Systems, Names, Professions, OH MY

#1 I dont think they can copywrite that kind of stuff, or try and fight you for using it. I think you should make whatever you would want to play. Even if your idea is like SWG(whatever game that may be) and make it yours! I mean add your own functions to inprove their functions, and just make it the way you would want it.

And for the names of the characters..no one has total control over the term "Orc" and anything like that lol. However, dont be calling your main character Duke Nukem, or Sam Fisher, lol then you got a problem with the feds!

Good luck with your adventures! Im pretty sure you have nothing to worry about with using the same base function ideas for games. No one has copywritted the "First Person View" and I doubt anyone will copywrite the a mythical creature. Dont steal their ideas, meaning the whole game, take the good, and leave the bad, and improve! :)

"Good composers borrow, Great composers steal!"-Igor

Steal the good! Leave the bad! and you will be as rich as Bill Gates! Or something!

Have fun!

#2 SWG = Star Wars Galaxies. What I wanted to do was take all the things that are good about many different MMOs and put them all into one system. Thanks for your comments!

#3 Jonathan,

I asked a similar question here on the GG forums a while back regarding copyright and intellectual property.

My son and I are working on a game that is definately influenced by Star Wars and aspects of SWG.

What I got from the posts here is that its ok to have influences from other media (books, games and movies) but you should really come up with your own ideas, stories, characters etc..

We are basing our game on a desert planet. The game does include a "Smuggler" type character but that is where the similarities with Star Wars end. There are no Wookies, Jedi or anything else that someone could look at and say, "Hey, this is Star Wars".

Be very careful what you take from other sources.

And if I can offer one bit of advice from a fledgeling developers, start small!

Steve

#4 If this kind of thing was copywritable, every game using the old-school Armour and Health bars would be owing someone a lot of money...

Or what about carrying an inventory of weapons accessible from hot keys?

It's all re-hashed, re-used and refined. Just stay away from obvious copies and brand names.

#5 I'd suggest you look up the particulars of the Hasbro lawsuit.

#6 Hmmm... not seen this one before..

www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article954.asp

www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=867

guess I'd better cease and desist on my Sonic the Italian Plumber game then :-)


It is quite worrying that people would be so short sighted as to try to prevent ideas being refined, just to make some quick cash.

#7 Wow. Seems to me like we should put the green ribbon on our sites and don't ever buy a game from Hasbro again.

Edit: I wouldn't actually copy things like the wookies or other player types anyway. Mostly what I'm interested in is their OLD professions system (before the lamed it up with this new crap) where you had a smuggler who could 'slice' weapons and armor to make them better. I like that concept. I would be using most of their OLD professions systems if possible with modifications for balance and to make them better basically. That's the parts I'm wondering about?

#8 What about things like spells and such? For instance, can the spell 'Holy Light' that is used in WoW be used and can it heal like it does in WoW or is that protected? Likewise, if a spell is in some tabletop roleplaying system, are you able to use it so long as you aren't using the entire system?

#9 With so many "clones" out on the market today, I'd say that as long as its not blatantly obvious that your ideas are not your own and you're just recreating the exact same game thats already been done then it should be ok to use certain aspects of other games. As far as orcs, elves, and the like Blizzard didn't come up with that, look at Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons for starters. Not to say that Blizzard should be sued for their use of such creatures but if you were to include orcs in your game and say they came from the "Red World", the same place orcs came from in Warcraft then yes you would be stealing.
Hell, in World of Warcraft they have several things called "easter eggs" one is a quest that involves a young elf in green named linken or something who looks almost exactly like link from Zelda and you get his trade mark boomerang theres also two suspicious looking characters that should remind you of two rather famous plumbers. As far as the spells go, "Cure", "Cure II", etc. aren't just found in Final Fantasy so I don't think you'll have too many problems. Then there are so many games out there already that use a Dungeons and Dragons system out there I don't think one more would hurt, and if so you can take a mace +1 you can get in so many games and beat them with it. If everyone came up with completely unique game ideas that have NEVER been done before there would be a lot fewer games on the shelves.

#10 Hmm. That makes sense. I guess my issue would be more in the fact that I'd be using what's called 'disciplines' from a famous vampire tabletop game system. Basically spells for vampires. Only two games have ever been officially created and they both use some of the disciplines in them (with permission and payment to the original publisher). I'd want to use all of the disciplines or most if possible, but figured they had copyright on them to disallow me to.

The main reason I want to, is because both games that they have produced from this system suck major arse. I'm a huge fan of the system and want to create an MMO that would do it justice.

What if I changed the name of the spells with different effects and such. For example, they have one called Obfuscate. This discipline allows the vampire to dissapear, dissapear and move (higher level), make a group of vampires/people dissapear (even higher level) and even erase someone's memory of the vampire ever being somewhere (highest levels). Can I call this MindPlay and have 5 levels of it instead of 10 with the same basic outcome?

#11 Hehe White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade, it does have a nice system in general that could be fleshed out in a video game not to mention pretty creative disciplines "spells", skills, and traits. And yes the games they did come out with were somewhat lacking. I don't see why you couldn't implement a system SIMILAR to it, so many RPGs have a system SIMILAR to D&D and I don't see them paying royalties. Look at it this way, you're writing a research report on something for a school paper, if you were to copy a book word for word without quoting and with out crediting the original source that would be plagiarism. But the grounds of copyright infringement, though similar to plagiarism, is somewhat more lenient. Taking a general idea from life and media has been the way people have been doing it since the beginning; stories, books, movies, and other video games are just a few. Just don't entirely recycle someone elses idea, even if it wasn't illegal rehashed knockoffs get boring fast. On a side note it is nice to practice professional courtesy when using the work of another person directly, such as using any of the vast resources found here on the GG website even if some authors may not require you to credit them, its always nice to do so it even encourages some of them to continue providing such resources and its always great to see your name in someone elses credits.

#12 Yes, V:TM is the best game system I've ever seen. I've already spoken with White Wolf about licensing the system directly, but they basically would require a large sum of money UP FRONT before development would even begin, so I'm wanting to do a similar setup, without digging my own grave.

#13 On a side note... if you know white wolf's system, then after watching BLADE you'll notice the 'book of arabus' as they called it iz a DIRECT knock off of 'the book of nod' which white wolf published. BoN is also known as 'the vampire bible' which is what Wesley Snipes called the 'book of arabus' It's funny how many different vampire-related movies, songs, shows, etc. I've seen/heard that I can recognise white wolf influence from.

#14 Its those subtle differences such as your example that allow a lot of people to avoid lawsuits. Even White Wolf took an idea from somewhere else (a certain son of 2 Biblically famous people comes to mind real fast) the entire "big picture" of the underlining story of the vampires is based on Caine, how he killed his brother, and how he was cursed for doing so. Sometimes the greatest ideas a person has stems from the ideas of someone else.

BTW: you may want to look into Table top RPG rule systems and brainstorm some ideas and improve on a base similar to those, most of them are very similar especially if you look beyond the names of things. That being said I wish you luck.

#15 Hmm. I guess my best bet would be to change the naming conventions and add some new stuff in as far as system goes. Obfuscate is a common word that means things such as obscuring and such, so they can't really tell me i can't use it in a game i guess.