Reply To: Game development questions …

[davehawes 7768xp 3]

When I worked in the video games industry, we use to get interviewees demanding we signed NDA’s before we interviewed them in case we stole their idea. This was almost never going to happen, for two reasons.

1. Making a game (video or tabletop) requires an enormous amount of effort and financial investment, art, writing, sculpting, production, marketing, QA etc… the list goes on. Good ideas are valuable, but they are not the most expensive part of the production process. As with so many things, it’s 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
2. If I was lucky enough to be in the position where I had the influence that I could pull together the talent, money, time etc… needed to make any game idea I had come across, I’d almost certainly use that opportunity to create one of my own. Most of the people I know in these industries on the journalistic, fan or developer side, are people who love this stuff and have dozens of cool ideas they would love to get made. Publishers are a bit different, and I’ll come onto that in a moment.

I actually had sort of the opposite fear with my own tabletop game Deneb (website here, project post here) that I’d spent so much time squirrelled away working on it, that when I put it out there people would say “oh you stole that idea from a/b/c”. As it turns out given the level of interest I’ve had so far (great thanks to those who have shown interest!) probably either my idea isn’t worth stealing, or I’m just very bad at marketing 🙂

To protect myself I did do a couple of things.

• For the main art production on the project, I have signed contracts that clearly state the Art is my IP, not the artists when I pay them. Which is fair and equitable. Then I made sure I paid them 🙂
• I’ve tons of evidence both on old BoW forums, my own website, and some of my collaborators’ websites of what in legal terms is known as “prior art”. Which if I ever had to properly lawyer up and defend, is strong evidence that I am the original creator and owner of this IP.

That all being said publishers, can be, the people who smell money and weakness like a shark with blood in the water. Actually, sharks don’t hurt people anywhere near as much as we might think, so that is a bit unfair on sharks! When you are dealing with a business that is showing some interest in selling something you have created, I think then the rules change, and then it’s time to ask for an NDA before sharing too much with them that could actually be used to produce/sell the game.

Not all publishers are evil, I’m very lucky to have been friends since school days with a guy who runs a small publishing company, and he is a wonderful human being. But not everyone is so lucky.

The key thing is, don’t be afraid to share with the community, even with an idea with as little traction as mine, I’ve had tons of great feedback, both as positive encouragement and constructive criticism.  Partly because of how good the community here is, and I can’t think of a better place to air your ideas in front of a knowledgeable, critical, honest, and supportive group of people.