the Tetris Company prevails?
A bit of backstory; Tetris was first created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, Vadim Gerasimov and Dmitri Pavlovsky, and it has among the most interesting legal histories for any game. During it’s first 5-10 years it was a battle of rights between the Soviet Governement, Nintendo, Atari and others, and in 1996 the Tetris Company was formed and started a campaign against freeware developers of tetris “clones”.
Now, these claims were bogus seeing as you can’t copyright gameplay, but a little scary talk can go a long way in a world where everyone is afraid of legal action. It seems the Tetris Company has dropped the pretense and are now suing social games site OMGPOP owner for trade dress violations and copyright infringement regarding the graphics used.
The concept and design of Tetris is simple, so simple that it is a common game programming exercise to duplicate it. I myself made a completely functional Tetris clone from scratch in less than 30 minutes once, so it seems like a bad idea trying to profit from it by preventing anyone else from making iterations of it - traditionally, game developers have used more finely tuned design or more complex technology to create brand strength and live off that. On the other hand, the OMGPOP game does look eerily similar to the original and I don’t condone making money off knock-offs either. Either way, it’s going to be interesting to see how this ends up.
DivX, continued
A forthcoming system update for the PlayStation 3 will allow users to play back DivX-encoded video files, DivX, Inc. has announced.No specific date was provided as to when consumers can expect to receive DivX functionality. Developers are currently able to make use of the technology care of the latest PS3 software development kit, version 2.00 of which was released November 2.
“We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to bring DivX to PS3,” said DivX CEO Kevin Hell. “Our technology will expand the multimedia functionality of PS3 by enabling users to enjoy access to the broad library of content in the DivX digital media format.”
… So that’s why.
DivX possibly for 360
Seems like DivX and Microsoft have been talking about it, at least. Well, I don’t plan on using it but it’s a start…
Hell seemed initially enthusiastic, then backed off: “Yes! that, uh, we’re in discussions with Microsoft on that at this point in time, so I can’t go into any great detail on that. Um, that is not a certified, that is not a certified or licensed product at this time.”
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16206
Microsoft original reason for not including DivX or XVid support was that “most of the available material is pirated” … Well, they’re just codecs but I’m not going to pretend that the fact that they’re probably right doesn’t mean anything; they would be hard-pressed to make any immediate money off the deal and it might’ve put them in a bad place when negotiating other deals. Waiting until they had a solid install base and leverage was probably the financially sane thing to do.
That being said, it really bothers me when companies throw away the better solution because piracy has somehow tainted it; just a few weeks ago we saw RIAA & co shut down OiNK and repeat the dreaded mistake of some 5 years ago. I’m not saying they should just’ve let it slide, but now they’re just gathering bad press for shutting down a site that was better than anything they’ve ever come up with, and twenty new, more hard-to-get trackers will appear as a result - just like when Napster was shut down and paved way for GNUtella, DC and KaZaa. I’m getting really off-topic (making up for my lack of post when OiNK actually went down), so I’ll conclude with the words of Rob Sheridan;
“I used to reject the wishy-washy “music should be free!” mantra of online music thieves. I knew too much about the intricacies and economics of it, of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation many artists were in with their labels. I thought there were plenty of new ways to sell music that would be fair to all parties involved. But I no longer believe that, because the squabbling, backwards, greedy, ownership-obsessed major labels will never let it happen, and that’s more clear to me now than ever. So maybe music has to be free.”
“Ideas are the only real currency”
Gamasutra sister site Game Career Guide recently posted advice on safeguarding your ideas, and the internets would probably be a nicer place if more people read some of that advice and took it to heart;
“It really is important to make sure all our readers know upfront that one idea isn’t worth diddley-doddley, as Ned Flanders would say. One idea is nothing. Even killer ideas are a dime a dozen.”
Now, while I certainly recognize that plagiarism is frequently occurring out there, I would argue that, as Edison said, invention is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. Making games is hard work and anyone with some experience in design will tell you that it’s very, very rare to get it right the first time. In order to make something that’s actually enjoyable, you need to evaluate it, refine it by adding and detracting things, balance conditions and you’re still not guaranteed to have something more than what amounted to a “good idea on paper, but…”
“…He talks at one point about trying to sell a game to a publisher by explaining the idea to the executives verbally and on paper, which failed. He went back to his team and told them they would have to try again, but instead of showing documents, they would show a trailer, a visual representation of the game they wanted to make. And that’s how they sold the idea.”
Publishers frequently get demonized for turning down original concepts by startups, and while there may be some merit to this argument there’s also a reason selling something as a startup is more difficult: you have to prove that you’re capable of going the distance.
I won’t neglect that a good, simple-to-implement idea can make or break a game, but even if plagiarism is bad form I would consider it infinitely worse to withhold a good idea from the world just because you can’t possibly profit from it yourself.