[Go to Google Groups Home] Groups € Advanced Groups Search € Groups Help Groups search result 904 for Charles McGrew From: Charles E. McGrew (cmcgrew@Ra.MsState.Edu) Search Result 904 Subject: Re: New ideas in publishing (was Re: Future of the Gaming Industry) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc Date: 1995/05/17 View: Complete Thread (5 articles) | Original Format Curtis Shenton (curtiss@netcom.com) wrote: : In article <800654819snz@kenjo.demon.co.uk> Ken@kenjo.demon.co.uk writes: : > : >On the other hand, if you were a game company (big or small) and someone had : >produced a supplement for it, you'd be rather wary of allowing an author to : >retain copyright, in case he later took it to a different publisher, complete : >with rules - the legal battle over the status of the rules would be rather open : >to question. There *should* be some middle ground between the extremes of : >author retaining copyright and company retaining copyright, but I'm not : >entirely sure what it would be. : > Most companies won't acquire the rights to a work unless they plan to publish it (or want to keep it off the market). The problem with cases where a work is refused and the author wants to take it elsewhere involves the status of that work as derivitive of the original game. If it uses the same terms/mechanics/core concepts then it is a derivitive work and any publisher would be foolish to allow an author to publish this work with their rules. It is not that difficult to change the rules of an adventure or game world to make it use an original set of rules, something like FUDGE or change it to another system and approach another publisher with it. Game mechanics are intellectual property too. : The internet is growing by leaps and bounds and even now has a rather : large base of people who are interested in rpgs, or at least it looks : that way to me. With DigiCash and other forms of secure credit card : transactions becoming available for WWW pages I think we may see a wave : of net publishing that will make the so called desktop revolution look : like a molehill next to a mountain. In time, the internet will change many facets of publishing and distribution of material. The biggest problem I see is piracy. Sure, lots of people copy sections of game rules etc. but a photocopy is devalued because it doesn't have the same depth and detail with artwork etc. With something in an electronic format, the copy's quality is every bit as good as the originals and the number of people who photocopy rpg rulebooks pales in compairon to the number (and proportion) of people who copy software. Photocopying a rulebook takes a lot of time and can even be more expensive than purchasing the original but how much time does it take to copy a file or disk? The effort involved is lower, the quality is as good as the original and so far software piracy has caused the prices for most commercial and shareware software to exceed the price of a rpg rulebook. Computer software can easily sell several thousand copies of even an independent title in a given year. RPGs are still struggling to push 1000 copies of an independent game in the same time frame. Considering the time it takes to create one, authors need to evaluate what their time is worth. In a situation where the number of legitimate copies of a given work would decrease and the number of illegitimate ones would rise dramatically, the cost of the work will most likely increase despite the drop in production costs to meet the costs of development. : An individual will be able to put up any intellectual property they want : on their page and charge for it. And with virtually no overhead the : prices can be really cheap. If you saw mention on the newsgroup of an : interesting article on wouldn't you download it : for 50 cents? Perhaps companies could sell licences for net books cheap, : but with an option to buy. If I think GURPS Lawn Gnomes will sell but : SJG decides it's not worth buying and publishing why not let me put it : on the web? If it suddenly takes off and Lawn Gnomes sweep the gaming : industry(I can just see all the people who like to dress in black : switching to lawn gnome outfits) then they can work out a deal to : publish it. : > : >---- : >Ken Walton : >========================================================================= Chuck McGrew (yes, of Mind Ventures) For more information about Don't Look Back and Mind Ventures' other products, contact us at mventure@io.com Check out our ever-evolving home page at http://www.io.com/user/mventure ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Google Home - Advertise with Us - Add Google to Your Site - News and Resources - Language Tools - Jobs, Press, Cool Stuff... ©2001 Google