This is an addendum for my original Making it Real article, but I think it deserved more than a comment in the thread with a few links.
Hat tip to Shamus for this one:
Johanna Blakely: Lessons From Fashion’s Free Culture
TED talks are all over the place in quality, but this one does point out some interesting thoughts on IP protection and innovation.
I have to wonder if the same spirit behind Linux might be moving things like Psychochild’s article on Elemental Advancement. He could have tried to keep that under wraps as a trade secret, but sharing it lets the blogging hivemind make the concepts better. It’s then on his head (or someone else’s!) to execute the ideas in a commercially viable way, for which he could and should be rightfully recompensed. It’s the work of execution that would be rewarded, not really the idea. This is also why you will never sell an idea to a game company. Go ahead and try; they will laugh in your face or outright ignore you. Ideas are cheap. (To be clear, Ixobelle wasn’t selling ideas there, he was selling himself, but the Blizzard response is standard; game companies will not buy ideas.)
The talk’s argument roughly suggests that ideas should be cheap, free and unfettered, and that execution is really what matters. When ideas can be free, innovation has fewer limitations. Her list of industries with different IP laws and lack of copyright is especially enlightening.
To reiterate on what I was writing about in the last article, then, if you make your game idea into reality and sell it as such, as a physical game, you are effectively monetizing the actual production and materials, not so much the idea. The idea can be taken and molded by house rules or knockoff products, but if you maintain quality, you’ll still be the standard of comparison.
Taken another way, you can make your own Magic cards and play with them. Sure, Wizards owns copyrights on their particular game art and the “tap” icon, but you can take a sharpie to blank cards and play all day long. You’ll never get them into a sanctioned tournament, but if you’re happy playing with friends at home, who cares? If you do want to play “for real”, though, you pony up and buy the cards. If you want the prestige of “real” cards and the option of playing in official venues, you go through the gates. If you just want to play with the cool ideas, you can do so at home with homemade cards and homebrew ideas.
The WoW TCG has a set of free PDFs that comes directly from the devs, allowing you to print out some game cards and play the game. It’s just a small slice of what the game ultimately has to offer, but it’s a way to get people playing. My Alpha Hex paper beta runs along the same lines, though I’m also using it to get playtest feedback. In either case, the “real” game has more to offer, and can be monetized as such.
IP laws can be weird and wild animals, as Scrusi rightly notes. I’m not sure that a totally anarchic society of free ideas would function as well as the idealists would suggest, but then, the Big Brother draconian DRM direction doesn’t seem to be paying off with much more than ill will and sequelitis with a nice side dish of piracy. We don’t make clothes (utilitarian tangible things) in video game design… but offline tangible variations might just be a nice avenue to explore sometimes.
In the meantime, throwing a few game design ideas out there into the wild just may be a good idea.
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UPDATE! Scott Adams of Dilbert fame weighs in on ideas… quite coincidentally. I like his take on it, though, and his closing line is one that Ed Catmull echoed as well: “Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.”
In a creative industry, like the one I work in, we’re paid for getting things done. Ideas are valuable inasmuch as they help get things done, but at the end of the day, if the work hasn’t been completed, and especially if there’s no product to sell, no number of ideas will make the guys writing the checks happy.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
So my halfcocked suggestions I toss up on KoK articles are welcomed? 🙂
Absolutely. You never know what will stick. There’s no guarantee we’ll actually do anything people ask for, but some of the things we’re doing in the Kefling sequel are definitely based on player feedback. 🙂
Part of my motivation for posting the elemental advancement system was because I had already proposed it to a group of developers on a failed project. So, I figured I might as well throw it out there to a wider audience for discussion.
The other part is a bit more cynical: I wanted to show that, really, even game players aren’t all that interested in ideas. Given how much people bellyache for “innovation”, you’d think people would flock to the idea. But, really, that post didn’t get much more discussion than an earlier post on moral obligations (an intentional hot-button issue). While I think some designers can appreciate the system and notice some of its elegance, for the most part few people care. I really don’t expect to find my system ripped off wholesale for a game. The best I can hope for is that maybe someone reads my post and then works on it subconsciously to come up with an interesting system that’s loosely based on it.
As for actual IP protection, I’ve always been of the opinion that strong IP protection is generally a good thing. It allows an independent to control their own destiny. Trademarks and copyrights are generally good things, especially because game mechanics are so fluid that you can often design around a copyright issue. On the other hand, patents are less nifty, especially when it relates to software. I think the current patent system has run amok and has perverted the original intent.
My opinions.
Thanks, Brian. I was surprised that the design post didn’t generate more discussion, actually. Maybe I should be more cynical? 😉
A further thought on IP protection in our industry, at least: We don’t really make *real* stuff like clothes that require a production pipeline and resources. At most, we make CDs and packaging, but we’re not just charging for that. Digital distribution channels reduce that overhead even more. What is left to make money off of?
I do still think ideas are cheap, and that we should charge on execution, but our medium just isn’t the same as the fashion industry. I’m also all for more idea sharing, but when it comes time to make money, things can indeed get a bit dicey.
I almost cited Disney’s Lion King kerfluffles in the article, but backed off. I’ll note it here: an author charged Disney with stealing ideas for the Lion King, and ultimately, Disney prevailed in court. This is something Ed Catmull noted in his talk at BYU a while back. Ideas are cheap, and production of a game or movie incorporates thousands and thousands of ideas. Of course, on the other hand, Disney vigorously defends their IP.
I think there’s a line to be drawn between ideas and execution, as well as between ideas and products and icons (trademarks).
Oh, and tangentially, Prof. Beej has a relevant article up on sharing writing online:
Posting Fiction Online
Airing works in progress in a public forum can be a scary thing that can either produce a train wreck or make a product better. Isn’t that what betas are about, for that matter? Perhaps sharing ideas and making a legal way for that to be more likely is like a beta testing phase for ideas so that devs don’t get all caught up in developing something that winds up being too derivative or just plain bad.
“Thanks, Brian. I was surprised that the design post didn’t generate more discussion, actually. Maybe I should be more cynical?”
I think sometimes these posts generate a lot of ideas in readers heads(this is true of me), but don’t always feel that we can articulate ourselves as well as the writer. Some folks obviously have no trouble just writing whatever, but I know I prefer to stay out of a discussion that I can’t add anything meaningful to, whether it’s due to time or knowledge.(Usually time, I’m a Goddamned genius, I say) Other than, of course, a quick comment.
I’ll be slightly off topic, but here’s a thought: Most people can tell you an idea of what they want, but can’t actually tell you the physical details.
You can see how people wont buy ideas and don’t see them as worthwhile to aquire.
Yet when your developing – what do people give you? Their ideas?
Are they any use in developing? Or do they actually get in the way – simply confusing things rather than conveying in concrete physical terms what the person wants?
If it comes down to rendering a physical object (and it does seem to), is getting more ideas just putting more stuff inbetween now and when you physically render it?
I’m probably thinking of my own table top design efforts, where plenty of people talk ideas, but in terms of actually putting a pen to paper and what ink marks to make? Absolute silence from everyone. Just more and more ideas.
Oh, and if you’ll forgive another comment, as programmers/rules designers were further removed from actually making something. Like take a song writer – he hums a few bars, he’s already made something. Maybe he’ll scrap it latter, but he’s scrapping something he has already made. Try that with coding, writing x += 1 … you’ve made nothing. The song writer can instantly make something just by humming a few bars (even if it’s not that good), while the programmer/rules designer cannot do anything instantly.
I think that’s a hurdle in the way of making it real – because the song writer will make a TON of stuff real before he writes a song he really wants to back. While a programmer can easily put in alot of time to make…nothing at all. Just scattered code.
Or what do you think?
I’m torn on the topic of ideas being free, just as I am on the topic of intellectual property as a whole. As much as I enjoy the free sharing of ideas that you can find on the internet and the academic community (with exceptions), I do have some issues with my own ideas being free.
I consider myself a bit of an idea specialist (if there is such a thing). I can program and even design if needed but my strength is in coming up with ideas and solutions while other people are much better than I am at execution. I surely don’t want to hand out all my work for free and then take a purely executive job to pay the bills.
I don’t believe that good ideas are so easy to come by that their worth is diminished. I have a couple of business ideas for example that I consider to be quite promising but that I simply don’t have the resources to realize. If I wanted to pursue them I would need to find financial backing by someone that doesn’t simply take my idea and uses it for himself.
Let’s say I do find that backing and create a small but successful internet venture. Big Company X sees my project, copies it and puts ten times the manpower into it that I have available. Suddenly they have the better execution, the better product, and I am doomed.
Without my idea, the whole thing would never have been created. Yet if I can’t protect my idea, it gets steamrolled by someone who can afford better execution. Why would I want to come up with that idea in the first place then?
I think the big issue with intellectual property rights is that they hardly succeed at protecting the individual “artist”‘s ideas (which is what they should do) and succeed very much at preventing these individuals from using previous work done in big companies.
Anyway, enough of the wall of text. Thanks for the link! 🙂