The Danger of Stronger Copyright Laws in Board Games

There has been some rumblings lately about possibly strengthening copyrights laws in board games to protect game mechanics.  Historically (from my non-lawyer layman perspective) copyright laws in board games have been relatively weak.  I recall Dan Yarrington explaining it like this at an UNPUB panel in Delaware. Devices can be patented, brands trademarked, and rules copyrighted - not mechanics.

What did Dan mean when he said rules can be copyrighted - not mechanics?  Dan meant someone cannot copy the rulebook of a game verbatim, but if they can get someone to perform the same set of action (aka mechanic) using a different set of words, it does not violate copyright.

The challenge to this older approach in copyright law is a series of court rulings that appear to provide some sort of copyright protection to game mechanics as well. I argue that strengthening board game copyright law is bad for board game innovation, designers, publishers, and players.  

Discourages Innovation

Innovation itself is the thing most at risk from strong copyright laws.  Innovation takes place when board game designers modify pre-existing ideas.  Take Ticket to Ride, a remarkable commercial success with a mechanic that tweaked and rethemed rummy.  

Most innovation is the process of tweaking older mechanics.  Having an innovative idea to compete over a set of actions does not mean it has been honed into an intuitive or fun package for board game players.  Many different board game designers work hard coming up with tweaks or iterations based on the same mechanic looking to hit the sweet spot for players.

Stronger copyright laws severely limits what mechanics are available for board game designers to tweak.  That by itself reduce the variability of board games.  Even worse, if mechanics were to become protected, a designer with any idea, good or bad, has to constantly worry if their idea infringes on someone else's copyright.

Why such a worry? Because with stronger copyright laws it becomes harder and more time consuming to identify when a designers has or has not violated someone else’s mechanic.  Under the older copyright approach described by Dan, I can read someone’s rules and make sure I am not copying what they are doing.  Under a system that protects mechanics I have to spend hours and hours of time researching or money on a board game copyright expert to make sure my game is unique.

The problem is the financial reward for making a board game design does not justify paying these costs.  Only a handful of board game designers earn enough money to cover the expense of attending conventions to promote their game designs, yet alone make a living.  Adding additional cost to the game design hobby only pushes more innovative people away from game design and off to doing something else.

Drives out Small Innovative Publishers

Another byproduct is that the cost of making sure a game does not infringe on copyrights drives out innovative small board game publishers.  Board game publishing is a low margin business.  A slight increase in cost across the industry has large implications for the financial viability of many small companies.

The threat of being sued is a big expense.  Keeping a lawyer on retainer, having to drop an additional X amount of dollars for an expert to review the copyright, having to worry about lost man hours dealing with copyright issues in a one/two man company dramatically increases the amount of capital it takes to publish a game.  

To Hasbro, stronger copyright protection is a minimal expense.  For a variety of reasons they already have a fleet of lawyers on retainer.  But for a small one/two man operation -Tasty Minstrel Games, Stonemaier Games, Dice Hate Me Games, Stronghold Games - it's very unlikely they have a legal team on hand for production runs of a few thousand a game.  Even worse, when there is a legal issue it will take up a huge amount of the owner's time to address it because they do not have the budget to push the problem onto a staffer of the company.

Innovation Fallacy

There are some people out there who would respond by saying, but this is all worth it because we will have more “innovative” games.  That, in an effort to avoid licensing fees, board game designers and publishers have to focus on making things that are truly “innovative.”

But this thinking misses the entire point of innovation.  The point of innovation is not to come up with an idea and only use it once.  The point of innovation is to come up with a great idea that is so useful for so many things that we use it over and over again.

Imagine you are the person who invents the wheel.  As a society we are excited someone invented the wheel, not because we necessarily want someone to invent something better than the wheel, but because the wheel is such a great idea we want to use it over and over again for a variety of applications.

We might, as a society, try to do something to award people to come up with the idea for the wheel to encourage the creation of it.  Be it cash prizes, prestige, or even a time period of exclusive use of the idea.  However, at some point we want the idea to be free for all of society to use so we can benefit from the idea and so others can modify it to become an even greater idea.  

Current Copyright protection in the United States lasts either 70 years after the death of the creator, 120 years after first creation, or 95 years after publication.  That means the game Trains, which tweaks the deck building mechanics created by Donald X. Vaccarion for his game Dominion, would have to wait 70 years till after Vaccarion’s death to publish if it failed to  secure his permission to use the deck building mechanic.  Odds are good Hisashi Hayashi would be dead by then and Trains would be one of the many innovative board game casualties from burdensome copyright protection of board game mechanics.

Prototype Question: Should I include money with my board game prototype?

On twitter I posed the following question:

When sending a board game prototype that uses money to a publisher do I include the money or will they want to use their own play money?
— Dr. Wictz (@drwictz) August 7, 2014

I was curious because I am preparing to make prototype versions of Post Position to send to publishers. 

Why might I think that publishers would not want me to include play money with the game?  Well, I naively thought some publishers prefer to use poker chips over paper money and they would pull out their own poker chips to play the game.

Quickly, other game designers corrected me of this fallacy.

@drwictz Include everything, when possible. Less effort on their end. They can swap out what they want.
— Gil Hova (@gilhova) August 8, 2014

@drwictz include everything. Don't make them search for components.
— Michael R. Keller (@vhgames) August 8, 2014

They make a good point.  These folks are being inundated with submissions from other aspiring board game designers.  Time spent trying to setup my game with their own poker chips is time lost playtesting other games.  Even worse, missing an important game component starts the playtesting off on the wrong foot, reducing the chances of my game being picked up.

And if there was any question to doubt other game designers, Crash Games, Dice Hate Me, Stronghold Games, and Tasty Minstrel Games confirmed that they want play money included with the prototype.

To be honest, Tasty Minstrel liked The Cardboard Jungle's idea even more.

@dicehateme @Crash_Games @drwictz @StrongholdGames @jameystegmaier @TastyMinstrel send some actually money too... ;)
— The Cardboard Jungle (@CBJPodcast) August 8, 2014

Tasty Minstrel never said which currency I had to use, so I am going to see if I can get my hands on Zimbabwe dollars.  The currency is so worthless that Zimbabwe officially abandoned it, meaning it should fit nicely into my prototype budget.

Chantilly2014 UNPUBMini Preview: Matthew O’ Malley

We are only a few days away from an UNPUBmini at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, VA (in northern Virginia just west of D.C.) on June 21st.  The event is free and has over 10 designers (including Dr. Wictz) bringing their latest board game designs for play testing.  To give you a reason (as if you needed any more) to stop by for an afternoon of board gaming heaven I invited board and video game designer Matthew O’Malley of Black Oak Games to stop by and give us a preview of what he is bringing to the UNPUBmini.

Dr. Wictz: So what are you bringing to the Chantilly UNPUBmini?

Matthew O’Malley: I'll be showing  Knot Dice.  I created custom dice that attach side-to-side to form Celtic knot designs for use in puzzles, art creation, and in several different games. Right now I'm testing a cooperative game, a partnership game, a full competitive game, and a real-time game.

Dr. Wictz: How as Knot Dice changed since you started presenting it at UNPUB events?

Matthew O’Malley: I first presented my Knot Dice at UNPUB 3 in 2013. Since then, I've designed several new games to play with the dice, and have improved the games' rules.

I've done away with some of the more complicated game ideas, and developed others that require just as much strategic thought but are far simpler to explain and play.

I'm excited about a new game that can be played with my Knot Dice which was inspired by Ben Rosset, another game designer I met through UNPUB.  Knot Partners (working name) has each player working on two tableaus, one with the player to the left and one with the player to the right.  The setup creates some interesting decision points.

Dr. Wictz: Why do you have so many different game variations you can play with Knot Dice?

Matthew O’Malley: The different variations of the game grew out of the original development of games for the dice. Since it started as more of a puzzle-game, I was always thinking about different ways I could use the dice, and I came up with a lot of game ideas. My hope is that once the dice are out in the wild, other designers will come up with new games to play with them as well.

I want to release the dice with several different games because they appeal to different playing styles:

-Kells is a cooperative game that has the whole table working together.

-Square Knot is an individual competitive puzzle-game.

-Knot Partners is a game in which you are sometimes partnered with one player and sometimes partnered with another, which adds a bit of a social element.

-Knot So Fast is a high-speed dice-rolling individual game.

Dr. Wictz: What inspired the theme for Knot Dice?

Matthew O’Malley: The Celtic knot theme was originally inspired by a friend of mine, Campbell Maloney [http://alphabetgallery.com/], a graphic designer who created an alphabet formed by shapes cut out of circles and then rotated. I spent a lot of time tossing ideas back and forth with him, and came up with the idea of making some puzzle games using Celtic knot designs.

The Celtic knot tradition has always fascinated me -- I love the look of the illuminated manuscripts from centuries ago as well as modern interpretations of it. It doesn't hurt that I've got a fair bit of Irish ancestry, and play Irish fiddle (along with other types of music).

Dr. Wictz: Does that mean I can talk you into bringing your fiddle to the UNPUB mini?

Matthew O’Malley: Sorry, I won't be bringing it to this one. I don't want my memorizing fiddling to distract people too much from talking about the games

Dr. Wictz: Looking at Knot Dice it sort of reminds me of your game video game Celtic Knots.

Matthew O’Malley: After I developed the Celtic Knots mobile game, I was driven to find a physical manifestation of the idea. Originally, I was focused on the puzzle aspect, and thinking about flat wooden puzzles with the knot pieces, possibly double-sided to get more patterns out of a set. But I couldn't get enough designs out of them, so I moved on to cubes, which became dice, which took me to far more interactive games (rather than individual puzzle-solving like in Celtic Knots).

Dr. Wictz: I notice on twitter you were exploring trying to make your game out of different materials, like cardboard squares, why did you decide to stick with the dice?

Matthew O’Malley: As far as dice versus cardboard cutouts, I've just gotten to the dice first. I do have plans in the works for Knot Cards and Knot Tiles, with game ideas emphasizing the strengths of each of those components, but the dice were my original idea and they appeal to me so much that I want to carry that idea through to production before spending too much time on the others.

Dr. Wictz: How did you get into designing board games?

Matthew O’Malley: I had a job with a relatively long commute, and after trying to occupy my time with various other activities or creative endeavors, I discovered that I could use that time thinking up and developing board game ideas. So I spent several years coming up with games that were far too complicated and took far too long to play, didn't have enough interesting decisions, or just weren't that fun. It wasn't until I started attending UNPUB events that my designs evolved enough for me to consider publishing them.

Dr. Wictz: Why do you love making board games?

Matthew O’Malley: I love making board games for so many reasons. I love bringing so many different elements together to craft an experience for a group. It's like directing a play or a movie, but the end result sometimes is a much more interactive experience, and can create some great stories about time spent together with friends.

Dr. Wictz: What games have you published thus far?

Matthew O’Malley:  I have two tabletop games being published in the near future, Diner (by Dice Hate Me Games), which has already been successfully Kickstarted and will be released this summer, and Battle of Wits (by Game Salute) which will be released as part of The Princess Bride set of games.

Dr. Wictz: Is it harder to get a video game published or a board game?

Matthew O’Malley: My experience with getting a video game published was relatively painless, though I did have to hire a developer for a good deal of the programming work. Once I found a reliable developer, the process moved pretty smoothly, and the process of actually releasing the game on the mobile stores wasn't too difficult.

The part of the process that I did not consider enough was support for the game, particularly on the Android platform. The iOS game is still basically the same as when I released it (besides some minor bug fixes), but the Android game required constant development work to keep up with new devices and OS changes, and I couldn't afford to keep it on the market.

As far as whether it's harder to get a video game or a board game published, I think it depends greatly on your skills and your method of publishing. If you are a developer, it would be pretty simple to publish a mobile game. If you can acquire some nice art assets, it can be relatively easy to self-publish on a print-on-demand site like Drive Thru Cards or The Game Crafter. Or, going the traditional publishing route, if you can find a publisher who is really interested in licensing your game, you can pass it over to them.

But of course, you have to put in a huge amount of time first getting the game ready for publishing. And once it's ready, you have to spend a huge amount of time on the actual publishing process.

Dr. Wictz: What is your favorite memory from past UNPUB minis?

Matthew O’Malley: I have to say when a store clerk told me that Star Dice (a game I was showing at the time) would be perfect to take out and play with kids at their school outreach activities. I think anything that appeals to kids has that "fun" factor that's so hard to nail down.

Dr. Wictz What are the positives to attending an UNPUB mini versus a larger board game convention?

Matthew O’Malley: I get much more of a chance to talk with the players at a smaller event, and to play other designers' games - and the players I think also get more of a chance to talk with the designers and find out about the game design and playtesting process.

Dr. Wictz:  Any shout outs to your most dedicated game testers (cough cough, wife, gf, etc.)?

Matthew O’Malley: My most dedicated game testers are my wife and my kids, and they help immensely with getting the ideas ready to show to other people - and they don't just say that they like everything I show them. I also have a great group of friends which was originally a game night group that I rope into testing my games as often as possible.

Dr. Wictz: Thank you Matthew for stopping by.  If you want to learn more about Matthew’s games you can follow him on twitter @BlackOakGames, facebook, or go to his website www.blackoakgames.com.  Or, if you are in the area, you can stop by the UNPUB Mini at the Game Parlor in Chantilly Virginia on June 21st and meet him in person.

Working Paper: UNPUB 4 - Post Position

Working papers are where I review lessons learnt to help improve my board game designs and where I publicly brainstorm ideas.  Today I am going to talk about what lessons I learned about my game Post Position at UNPUB 4.

For those of you not familiar with Post Position here is a quick run down of the game.  If you are familiar with the game you can skip to the section titled “Lessons Learnt at UNPUB 4”.

Post Position is a stock market game with a horse racing theme for 3 to 12 players.  The goal of the game is to be the player that earns the most money at the end, although I like to say ‘if you have more than 100 dollars at the end you are a winner, if you have the most money you are the winner.’

Horses are moved five times in the race.  Players move the horses by secretly picking 3 horses on a straightaway and 2 horses on a turn to move.  After everyone writes down the horses they want to move, the orders are stacked in a pile to be read after the stock trading phase.

During a four minute stock trading phase people buy and sell stock with each other in horses. Players take advantage of their inside knowledge of horse movement to find horse stock that is mispriced.  Stock pays a dividend at the end of the race based on where the horse finishes.

Stock in the games comes from two sources.  At the start of the game the bank auctions a single share in each horse. The bank pays dividends to the shareholders who horses place 1st-6th.

The second source of stock isn’t really stock, but a promise by players to pay the stock earnings of a horse at the end of the race.  I call this second source of stock a “short position”.  When I sell a short position share in a horse, say A.A., I am promising to pay the dividend earned by A.A. at the end of the race.  So if A.A. finishes in 4th place, I owe 7 dollars to the person holding the short position share of A.A. that I created.  I make money if I sold the short position share for more than 7 dollars and I lose money if I sold A.A. for less than 7 dollars.

The logic for selling a short position share is the same as selling a share by the bank.  I sell either share types if I think people are overvaluing a horse because it will finish worse in the race than what buyer believes.  I buy either share when I think the horse is undervalued because the horse is going to finish higher in the race than what the seller believes.

The winner of the game tends to be the person who best reads what horses players are moving up and what horses players are moving down.

Lessons Learnt at UNPUB 4

If (people) give you feedback that makes your game a completely different game ignore it, they are only creating their own game.  But, (if) they tell you what aspect of the game they don’t like, take it to heart because now you can start to craft it.

-Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me Games on The State of Games Episode 57

The major feedback I received from publishers was the theme did not match the mechanics.

Game Salute was worried people would expect one thing and get another.  With a title and theme like Post Position, people might expect a typical horse racing game only to discover after they start playing they had purchased an intense stock market game.

Or as Bruce from the Party Game cast put it, when you start playing the game the Chainsaw Of Math starts making a soft buzzing sound - Math Math Math Math.  Next thing you know the engine revs up and saws off your legs.

Bruce and Game Salute emphasized that there is nothing wrong with the game having a little math in it.  There are people who like math games and stock games.  The problem is when people expect a gentle bout around the racecourse, and instead discover they are in an intense game of market manipulation.

Eagle Griffin was concerned the theme did not match player actions.  Specifically, his concern centered on the relationship between stock ownership and horse movement.  Since players keep trading stock during the race, the horses players select to move vary based on what horse stock they purchased.  In real horse racing, horses do not do better in a race because people make bets on them.  Yet, this is what happens when people play Post Position.

He brainstormed with me a bunch of different ideas on how to make the theme consentient.  All of his ideas involved a complete retheme of the game to something like commodities or companies.

All of this feedback left me a little shaken.  Half of me went through a brainstorm of finding a new theme that drastically altered the setup of the game.  The other half of me urged restraint, and pointed out how those drastic changes created a whole different game.

At that moment I remembered the previous night when Bruce Vogel said I should make a convention version with My Little Ponies for horses. He envisioned the My Little Ponies being gambled over by a bunch of large leering men smoking cigars in a back room.  And that is when I it hit me… The Mob.  I can solve my theme problem with The Mob.

People already joke at the end game of Post Position when someone went horribly bankrupt that they were going to be tossed into the river. Who does that? The Mob. And who would have the power to rig the horses at the race track? Again, The Mob. So who are the players pretending to be when betting on horses at the race track in Post Position...mobsters.

I can remake the box cover to emphasize money and betting on the box front to clearly communicate the game involves math at the start to players.  I can even show a mobster paying off a jockey to let players know the race is fixed.

I rolled out the changes for my last game test at UNPUB 4.  I explained to players that they were all mobsters betting on horses with each other.  Bets on a horse paid 22 dollars if the horse finished 1st, 19 dollars if it finished 2nd, 16 if it finished 3rd etc. and bets on horses finishing in 7th place or lower paid nothing.  At the start of the race the house auctions off a single bet in each horse, but throughout the race mobsters can sell and buy bets with each other.  When mobsters sell and buy bets they each have some inside information on the horse race because their influence with the jockeys enables them to push a few horses ahead in the race.

So if your question is “oh, so you changed the game?” the answer is no.   I tweaked the theme to make the mechanic easier to pick up and to help new players to get into the game faster.

Tentative results from the first play testing are good.  The UNPUB 4 playtesters found the tweaked theme to be more intuitive.  I am going to formally rewrite the rules to better fit the thematic tweak and I will talk to some past play testers to see if they buy the theme alteration.  If yes, then I will roll out the newly crafted theme for general play testing.

Say (to yourself), somebody had a really negative reaction to that (part of my game), how can I make it better?

-Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me Games on The State of Games Episode 57