have submitted a number of entries for the games section and have created one group. Jay Barnson of Rampant Coyote has done such a great job of submitting RPGs that he was given the title of admin of the RPG tag.

Maybe I’ll get the “Obscure games that people didn’t play when they were new” tag admin rights. B-)

In an interview with Jeff, he comments on the benefits for indie members of the site:

Having indie games presented side by side with commercial games should get more recognition for the indies.

Er, why are indie games not considered commercial? In fact, when I am entering information for new game entries, I always find the publisher section weird. The choices are “none”, “indie”, or “commercial”, and if you pick commercial, you get to input the name of the publisher. Why do indie publishers have to be anonymous? Why are indies considered different from commercial in the first place?

Anyway, I’ve found the Great Games Experiment to be a great way to interact with game developers and players. It’s still new, but it is much more relevant than MySpace. And much more stable.

General

Indie Game Dev Podcast: Interview with Caravel Games

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 3/20/2007
1 Comment on Indie Game Dev Podcast: Interview with Caravel Games

Erik Hermansen, one of the major developers at Caravel Games, discusses open source development with Action in the latest indie game developer’s podcast.

Long ago, I emailed Erik about his challenges with using open source for a game. He touches on a few of them in the interview, but I really wish they would have gone more in-depth in what it means to sell an open source game. Otherwise, I was glad to get an opportunity to learn more about what happens behind the scenes for one of my favorite indie developers. There was a focus on managing an open source project as well as Erik’s take on marketing.

Game Development Games Geek / Technical General

Video Games as Educational Tools

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 3/20/2007
3 Comments on Video Games as Educational Tools

Thanks to Slashdot, I learned about a News.com article entitled More video games, fewer books at schools?. Apparently some educators are proposing that video games should be used as teaching tools as much or more than books currently are.

Using video games as a tool to educate sounds like a great opportunity. Reading about economic variables can be mind-numbing, especially without context. It is easier to understand how supply and demand affect a business when you play one of the variations of Lemonade Stand. Learning about history is difficult if you treat it as a series of dates and names that you need to memorize for a quiz or test. It is easier to remember that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th or that MacArthur said “I shall return” when driven from the Philippines if you play a game such as Koei’s PTO 2. Heck, I learned that Japan is in a timezone that puts that date at December 6th because of that game. Solving physics questions might be interesting, but calculating trajectories to launch bananas at opponents in Gorillas can demonstrate the concepts for you.

Good articles can provide balanced viewpoints, but this one had some strange quotes.

“But there’s still a question about the value to the extent that most of the world is not a video game. They’re not getting problems in real world situation,” [Dr. Joshua Freedman] said.

Most of the world is not a book, either. Children aren’t currently getting problems in real world situations anyway. I remember a physics problem involving a car approaching an intersection. You needed to determine if the car should continue, getting safely on the other side before the light turns red, or if it should stop to avoid an accident. I got the answer wrong. Why? Because the teacher did not tell me that the question was not about the safety of the car but about the red light. See, if you treat it like real life, then my answer would have been correct because I took into account the idea that if the light turns red when you are in the middle of the intersection, you’d be fine. The teacher assumed that as soon as the light turned red, the cross traffic’s light turned green AND, here’s the kicker, the cross traffic has instantaneous velocity. If this is an example of the real world settings children are expected to be getting, then I am sure that video games can do much better.

Technology taking over life is an article that touches on Hasbro’s new ION Educational Game System, but it mostly serves as a warning that technology is not a replacement for exercise or social interaction.

Well, neither is reading books, and yet I don’t see articles warning against the dangers of reading to the detriment of health or experiencing life.

I am not claiming that books are bad. I love reading books. I think that books are great for entertainment and learning. I just find it strange that when video games are offered as an educational tool, the arguments against it are that children aren’t getting real world situations or that they aren’t exercising or interacting. Even the person who argues for the need of video games in schools is quoted as saying something negative about them:

My 6-year-old, Julian, can step into a video game and a world of rules and figure them out. He’s not scared of the unknown or scared of failing. I think that’s something valuable that video games provide. But, I want him to experience much more, and [have] relationships outside of games.

And, of course, there are the quotes from the game-playing children who say some of the most uninformed things, such as equating entrepreneurship with hustling. These quotes are almost as bad as the news articles that use child game players to act as the balance to the arguments of psychologists and lawyers.

As I read the article, I got a weird vibe. It was almost as if there was a bias against the idea of video games being used to do more than subvert children. I don’t get it. I think using video games as educational tools is a natural fit. The Oregon Trail taught me history and geography. Lemonade Stand taught me about the challenges involved in running a business. Both expanded my vocabulary, as I didn’t know what it meant to caulk a wagon or what advertising was before playing those games. I learned that “inadequate” meant that there wasn’t enough grass to feed my oxen, which explained why they were dying whenever I got those messages. At the time, I had to look up these words in a dead-tree dictionary. I remember looking up scurvy in an encyclopedia when my character fainted from the disease in The Illusion of Gaia. And there were countless historical strategy games that led me to crack open my history books and read AHEAD of what my class was scheduled to learn in order to understand what really happened in the world I was participating in.

Books and video games. Why can’t they be complementary?

Game Design Game Development Games General

Good IGF Quote by Andy Schatz

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 3/13/2007
6 Comments on Good IGF Quote by Andy Schatz

If you also didn’t get to go to the IGF and GDC, whatever your excuse, you can still watch the awards show at Gamespot. The show was one part inspiration, one part comedy, and one part romance.

This year, the IGF was hosted by former winner Andy Schatz. He’s not only an indie, but a snazzy dresser. He is also a great host, and his opening remarks almost gave me chills. Almost.

We’re indies. Someone else can wear the suit. Tonight’s show is all about the heroes of game development. Tonight we honor the ones who wake up and stumble to their computers in their bathrobes and their underwear for “work” all to pursue the dream of developing the next gaming breakthrough. THESE are the developers that will expand the public’s perception of the power of video games.

99% of us might not make it, and that’s what makes every single one of you a hero.

You. A hero. Chills, right? B-)

Being an indie sometimes means doing things even though there are plenty of reminders that you are likely to fail. The IGF is a highly visible celebration of the victories, and I think Andy did a great job of capturing the sentiment in those few sentences.

Game Development General Marketing/Business Politics/Government

An Indie Guide to Copyright Law

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 3/2/2007
6 Comments on An Indie Guide to Copyright Law

I recently finished writing an article called What an Indie Needs to Know About Copyright.

I wrote it because it still amazes me how many independent game developers do not know about copyright. Either they overestimate what it is that copyright does for them, or they underestimate what it does for other people. The entire purpose of copyright is sometimes confused! What can you do with public domain works? What about fair use? What IS copyright actually protecting?

I don’t pretend that I know everything about copyright law, but I have done a fair amount of research, and I hope I have condensed that knowledge into something useful and easy to read for other indie developers. In the end, there are a few resources you could consult for more details, and of course you should consult a lawyer about anything you aren’t sure about. It’s your business to know, after all, and the expense may be worth it.

I want to thank Keith “Uhfgood” Weatherby II and Kelli Lydon for proof reading and providing some great feedback.

Game Development Games General

The First Carnival of Video Game Bloggers

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 2/19/2007
4 Comments on The First Carnival of Video Game Bloggers

There are quite a few carnivals popping up these days, and the latest one is the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers.

And for the first edition of any carnival, there are many good articles. They covered a variety of topics from the humorous, the rantish, and the serious. Posts railed against the Virtual Console on the Wii and Microsoft’s apparent hate of game players, compared game rental services, informed you how to put together your own arcade cabinet, and even educated you on the benefits of serious games for hyperactive children.

I counted 18 different posts covering those topics and more.

General Personal Development

Don’t Blog Angry

Donâ€™t Publish Blog Entries When You Are Really Angry documents the frustration Juuso recently had with software. It’s never a good situation to be in when your computer shuts down suddenly only to tell you that it seems to have misplaced your email.

I donâ€™t know if itâ€™s Microsoftâ€™s fault or Mozillaâ€™s fault (or my fault), but that really doesnâ€™t matter. What matters is how the heck Iâ€™m going to find those emails again. I have backups, but they are few days old.

Lessons are: backup your emails, and and donâ€™t write your blog when you are angry. I think I managed the second part quite well, itâ€™s the first part I need to practise more.

I picked up a different lesson from his post.

Recently I got upset about unanticipated obstacles to game development I recently experienced and wrote a blog post about it. I railed against inconsiderate SUV drivers and my problems with finding parking after a snow storm.

But did I write about any lessons I learned from the experience? Is it useful to anyone other than as a slightly amusing story about one man’s struggle against the elements and latte-drinking, cell phone-using, yuppie tank commanders?

No, I just wrote while I was angry. It wasn’t very fruitful at all. Calling them yuppie tank commanders wasn’t called for either. Maybe I felt better immediately after clicking the Publish button in WordPress, but how would it help anyone else reading it? How does it help me when I read through the archives?

Why have a blog if I’m just going to post knee-jerk reactions as if I was a newbie on a web forum? I can do better.

In the original post, what I should have been writing about was the futility of complaining about circumstances and situations outside of your control. I lost an extra 15 minutes of development time due to outside circumstances delaying my ability to get home sooner? So what? The really interesting questions: what was I going to do to gain it back? What will I need to do differently in the coming days to prevent a loss of what precious little productivity I have? Those lines of thought are what you should have read.

The real lesson is that things will happen that are outside of your control, but you, as a human being, have the ability to THINK before you act. You can also anticipate that things can and will go wrong, and you can take action to mitigate those problems. Create a backup system and use it. Create a policy of only publishing your blog posts the next day and follow it. Make your plans revolve around the FACT that it will take longer to get where you have to go due to the weather.

But no matter what, don’t blog angry. You’ll be more coherent, relevant, and useful if you write with a cool head.

Game Development Games General

The Carnival of Game Production Is Back!

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 2/15/2007

Once again, Juuso has put together the Carnival of Game Production with a collection of quality articles.