Originally posted by Loke666

Even the big companies get their stuff stolen and steal from eachother.

M59->EQ->Wow->Rift...

People with good lawyers like JK Rowling (who herself ripped of Neil Gailmans "Books of magic" including the silly glasses and the owl) seems to be able to protect at least some of their ideas but unless you sell a lot of books or movies things are really bleak.

If you get a really good idea you can bet most other games will add it soon in a patch or next expansion.

Sorry, but she didn't rip off Gaiman. Neil himself has said as much, even went so far as to say he doubted she's even read any of his work.

Fact is, as someone pointed out above, you may think you have an original idea, but the chances are really slim that your idea actually is unique.

Also, as pointed out above, copyright automatically applies to anything you've written. You don't need to file any formal copyright.  Titles and ideas cannot be copywrited. Certain elements can be trademarked, such as Harry Potter, or Hogwarts. 

Originally posted by Plasuma!!!

You can best protect your IP by copyrighting some article describing it in full detail. It costs about $35 to do so.

Go to www.copyright.gov to get it done online.

I suggest you look at other examples of copyrighted documents to get an idea of how you should organize and word them, because a typical design document rarely contains enough information to differentiate it from one or another video game or multimedia IP.

Copyrighting is more or less an easy way of getting your material published or notarized (which you should still do anyways). If you have a fear of people stealing your ideas by releasing information about them, those fears are unfounded. Actually, you should fear quite the opposite - the longer you wait to get your idea out there, the more likely it is that other people will do it before you.

Yep. There is much truth in this last statement. There's much greater chance that someone else has thought up the same exact idea you have and is working to make it happen. The longer you wait, the less likely your idea will come out on top.

I work in a creative field. I rarely worry about my ideas getting taken. Why? Because I literally have hundreds of ideas that I'm working on. If someone beats me to the punch (or even less likely steals an idea), I have many, many more to fall back on.

Here's a fun fact you can contemplate. Stan Lee and his various associates developed over 500 different comic book characters. That's 500+ ! Most of them never made it far.   If you're pinning your success on one single idea that you think is fantastic, you are most likely going to fail. 

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249/mythbusting-game-design-and-copyright-trademarks-a

Read it learn it,live it.

If you're going to seriously be working on a project, and working with people you're going to want to look at the next link.   Pretty much $300 for some nice clad legalesse, further summarized with what it the contracts cover in english(and a discount of further modifications).   If you aren't willing to spend $300 on a project it's really not a project worth doing, so don't bother wasting other peoples time.

http://gamedevkit.com/resources.html

Originally posted by eyelolled

I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed in the path this thread went.  A person asks a legitimate question, and gets a couple basic answers and then everything diverts into another direction altogether. I guess that is the nature of forums. So sorry if I divert again.

 

I am also wondering about sharing ideas and how to insure that I maintain protection of the efforts that I've done.  I would think that the main thing to have is a completed work that can be documented and dated, but I honestly don't know if that is enough. I also don't know if asking here is going to reach anyone that actually would have a clue anyhow, but it's worth a shot. I want to discuss my ideas with people in the hopes that I will find more people to pool efforts with, however I don't want to simply watch my efforts be taken over by someone else.  Is there anyone that could offer advice other then give up? 

You're just sad that people answered him (and you apperantly) in way that you don't like.

Let me sum up what everything everyone has said in a single sentence:

Nobody wants your ideas.

So, what I suggest is print everything on eco-friendly paper and use eco-friendly envelopes, so that when you send them to game developers and they go straight into the trash without ever being opened, it you won't be hurting the environment. Considering most game companies have HQs in very liberal places, they might even send you a thank you letter.

You can do a poor man's copyright. Send it to your email or your house and never open it and put All rights reserved, with your full name and year.

Originally posted by Eronakis

You can do a poor man's copyright. Send it to your email or your house and never open it and put All rights reserved, with your full name and year.

This no longer legally applies in the US.   In other countries it only "helps", you need much more supporting proof.

Pretty much registering a copyright is around $35.   legal fees to actually defend it start at unbelievable levels(quite litterally whatever opposing companies want to force each other to spend).   Pretty much copyright is useless unless you're willing to invest money in it. So if you're only willing to spend some 42 cents to defend your work it's probably not work worth defending in the first place(or even be able to afford legal fees to defend the copyright).

Originally posted by anemo

Originally posted by Eronakis

You can do a poor man's copyright. Send it to your email or your house and never open it and put All rights reserved, with your full name and year.

This no longer legally applies in the US.   In other countries it only "helps", you need much more supporting proof.

Pretty much registering a copyright is around $35.   legal fees to actually defend it start at unbelievable levels(quite litterally whatever opposing companies want to force each other to spend).   Pretty much copyright is useless unless you're willing to invest money in it. So if you're only willing to spend some 42 cents to defend your work it's probably not work worth defending in the first place(or even be able to afford legal fees to defend the copyright).

Well umm what if you don't have the funds to do so? Because someone is poor and can't afford legal fees at the moment is not worth defending your work? Really? No I don't think so.

Originally posted by Eronakis

Originally posted by anemo

Originally posted by Eronakis

You can do a poor man's copyright. Send it to your email or your house and never open it and put All rights reserved, with your full name and year.

This no longer legally applies in the US.   In other countries it only "helps", you need much more supporting proof.

Pretty much registering a copyright is around $35.   legal fees to actually defend it start at unbelievable levels(quite litterally whatever opposing companies want to force each other to spend).   Pretty much copyright is useless unless you're willing to invest money in it. So if you're only willing to spend some 42 cents to defend your work it's probably not work worth defending in the first place(or even be able to afford legal fees to defend the copyright).

Well umm what if you don't have the funds to do so? Because someone is poor and can't afford legal fees at the moment is not worth defending your work? Really? No I don't think so.

A poor mans copy right of anytype will not help you in the US, it will just be "noise" in the actual court room and display ignorance.   In other countries it will help you a little bit if your work is a bit popular or some minor fad. Then again any type of work popular enough can be defended without an official copyright, but it's not like you see any type of book/best seller release W/O a registered copyright.

Pretty much yes if you don't want to "waste" registration money, it's probably not worth it to try to actually defend an automatic copyright of anysort.  

Originally posted by anemo

Originally posted by Eronakis

Originally posted by anemo

Originally posted by Eronakis

You can do a poor man's copyright. Send it to your email or your house and never open it and put All rights reserved, with your full name and year.

This no longer legally applies in the US.   In other countries it only "helps", you need much more supporting proof.

Pretty much registering a copyright is around $35.   legal fees to actually defend it start at unbelievable levels(quite litterally whatever opposing companies want to force each other to spend).   Pretty much copyright is useless unless you're willing to invest money in it. So if you're only willing to spend some 42 cents to defend your work it's probably not work worth defending in the first place(or even be able to afford legal fees to defend the copyright).

Well umm what if you don't have the funds to do so? Because someone is poor and can't afford legal fees at the moment is not worth defending your work? Really? No I don't think so.

A poor mans copy right of anytype will not help you in the US, it will just be "noise" in the actual court room and display ignorance.   In other countries it will help you a little bit if your work is a bit popular or some minor fad. Then again any type of work popular enough can be defended without an official copyright, but it's not like you see any type of book/best seller release W/O a registered copyright.

Pretty much yes if you don't want to "waste" registration money, it's probably not worth it to try to actually defend an automatic copyright of anysort.  

How can you not want too when you don't have it? It's not the fact of if someone wants to, its the fact of someone cant but wants to. That's the whole point here. Just because you don't have money to invest it at a certian time doesn't mean you don't want to. Thats my whole point here.

Its a big problem

I have an apsolutelly killer idea for Facebook game that would easily rival Farmville. But i can do nothing with it.

I have no means to develop it myself.

And if I try and sell the idea alone - they usually hear you out and say :

"What a coincidence, we are working on something similar allready"

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Its a big problem

I have an apsolutelly killer idea for Facebook game that would easily rival Farmville. But i can do nothing with it.

I have no means to develop it myself.

And if I try and sell the idea alone - they usually hear you out and say :

"What a coincidence, we are working on something similar allready"

It's not really a surprise.   If you get enough skilled people together you pretty much end with way more stuff than you could ever do.   The expense of a dozen or so ideas that work together is also soo soo much less than implementation.

As for not being capable or having any means that is pretty silly.   You could probably take a few online classes.  Then spend another year/three working pro-bono on a few open source projects(as DOCUMENTATION, the rarest talent used by good programmers and one of the fastest ways to learn programming, working as a team over the Internet, IT analysis, and developer-ship), and have enough experience as a developer to actually be able to manage a very small team and not be a "clueless, and useless".   I actually wouldn't be surprised if more than a handfull of people here are all ready more than capable of doing this(W/O additional schooling), they just don't have the drive to get actual experience.

The downside laughabley enough is that if you have the drive to do all that crap, you pretty much had the drive to improve your RL income by who knows what.  This is pretty much the biggest stressor in the production of large indy games, people find their "drive" and decide to instead use it in RL.