Just wondering how various groups here handle the copyright behind their various game storylines. At what point does the story itself cross over from the author's hands to the "software company" or whatever your team is? I'm very wary of writing a storyline which is copyrighted by a company, even if I'm a key member of it. Where do you draw the lines? If we end up without the abilities to bring the game into the light, it would super-suck to walk away having lost all rights to the storyline I wrote.

------------------

First of all: (url="http://"http://www.copyright.gov")http://www.copyright.gov(/url)

A quote: "Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.

In the case of works made for hire, the employer and not the employee is considered to be the author. Section 101 of the copyright law defines a "work made for hire" as:

• (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or
• (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as:
• a contribution to a collective work
• a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work
• a translation
• a supplementary work
• a compilation
• an instructional text
• a test
• answer material for a test
• a sound recording
• an atlas"

------------------
People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.

Hmm... good link to have... Let's try to keep this thread current...

------------------
Placeholder Signature

If this were a direct employer-employee relationship, I'd follow that fine. There's a guy on our team who had the initial idea and recruited the rest of us. We aren't getting paid at the moment, and only would if the game made money. With the idea of selling the game, we've talked a bit about forming a company. Are we already in an employer/employee situation, then? Our programming team is set on building an rpg from scratch, but I'm concerned about their ability to do so.

Thanks for the link. Very helpful.

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by druber:
**If this were a direct employer-employee relationship, I'd follow that fine. There's a guy on our team who had the initial idea and recruited the rest of us. We aren't getting paid at the moment, and only would if the game made money. With the idea of selling the game, we've talked a bit about forming a company. Are we already in an employer/employee situation, then? Our programming team is set on building an rpg from scratch, but I'm concerned about their ability to do so.

Thanks for the link. Very helpful.
**

Allow me to speak from a pulpit here... I am old, been an officer in many partnerships and corporations, been sole prop. with employees, worked under government contract.

What you have is a very 'sticky' situation and it is rapidly compounding by the very nature of your post. I doubt the original group will hold together and there will be 'hard feelings' developing very soon.

My advice to anyone interested in collaborating on a Coldstone game is to make it VERY CLEAR at the outset... The first game will be 'freeware'. Keep it simple, make it free so that no one can profit and everyone has a chance to see if he/she can work effectively and constructively with the group. If you all succeed with the 'free' game, then form a 'legal entity' to collaborate on the next game... The game for profit.

Skip

------------------
...it wasn't me...

let me preface my reply by announcing my enjoyment of your opening phrase, "i am old." i'm not trying to screw up enough courage to shout "mutiny!" afaik, i'm the only member of my team reading these forums, so even though this isn't a private forum, my questions on the forums are for my own enlightenment. it's, um, rather hard to work on a simple coldstone game when you aren't a beta-tester, and equally hard to try to focus on writing a small free game when you have a fairly long open timeslot to work on the big'n.
i agree that, as a group, we're on shaky ground. i'm excited about the 2d/3d team we have assembled. i'm excited about the storyline ideas we have; my wheels are definitely turning on that. if i had faith in the programming end, i'd be completely on board. i don't, and i'm not sure how to express that or to proceed.

------------------

I am going solo. Maybe somebody will end up helping me with art but I and only I will be doing the coding. This will be purely my game with my ideas and storyline. Groups just don't work all that well.

------------------
Was it the Chad?
--------------------------------
Make sure you visit the Coldstone Hotline Server run by GlueBubble. The IP is:
65.4.86.190

I'm going to chime in again and agree with Skip. If you're going to work on a project with someone else in a non-professional manner, you need to be clear with each other from the outset what your goals for the project are.

To illustrate:

I spent most of 1999 and early 2000 working on a music album with someone who was a friend of mine. After I had paid to have the thing mastered properly, I started sending out demos to record labels to see about getting a deal. We got a couple of good offers, including one from a major label. Unfortunately, my friend didn't want to release the work. At the mention of this major label being interested in our music, my friend/collaborator went somewhat psychotic and has legally buried the album (claimed we would be "selling out"); now I cannot legally distribute copies of the album in any form whatsoever, be it MP3, CD, tape, etc.

All because of misaligned intentions and intellectual property laws.

Isn't life grand?

------------------
People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.