[MUD-Dev] Advancement considered harmful (long)

[Zak Jarvis]

> From:Charles Hughes [charles.hughes at bigfoot.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 4:39 PM

> On Tuesday, May 30, 2000 4:15 PM, Zak Jarvis [SMTP:zak at voidmonster.com]
> wrote:
> > Here's the scenario:
> >
> > I create a game which allows the players to paint pictures,
> > write music, enact plays, sing, dance, make petroglyphs and
> > craft items from any material they can think of. Part of my
> > boilerplate TOS is that I, Game Developer, Inc. own any material
> > created within the game. Quite standard stuff, if I recall
> > correctly.

Hrm, I wish I'd left the legal aspect out the discussion, as it obscures
the point I was trying to get at...

> > An artist plays my game and creates a picture which is better than
> > anything he has ever created before. Yet, his work is totally bound to
> > my world. He burns out on the game (as per my original discussion. ;)
> > and moves on to yet another game that supports rampant creativity
> > (yes, this example takes place in a mythical, nearly-perfect world).
> > He still doesn't create anything that surpasses or even equals the
> > painting he created in My Game(tm).
> >
> > The questions this raises for me as a designer are troubling.
> >
> > If this player feels that I've robbed him of his best creative
> > work, have I? I'm not certain.
>
> Legal niceties aside, how have you robbed him?  If you claim exclusive
> rights, that would be robbing him.  If you don't claim exclusive rights,
> then he can recreate the work in the new game. (How this is accomplished
> is not germane to the discussion.)

Presumably he can recreate the work. The presumption is fairly large. I'm
aware of a pretty sizable body of literary work done by players which is so
effectively bound to the world it was created in that it simply cannot be
recreated elsewhere.

Not much of it has generated resentment (though some has, or I never would
have thought of this point), but the games it resides in weren't really
actively supporting these kind of creative endeavors. I have to think that
if players were specifically encouraged to do these sorts of things that
they could end up extraordinarily bitter.

> > Even if I have no such clause in my TOS, can his work
> > be sufficiently separated from my game to be meaningful elsewhere?
>
> Depends on the work.  A written work or song probably won't fit into
> another game.  Physical objects (snicker - cyberphysical?) probably
> can't be copied due to the limitations of the two games. Artwork on
> the other hand, being merely a collection of bits, should be relatively
> easy to transfer.

Of course, if the artwork represents a scene that happened in my game,
using characters and perhaps even races that aren't existent in another
game, the work doesn't transfer. This is what I'm talking about.
Essentially, is it moral to encourage our players to make deep, creative
investments into what can only *ever* be virtual worlds.

Personally, I would answer that it is, but it is not an unalloyed yes.
There are real issues, many of which aren't addressable. I'm taking a
slightly unusual position here. I want to discuss the negative
ramifications of a system that I'm more than likely going to be developing
and promoting.

> If you are referring to the concept of an entire area, quests, etc
> then the question is more easily answered - how would you stop him,
> and why would you want to?  Policing such a thing would be almost
> impossible, and litigating it would be pyrric at best.

You might have misunderstood what I was getting at here. I'm not interested
in litigating against potential infringements of my design. What I'm
interested in is the (usually psychological) toll creative systems extract
from creative users.

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com





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