Afraid Someone Will Steal Your Game Design Idea?

Lemeowski writes "Game studios go to great lengths to protect their IP. But board game designer Daniel Solis doesn't subscribe to that philosophy. He has spent the past ten years blogging his game design process, posting all of his concepts and prototypes on his blog. Daniel shares four things he's learned after designing games in public, saying paranoia about your ideas being stolen "is just an excuse not to do the work." His article provides a solid gut check for game designers and other creatives who may let pride give them weird expectations."

Comments

It's actually a good idea.

[Gman2725]

He's creating a public record of his ideas and innovations by blogging in this way. It seems like it would encourage people to steal them, but could also be used in court to prove he had the ideas first. It may or may not hold up in court in the end, but at least it gives him the opportunity to get the credit he deserves publicly for his innovations.

Re:It's actually a good idea.

[rolfwind]

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

We have this collective modern notion that someone gets a great idea and then makes millions off of it. That's simply not how it works in most cases, it never really did and that's what makes patent trolls and the system that rewards them so egregious - they do the 1% at most (and more than likely not buy it or simply take a preexisting idea) and leech off those that do the other 99%.

Ideas are a Dime a Dozen

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Ideas are a dime a dozen ... what matters is execution. That's not just for games but pretty much everything in life.

Re:Ideas are a Dime a Dozen

[umafuckit]

Some of the lecturers in my department are ULTRA paranoid about people stealing their research ideas. They also tend to be the people who work on things which nobody else understands (because it's impossible to have a casual conversation with them about their work and they deliberately hold things back in papers) or who get quietly labelled as crackpots.

On the other hand, people who are quite open about their work tend to get a lot more interest, more input from people with different specialities and more offers of collaboration.

Ideas are indeed a dime a dozen, and execution can be greatly helped by people with different expertise or viewpoints on the matter. People who will outright steal your work are few and far between, and their reputation generally precedes them.

I see this too, but the specifics really depend on the field. In my field it's very competitive and densely packed and most people have become protective and secretive as a result. They don't work on stuff that's weird or unusual, either. When the whole field behaves this way, being secretive doesn't diminish interest in one's work but it does increase the tension between research groups. Knowing who is likely to steal your work doesn't help. Once the field becomes secretive, people are unwilling to even present their data as a talk or poster unless it's either quite near fruition or unless what they're doing is so far-out that nobody else could possibly copy them. Even in the latter situation, though, I've seen people be incredibly secretive about their current projects. Sad, really. We'd all make more progress if we pooled together.

Re:Ideas are a Dime a Dozen

[Daniel Dvorkin]

In my field it's very competitive and densely packed and most people have become protective and secretive as a result.

I think that's a sign of a research field in need of something new and big. Immediately after a major discovery, there's plenty of good, interesting work on its implications, and people tend to want to talk about their work with each other. Once the low-hanging fruit has been picked, the paranoia sets in as people start trying to (stretching the metaphor a bit) shake the tree to dislodge others from the higher branches. "Paradigm shift" is a grandiose and over-used term, but something along those lines is helpful, some new area where people can do good work without worrying about being one of a thousand people doing exactly the same thing. E.g., bioinformatics was starting to show signs of getting a bit stodgy until epigenetics took off, which created all sorts of new opportunities both theoretical and applied--everything from algorithm development to drug design. Fortunately for me, this happened right about the time I was looking for a postdoc. ;) Whatever your field is, I hope it opens up again soon.

Re:Ideas are a Dime a Dozen

[blahplusplus]

"Ideas are a dime a dozen ... "

People SAY this but they don't know what it means. MEDIOCRE ideas are a dime a dozen, GOOD IDEAS are hard to come by. There are tonnes of small things game developers could do when they are endlessly rehashing some first person/third person shooter and they NEVER do it. One can only conclude: They've never had the idea. Because many fantastic and quality ideas are cheap and easy to implement. I look over a game like Rage and I can only shake my head at the level of idiocy and lack of scope control on that project. They put way too much emphasis on graphics so most of their budget was sucked up by stuff that really didn't matter. Knowing what ideas/aspects of the game to put emphasis on is absolutely CRITICAL and that requires knowing WHAT IDEAS HAVE VALUE. Idea's are the schematic for a game, so saying 'ideas are a dime a dozen' sounds wise in principle but HAVING THE WRONG ideas (schematic) for a game means you'll be developing it in the wrong direction. So ideas are in fact critical at every point else you can't make decisions concerning quality.

Someone out there has some killer ideas that no one can understand the value of, because if you're good at game design and coming up with ideas for gameplay. You need someone at your skill level or higher to understand their value.

The real issue is dunning krueger.

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."

"Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Re:Ideas are a Dime a Dozen

[rubycodez]

funded it

Confusing "ideas" with "IP"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Game studios go to great lengths to protect their IP. But board game designer Daniel Solis doesn't subscribe to that philosophy.

I think you're confusing IP with "ideas." IP is often the successful and repeatable implementation of an idea (e.g., a patent). Furthermore, when game studios license IP, it's often to latch onto an established entertainment brand, like "Batman." The actual games themselves are usually formulaic at best, and their "plot" will be exposed on the Internet anyway as soon as the first public Beta comes around.

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Which is pretty much the point of TFA (and in the case F really does stand for fine) but it's worth repeating, over and over, until people get it through their heads that "stealing ideas" is a meaningless concept. Good for this guy for having the guts to say it.

Re: "Board game designer"?

[techprophet]

Believe it or not, some people do still buy and play board games. You almost always have to go to a solid game shop to get decent ones, but they exist.

Ideas aren't really the big thing

[Sycraft-fu]

As Todd Howard pointed out during a keynote "Your ideas are not as important as your execution." The games that are loved and that endure are not the ones that had some amazing idea that nobody could have every thought of before. Heck, they often draw heavily on literature, film, myth, and popular culture. Rather they are the ones that execute their vision well, that are fun to play, that are a good ride.

I can't think of a single game that I've seen succeed just because the idea was so good and so unique. Always, always, always, it was accompanied with good execution. In fact many of my all time favourites are not particularly original ideas.

Good example? Civ 4. One of the all time greats in my opinion. I still play it from time to time. However an amazing original idea it is not. As the number implies, it is the 4th game in the series, they've done the same thing 3 times before. Also it wasn't an original concept to begin with, Civilization was a board game before it was a computer game. That aside, the idea of "a game where you conquer the world" is not that original of an idea.

The reason it is a great game (and its successor not quite as good in my opinion) is the execution. It is well put together, fun to play, well tested, well balanced, has good visuals and music, it is stable, and so on and so forth.

If you think the only thing that will make your game succeed is that its amazing idea be protected until it is released, well then it will fail. Good games are ones that would be good, even if someone had done something like them before, and does something like them after. They stand on their own.

Re: "Board game designer"?

[jonyen]

Settlers of Catan, anyone?

And a good expression

[tepples]

Ideas are not protected

But expression is, and good luck convincing a judge that what you copied is the idea, not the expression.

There are already enough copycats out there, just look at an app store

And some of these App Store copycats are getting sued.

Games are different

[tepples]

Games are no different.

U.S. judges have tended to draw the line between idea and expression in different places for games compared to other kinds of software. On the one hand, you have Lotus v. Borland and Oracle v. Google that weaken copyright in interfaces between a program and a user or between a program and other programs. On the other hand, you have Tetris v. Xio that strengthens copyright in the basic rules of a game.

Re:Games are different

[davester666]

All of which are worthless, because you can't afford to sue [or rather, afford to win the lawsuit].

Re:Games are different

[Somebody Is Using My]

He's saying that the Judge smacked down Oracle's claim that they can copyright an API. Copyright weakened.

Meanwhile, another judge ruled that Xio, although using none of Tetris's code, still violates copyright because it infringes on the core concept or rules of the games. Copyright strengthened.

Re:Games are different

[Theaetetus]

Meanwhile, another judge ruled that Xio, although using none of Tetris's code, still violates copyright because it infringes on the core concept or rules of the games. Copyright strengthened.

That's not what the judge ruled at all. It wasn't the "core concept" or "rules", since those are not covered by copyright; rather, the judge ruled that Xio infringed because of the creative, aesthetic and design features. From your link:

Judge Wolfson took a detailed look at both the Tetris and Mino games in an effort to identify those items that were protected under the law, and there were a number of things that stood out in the Judge’s view. First of all, when placed side by side, various screenshots of the two games were just about impossible to differentiate. The Court stated (and I love this quote, by the way) that “if one has to squint to find distinctions only at a granular level, then the works are likely to be substantially similar.” Moreover, Judge Wolfson spoke to the many elements of both games that were hard to distinguish, some of which included the look, color and shape of the game bricks; the movement/rotation of the pieces; the way the game pieces could be put together to form a complete line; the exact size of the playing area; and other specific design decisions that Xio had copied.

(emphasis added)
It's also on page 15 of the opinion:

The game mechanics and the rules are not entitled to protection, but courts have found expressive elements copyrightable, including game labels, design of game boards, playing cards and graphical works.

Copyright is strengthened by the decision, only in that decades-old precedent continues to be upheld.

Re: "Board game designer"?

[Applekid]

Believe it or not, some people do still buy and play board games. You almost always have to go to a solid game shop to get decent ones, but they exist.

The idea, perhaps, is more along the lines that 95% of board games are crap and would never ever get published, and therefore, would never ever get played.

Except, of course, Kickstarter lets you self-publish. Unfortunately, that doesn't put the game in the 5% category with all the other published games, it's still crap except people will play it once or twice before forgetting about it on a shelf and hoping it's be worth something in 50 years since the print run was so small.

... and this goes way beyond game design

[ZouPrime]

It's true for almost anything.

The world isn't divided between thinkers and doers. People who believe that generally see themselves on the thinker side, and they don't want to do, so it's a narrative that fits them well.

In practice, I've met very few good thinkers who weren't also doers in one way or another, simply because it's very hard to actually have good ideas if you never got down to implementing them. An idea can feel good and sounds great, but if you don't have the experience in knowing what works and what doesn't, how to see and deal with edge cases and exceptions, it's probably not that great - or, put another way, you are probably not a good judge of its greatness.

And that's the biggest problem with the "lets reinvent the world" crowd - if you don't know how the world works, why it works, and if you never actually managed to reinvent anything in your house, in your community, in your business, it's quite doubtful your great idea to save the planet is actually interesting. And it's also why so many of the world's doers seem to do so often the same things, and take the same decisions in front of the same situations - not because they are stupid and ignorant, but because more often than not, they already figured out what works and what doesn't, and the difference between what they can dream and what they can accomplish.

Re: "Board game designer"?

[orgelspieler]

depends, do you have any ore?

It depends on the content

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former IT Manager and head of security for a AAA game studio I can tell you it depends on the content and what is up for grabs. If you have mounds of concept art and CG that will not be stolen. If you have accessible and unique IK and motion capture that will tend to be stolen. If you have UnrealScript and generic level design components no one will care. If you have tried and tested AI and NPC logic that will be stolen. So it tends to reason that ideas along the lines of "I have a streamlined process for integrating dismemberment and AI and it is *******"...yes that will be stolen. Ideas that go like "It would be really cool if the player can ********" no one will care. Just to increase general paranoia I will tell you the biggest threat of theft is not from outsiders but existing staff trading stolen works for a better job if they are unhappy- if you run a studio and are reading this then keeping your staff happy is your number one concern or your whole studio will be traded out from under you for better job opportunities. Confronting such theft should never be done if you love something (or someone) in this case let them be free but just make sure to change whatever was compromised or make it better.

Re: "Board game designer"?

[rogabean]

No but I'm offering wood for your sheep!

Re: "Board game designer"?

[keytoe]

Believe it or not, some people do still buy and play board games.

And believe it or not, they've been gaining in popularity lately.

It's been a long time coming, but the Monopoly Stigma is slowly dissipating. I think Monopoly was the Mt. Saint Hellens of board games. It blew up, left a swath of scorched earth and desolation in a generation of people who grew up thinking games were stupid, pointless and nothing but dumb luck followed by three hours of a runaway winner forcing everyone else to keep playing. Over time, that desolation becomes fertilizer for the next generation.

If you're interested in giving a post-Monopoly tabletop world a look, there are a couple of key resources:

Tabletop

A bi weekly show hosted by Wil Wheaton showcasing a host of "gateway games". He gets three other internet famous (and sometimes proper famous) people to come play a game with him. He lightly goes over the rules, and they play.

A lot of effort goes into showing the fun interactions between the players that happens over the table - truly the best part of tabletop gaming. These are 30 minutes each, professionally produced and great fun to watch with the whole family. Overall, it's a great resource for finding something that may appeal to you and your friends/family.

The best part is watching Wil repeatedly lose episode after episode.

Board Game Geek

An extremely thorough, mature and self-built resource of pretty much all things tabletop game related. The community here is one of the best I've ever seen on the internet. Seriously, flame wars so germane and polite that they're helpful. Games are well reviewed, well discussed, and ranked overall.

The rankings are generally pretty spot on, but there is an overall tendency to devalue lighter games making it a bit difficult to find good gateway games. Be careful with this one if you have a tendency to lose hours whenever you land on IMDB, Wikipedia or TVTropes.

You almost always have to go to a solid game shop to get decent ones, but they exist.

I have yet to need to do anything other than order things from Amazon. Granted, if you're looking for some obscure Euro that's out of print, Amazon probably doesn't have it (or it's $300) - but then again, neither does your Friendly Local Game Shop.

Re:He clearly doesn't design for the App Store

[Cruciform]

The scale in which is takes place now is much higher due in part to imitation on the app store.
There's a cottage industry of businesses which do nothing but duplicate every element of a newly successful game except the art.
It's not just like the Tetris clones we used to see, but companies who monitor up and coming games and work to duplicate and capitalize on them in mere days.

Re: "Board game designer"?

[delt0r]

I have wood for sheep.