Category: Marketing/Business

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Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business

Copyright Not a Minefield Just for Indies

I originally talked about the dangers of working with existing protected works as an indie developer. Having the means to afford a legal team isn’t a guarantee of immunity, either.

In the Gamasutra news entry Ghost Rider Creator Files Suit Against Take-Two, Others, it seems that Gary Friedrich is literally suing Marvel, Take-Two, and others for making a bad movie based off his work. While the suit claims he has owned the exclusive rights to Ghost Rider since 2001, meaning that the movie was an infringement of his copyright, he is also accusing the defendants of “waste”.

Imagine if you owned the rights, trademarks and copyrights, regarding a popular character. Then imagine that someone makes a movie about the character, butchering parts of it, and then doing a terrible job of advertising. Now your own rights are worth less than they did before the movie was made because people associate this movie with your work. And you never gave them the rights to make the movie in the first place!

It just goes to show you what a minefield licensed properties can be. This situation reminds me of the SCO/Novell/IBM/Linux debacle.

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

Chicago Indie Game Meetup Tomorrow Night

It’s been a long time coming, but the next Chicago Indie Game Developer Meetup is here. Check that link for contact information to learn the super secret location.

It’s at Rohit’s place at 7:00 PM. That’s all I can say.

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Game Development Marketing/Business

New Gibbage Website Offers Cash to Indies

Announced in the Indiegamer forums, Gibbage is now sharing its money with indies.

For most, going ‘full-time’ indie is a mere pipedream. Without cash upfront, it’s difficult to be able to dedicate the amount of time and resources necessary to make something truly awesome. Frankly, this is a tragic loss for us gamers, because what these people can do with a couple of lines of code and a copy of Photoshop is nothing short of astounding.

…

From now on, every penny of profit this site gains will be plugged directly into funding future independent game projects. That doesn’t mean me hacking together some rubbish code while slurping on caviar you’ve kindly provided, that means hiring professional artists and coders to make interesting, high-quality, funny, funky and brilliant games for you to enjoy.

Basically, Dan Marshall is making enough money to survive that anything he gets from Gibbage will be given back to the indie community. If he sees a struggling indie doing cool things on a practically non-existent budget, he’ll contribute part of the earnings to that budget, which will presumably make the cool things even cooler.

It’s an interesting idea, and Dan, the mind behind the popular Gibbage game, is certainly taking a brave step with it. It seems to me that he has taken on the guise of an angel investor who is very aggressive about giving away his money. He explained a bit of his plans on IndieGamer.

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Game Development Marketing/Business

Mastering the Craft Registration Is Open

If you missed out on GDC (or not) and are involved in online game development, you might want to register for the Mastering the Craft Series. There is an amazing lineup of speakers, including Daniel James of Three Rings, famous for the online game Puzzle Pirates.

The program outline is heavy on infrastructure with seemingly little discussion about online game design.

Through four separate one-day conferences, the Mastering the Craft Series’ mission is to provide a focused venue to address very specific operational challenges in a spontaneous and engaging format.

Registration is $595, although rumor has it that there are discounts to be found…

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Game Design Game Development Games Geek / Technical General Marketing/Business Politics/Government

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.

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

Great Games Experiment: Social Networking for Game Players and Developers

Great Games Experiment

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.

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Game Development Marketing/Business

Production Lag Bad for Business

After filing my taxes and learning that my business operated at a loss last year, I realized that I needed to focus on results a lot more than I have been. I can’t sell anything unless I have something to sell, and I haven’t been doing a good job of creating that something. It is already March, and so the first quarter of the year is finished. I thought about the progress I have made for the year, and I am not pleased with it.

Before January, my Space Invaders clone was playable yet unpolished. I’ve since improved how playable it was, fixing the code that handles frame-rate independent movement and tweaking how the aliens move. I have added a simple text-based HUD and most recently played around with a decent font to use.

It shouldn’t have taken me three months to get to this point, and I still need to add quite a bit if I want non-technical players to be able to pick it up and play. I have already decided that I need to release a standard clone as v1.0 before I bother trying to create something innovative. Taking more time to release something just means that I will take just as much time to start work on something new.

My business and I have been coasting along on only a few hours a week. It is a common problem I seem to be having, and maybe these days I’ve added a few hours to my weeks, but I need to consistently put in at least 10 hours a week if I want to get significantly more completed. 10 hours a week is two hours a day, five days a week, so it shouldn’t be too hard to do at all, especially since I tend to work on weekends.

So, what’s left? As far as code is concerned, the major thing I need to implement is a simple menu system. It’s simple in that all the options I need to provide the player is to start a new game, view the credits, and exit. When the player pauses the game, it should ask if he/she wants to quit. There are still a few more code-related things, but they are related to my content needs.

Since silent video games have been out of style since the 1920s, I will need to add sound effects at a minimum, but I may have to skip adding music if I want to release something sooner rather than later.

As for graphical content, programmer art, as sexy as it may be, needs to get replaced. I think I am pleased with the fonts I have chosen. I’ve spent a few sessions of development just looking at them in the context of the game, and I am ready to move on to something else. The various entities in the game need an overhaul. The player’s ship doesn’t even look like a ship, and I don’t like the idea of a ship hovering back and forth on the ground anyway. I would prefer that it look like a tank, with a turret that faces up. Actually, there are plenty of theme changes I could make, each of which requiring different graphics needs, but I can concentrate on choosing among them after v1.0 is released. The same goes for replacing the static alien and missile sprites and the boring explosion effects.

I want to add a menu system sooner rather than later. Other than sound, the menu is the only part that is missing, and it will be easier to code up a menu system than to create or find decent sound effects.

Will this game improve the bottom line for my business? Probably not by itself, but the sooner I finish it, the sooner I can work on something that people may be willing to pay to play, and the sooner I can join the ranks of those people who claim to have truly finished a game. Taking a longer time to finish this game than necessary is a huge liability for my business.

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Marketing/Business Politics/Government

LLC Annual Reports

It has been about a year since I first formed my LLC, and I have already submitted my tax return. Without going into specifics, GBGames, LLC posted losses in its first year. Looking back, I can say that one of my problems was that I didn’t do a very good job of managing my business (or myself!), but I can write about production and self-management in another post.

Last week I submitted my annual report to the Secretary of State, and it was easy.

In Forming an LLC in Illinois, I described the steps necessary to create a limited liability company for yourself. The initial payment of $500 required something other than a regular check, and I used a cashier’s check when I created GBGames, LLC. I was not sure if I would need to go through the trouble of getting another cashier’s check to pay the $250 annual fee, but it turns out that you could send a regular check.

Filing the report was pretty simple. The state sends you a form with your important information: business name, the primary contact, and principal business location. If nothing has changed, sign it, enclose the check, and mail it off.

The most confusing thing about the process was the difference between the address on the provided envelope and the form itself. I imagine it eventually gets to the same place, but why provide an envelope with a different address from the one that the form says it should go to?

In any case, GBGames, LLC will be going into its second year on March 22nd. Hopefully it will be a profitable one. B-)

Categories
Game Development General Marketing/Business Politics/Government

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.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business

How Sony Killed Its Brand

I found this video on YouTube called PS3 Song that puts a video together with the song “How to Kill a Brand” by Doc Adams. It is actually a good look at how Sony’s marketing hype machine (“4D Graphics”? WTF?) and uninteresting game lineup failed to dazzle gamers and prevent Microsoft and Nintendo from basically laughing all the way to the bank.

Even if you don’t think that there is anything wrong with Sony, the song is a good parody.