[MUD-Dev] Advancement considered harmful (long)

[Charles Hughes]

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.
>
> 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.)

> 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.

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.




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