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Hasbro And Game-Design Lawsuits
Athyra writes: "This is chilling news -- Inside Mac Games is reporting that Hasbro has been successful in their attempts to get a number of manufacturers of classic-style games ("taxman," "Missile Defender," etc), claiming that Hasbro owns the gameplay concepts used in these games. Considering how most games are built on just a few stepping stones, this could have a chilling effect -- will the designers of Gran Turismo be sued for ripping off Pole Position? Will Broderbund have to pay Myst's profits to the folks at Infocom and SAGA? And what happens if someone can prove ownership of 3D action games? No more Quake sequels?" Update: 04/20 12:23 by E : It should be pointed out that the companies settled out of court for money, and a promise to not sell the offending titles anymore - no legal precedent was set.
Does this mean we won't see a digital ripoff of Hungry Hungry Hippos?
Maybe we could port it to Linux, GPL it, and update it for today's tastes -- "Pimpin Pimpin Penguins".
Well, it looks like The Onion got the scoop on the government's response before any of the others.... kinda scary, actually...
(For those of you too lazy to go look for yourselves, the headline reads "Federal Judge Rules Parker Brothers Holds Monopoly Monopoly"--Parker Brothers did the computer game in conjunction with Hasbro.)
James-rt
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Now, I think it would be GOOD to buy FIVE or SIX STUDEBAKERS
and CRUISE for ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING!!
Let's look that this calmly, without going all nuts about big corporations and patents and the GPL and so on.
If someone writes a game that really is a clone of Asteroids or Pac-Man or Centipede, as is way too common among shareware authors, is there really an issue about whether or not they swiped an existing design? The arguments I've seen against this are from people who seem to think that they can write an Asteroids clone and claim it as an original they can make money from. Now we're not talking about games that are simply in the same genre, as Pole Position and Daytona are, but games that feature a ship that moves via thrust and rotate that shoots floating rocks that get smaller each time, the only things that shoot at the player are little spaceship things that come out occasionally, and the game ends when all the rocks are gone. Is that Asteroids? You betcha.
Legal and moral issues aside, I see this as more of a complete lack of creativity on the part of many amateur game programmers. There are endless concepts for games, just as there are endless concepts for stories (Orson Scott Card has given seminars on this topic). Starting with the basic Asteroids concept, you can go crazy in all directions. How about eggs instead of rocks and groups of creatures come out when you shoot an egg, instead of simply breaking into smaller eggs? How about making the rocks explode into showers of sizzling, trail-leaving pieces when they collide, making for great chain reactions? How about replacing the rocks with spinning flowers that throw seeds that can grow into new flowers? Those seeds can be collected by the player by running over them before they get fully grown.
All of these ideas are off the top of my head, and yet all of them are way more creative than any existing "Asteroids enhanced" that we've seen over the years. Perhaps the best example is Atari's own Millipede, a 1982 sequel to Centipede. This game included all sorts of great additions to the original game: DDT bombs the explode when shot, swarm attacks, an inchworm that kicks the game into slow motion mode, mushroom growth, a moving mushroom field, a ladybug that turns mushrooms into unshootable flowers. But look at what enhancements have been done to Centipede by oh-so-creative game designers over the years. Powerups, mostly. Higher resolution graphics. Digitized sound. That's not creativity, that's just out and out knocking off.
It seems likely that they're merely exploiting their position as a deeper pocket than most any video game company to win out-of-court through fear-induced settlement. Hopefully one of these conglomerates (with acquired copyrights to old games) will eventually come up against someone (a) large enough to defend the matter in court and (b) with a sufficient financial and moral motivation to actually do it.
In this particular case, they probably only own the rights to some games in some contexts (Pac-man is the Midway licence of a Namco game, for instance; AFAIK Atari only had the rights to home computer renditions, via the 2600 licence and later Atarisoft). Tetris was probably just the arcade version licence.
In any event, this sort of chill on new versions of old games might actually be invigorating; I've enjoyed playing retro versions of cool 80's ideas, but I'd always prefer to see a new idea, and those have been few and far between for the last fifteen years or so. Since the game market isn't going away and this sort of precedent also makes any *new* ideas that much more valuable (since you can shake down later derivative versions for, um, protection money), new innovative development becomes that much more appealing and valuable.
Gawd I can't believe I used the word "innovative".
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
To make a case that a copyright (not a patent) was violated, the people you're suing have to have duplicated almost exactly the program that it's claimed is being infringed. I don't believe you can claim you own an entire genre of games simply because you got there first (For instance, HalfLife and Quake are different enough that Id would have a hard time suing the creators of HalfLife.)
Your mileage may vary.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Apogee distributed the shareware trilogy of Wolf3D.
Id wrote the game.
John Carmack
Most hits rip other games' concepts. No, Nintendo didn't create the side scroller; Activision did in Pitfall for Atari 2600 (no connection with 2600). Alexey Pajitnov of Tetris® fame didn't create polyminoes; that was from the Romans. I think you might want to play some "infringing" games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is all rather ironic to me, as just before reading this article, I was driving home and talking with my dad (who is a trademark lawyer) about how themes of stories (shakespeare was the example) are not copyrightable, they are so basic and so representing of humankind that for every story there are tons others with the same theme. (I'm talking about theme such as 'guy meets girl..' or 'family feud, but one member of a family has fallen in love with a member of the enemies family aka Romeo and Juliet or West side story') This seems to me to be about the same thing, themes in games, themes in stories... why are they any different? Often a game is a story (zelda,etc..). Even Doom has a theme... something about aliens..;)
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/m akegames/page2.asp says otherwise.
From their page:
Something I need to mention is that when you make your Tetris game, you can't call it "Tetris". Tetris is a trademark of the Tetris Company who is owned by Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. It is his exclusive right to use the name Tetris, and I believe they may have won a lawsuit saying that you cannot make a falling blocks game with the syllable "tris", as it is obviously playing off the popularity of the of the name Tetris.
However, this means nothing to you if you call your game "The Sky is Falling", or anything without a "tris" in it, as they do NOT own the gameplay, interface, or idea of falling blocks. If you hear anything differently from anyone, tell them you can't own ideas, and if you require further proof you can look up information on this subject at the USPTO (http://www.uspto.gov/ ).
What I don't understand is why Hasbro decided to follow suit on these things. It's not as if Hasbro was attempting to sell these things currently. Like many have said this was ages ago.
If I develope a game and a month or two later somebody comes out with a near clone of my game then yeah I'll get pissed and probably take them to court. But come on, Pac Man is a legacy from nearly twenty years ago. Hasbro isn't loosing out on cash from the sales of these game packs.
What next, does some relative of some dead English Lord sue over PONG because it looks awfuly similar to Badmition or Tennis?
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"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
Steven Wright
Come on. You market a game that looks just like Pac-Man, plays just like Pac-Man, and call it "Mac-Man". The original game is not only copyrighted, but Hasbro is still making money off it.
If not for legal reasons, then for common sense reasons, they deserved to be taken to court.
This isn't a matter of a game being inspired by a classic. Mac-Man and the like are games with no creative process to them.
Besides, there is no legal precedent when the case is settled. The outcome might encourage companys to sue though. If a software company wants to sue when they are being so blatantly hosed, more power to 'em.
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Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
In 1982 (I think) Atari sued Sierra for the game jawbreaker, a Pacman clone. They lost when it was proved that the game was different and had different graphics. Also the suit isn't over yet, If what I read was correct they settled with two of the defendants. Story at: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2552 599,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01 Also see the Extreme Games LLC(one of the defendants) website at: http://www.xgames3d.com/ And one article by a game designer: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/business/features /hasbro1/ If this suit is upheld it could kill the game industry. John Carmack will go from just rich to filthy stinkin rich(if he lowers himself to that level). John if you read this please don't.
About a year ago, I took a creativity class at school (yes, I know, someone will argue you can't teach creativity. Not the point of this post). One of our assignments was to develop a game -- any sort of game, board, puzzle, card, what have you. Our instructor claimed to have come up with several games himself, and sold them to companies such Mattel, Hasbro, Parker Brothers, etc.
Now, obviously, how much our games could be like other games was a big issue. It's hard to come up with something new, as most of the posts in this thread recognize. Apparently, the rule that has been agreed on in the industry at large (not necessarily computer games) is that your game must be "25%" different. How you figure what % of a game is alike and different is something beyond me, but our instructor informed us that court cases have been decided over this rule. It also explains the state of things to some extent; there are a lot of games that are somewhat alike, but maybe changed 1/4 (there are also complete knock-offs, but I don't think you find them so much in the market at large).
If this is all true (and I don't have any documentation or references, sorry), then I wonder how much of this might go over into the computer game industry...
Tweet, tweet.
The people that made Wolfenstein 3D must be jumping for joy.
Yeah! They could sue the makers of Doom, and then the makers of Quake and make a fortune!
Boy, I wouldn't like to be in those rip-off merchants shoes right now!
Acknowledging Microsofts rights to crashes such as HEAD ON, SIDE SWIPE, MEMORY LEAK and BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. "It's just a bunch of useless junk" said Joe of Joe's Salvage.
Joe's Salvage has agreed to cease and desist the use of crashed items based on these and other properties Microsoft owns or licenses.
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1) A bunch of first person gun game clones like House of the Dead.
2) A bunch of street fighter clones.
3) A bunch of racing clones all of which date back to the original Pole Position.
4) An occasional pre-1987 game. It's usually Ms. Pacman.
Console gaming is in slightly better shape. At least you can find some original concepts in the epic role playing games like Final Fantasy or Star Ocean.
It's a shame that distributing those ROMs is illegal, though. We're in serious danger of losing a lot of those old classics from back when game developers were still creative. I'd love to be able to show my kids space invaders running under MAME but that's probably going to be impossible by the time I have kids. Thanks, Hasbro and way-outdated Copyright laws.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I cannot say exactly what the legal ramifications of a cash settlement plus an offer to stop selling the disputed software will do to the industry as a whole but we must remember this: The disputed games were complete rip offs of the Hasbro games with graphics changed. Look at MunchMan, Mac Man, and Missile Defender which are three of the disputed games. I am not so sure that this settlement will translate directly into lawsuits based on game genre.