Geting legal protection

[Sarge mat]

Hi,
I have been a member of Indie gamer forums for A week or so now but this is my first post. So first i would like to explain my situation. I am about to start studying games development at college this september and i have been into games development for the past 2 years. For a few months i have had a realy good idea for an Xbox 360 live arcade game that has never been done before and i truley think it will be a big hit. So i have been working on a game design doc etc for a wile now. I plan to set up a small team of people like me to develop the game over the next year or 2 useing XNA and TorqueX.

So is there any way i can get legal protection on my idea ect before i go public with it.
chears
sarge mat

[mahlzeit]

You can't protect ideas with copyright or patents. The only way you can legally protect an idea is to have other people sign a contract in which they promise not to divulge the idea to others (unless these others have signed the same contract). It's called an NDA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement) (Non-Disclosure Agreement).

But you probably have to give people something in return for signing such a contract, because why else would they give up any rights they normally have? If you tell me about your idea and I haven't signed anything, then I can do anything I want with that idea.

However, I wouldn't worry about protecting your idea unless it's trivial to implement. Worry about producing the game instead. If you've never made a game before, you're probably in way over your head already. ;)

(I am not a laywer. Fortunately.)

[Aldacron]

Hi,
I have been a member of Indie gamer forums for A week or so now but this is my first post. So first i would like to explain my situation. I am about to start studying games development at college this september and i have been into games development for the past 2 years. For a few months i have had a realy good idea for an Xbox 360 live arcade game that has never been done before and i truley think it will be a big hit. So i have been working on a game design doc etc for a wile now. I plan to set up a small team of people like me to develop the game over the next year or 2 useing XNA and TorqueX.

So is there any way i can get legal protection on my idea ect before i go public with it.


There are hundreds and thousands of great ideas out there. Until they are implemented, then that's all they are -- great ideas. Once you get something concrete implemented then you have options for legal protection for your intellectual property. Until then, just don't hope no one else implements it before you ;)

[Sarge mat]

ok thanks. yea i have developed games before.

[LilGames]

For every "new" idea, 10 other people on this planet probably also thought of the same thing. The "winner" is not the first to think of the idea, but the first to properly develope and successfully market the final product.

So just keep moving ahead.

[Sarge mat]

For every "new" idea, 10 other people on this planet probably also thought of the same thing. The "winner" is not the first to think of the idea, but the first to properly develope and successfully market the final product.

So just keep moving ahead.
thanks. good advice

[lakibuk]

From "The art of the start" by Guy Kawasaki:

Q. Should i share my secret ideas with anybody other than my dog?
A. The only thing worse than a paranoid entrepreneur is a paranoid entrepreneur who talks to his dog. There is much more to gain - feedback,connections,opened doors - by freely discussing your idea than there is to lose. If simply discussing your idea makes it indefensible,you don't have much of an idea in the first place.

[electronicStar]

I'm going to repeat what everybody else said, but one idea is worth nothing.
The efforts required to bring it to life are what really matters.
Of course there exists the "million dollar idea" (think Tetris) but if you study the history of tetris and all the battles involved you'll realize there's nothing you can do to protect yourself, if it attracts the interest of the sharks.
And as a game designer you must be ready to churn out lots of great ideas and abandon 95% of them along the way.

[Mike D Smith]

Nobody really cares specifically about new ideas in games anyway. All that matters is if the game is fun. Give me a super fun remake of an old idea before a boring new idea anyway.

What I'm getting at is that your new ideas for gameplay etc are not as important as you may think and are really not worth trying to protect. Also, imagine if everybody that came up with a new game play idea patented it so that others had to pay to use it. Pretty sad if you ask me.

[sillytuna]

With a very few exceptions, ideas are worthless. Implementation is everything. Repeat 10x. Implementation is everything.

Good ideas are plentiful, but to succeed you need to open up to people about it and get feedback.

I have a few people who email me with "I have this great original idea and it'll be great on Live Arcade. How much will you buy it for?". Then you see it and it's neither original nor great. Or even remotely close. It quickly becomes obvious that they've not even taken the time to research the industry, indie games, and so on.

There's only so many poor breakout and gta variants you can see before your eyes glaze over.

So be sure you know everything about anything remotely competing first, and then try to be objective about the game itself, proposed visuals, single and multiplayer modes, likely development problems, and so on. A good start is to write a risk analysis. It sounds dull and boring, but it'll really help. What can go wrong? Write down everything you can think of, right down to "programmer drops dead after too much coffee", "single player might suck", and "visuals very important - how do I find the right artist".

Then go back and work out how to solve the problems, or at least mitigate them where possible. It'll work just as well for homebrew or (commercial) indie games as for retail.

[Sarge mat]

thanks for all the advice guys. i think i was over going over the top a bit. i will make a post about my idea soon.
chears

[Brian A. Knudsen]

Just a note,

In europe atleast, writtings and computer programs are protected in same manner. They automaticly obtain copyright without any action from user apart from using his label (without infringing others).

If your "work" has reasonable value its protected, even if its just 20 lines of code. However the hard thing is not to get legal protection, but to claim it when infringed, nomatter if they signed anything it all ends up to a matter of trust.

But as such, ideas cannot be stolen, atleast not by european law. Specific costructions can be patented but not the idea behind the construction. That is, an compression algorithm can be protected, but not compression as such.

... that was my 5 cents

[arcadetown]

Best legal protection, only work with people you trust. A contract is only worth as much as someone is willing to spend in court to enforce it. As mentioned above, an NDA is a good starting point.

[Brian A. Knudsen]

Plan for worst and plan as much as you can do without hinder productivity. but count on people not cheating you.

It would be worse to have untested game than to offer testing to non-nda'ed people.

[LilGames]

By the way, NDA's only offer protection if you're willing to enforce it. And the purpose of an NDA is for "Non Disclosure". That doesn't mean the recipient of your idea can't steal your idea... All it means is they can't TALK ABOUT IT. If they did steal your idea, the NDA serves as proof that the two parties were in contact, but it does little else. You'd still have to pay a lawyer big bucks to build a case and prove you deserve compensation.