[MUD-Dev] Would a complete gpl'ed and copylefted online gaming world be financialy succes?

[Marc De Mesel]

In reply to the post that Valerio Santinelli forwarded (for which I
thank you Valerio, I was happily surprised seeing myself 'quoted' on
the mud-dev mailinglist :-)) I am bringing the argument that
completely gpl'ed online worlds (next to the engine also the art as
well as the brand) could be a successfull business opportunity.

I see no difference between the reasons why someone would gpl their
engine as for the reasons why someone would gpl their art or brand

Here goes the reasoning,

Firstly let us analyse the possible reasons why the nevrax founder,
Olivier Lejade chose to gpl license their expensive and state of the
art MMORPG engine (correct me if I'm wrong).

  - Ideoligical, we think making the engine available to the
  community will accelerate the production of fantastic online
  worlds in general. ( because if the necesary technology to make
  such an online worlds is easily available to be used without
  restrictions, more people will be able to make graphical online
  worlds. You will get more variation and thus higher quality which
  will draw more public to the online worlds in general. Advantage
  to nevrax: Since online worlds is nevrax's future business they
  will prosper from bigger audience interested in new online worlds.

  - Marketing, people will get to know our project (Ryzom) better
  thanks to the attention their gpl'ed mmorpg engine gets, so
  probably more subscribers their Ryzom world than if they would not
  take the decision to gpl the engine.

  - Future competetive advantage, since other people will use the
  engine they will probably make him better too so that we for our
  next project will have the best engine available, and will be able
  to do the most with it as we understand the engine and his
  possibilities the best.

So what would happen if you gpl'ed your artwork and trademark too? 
What are the advantages of doing that?

Well, suppose I'm creating a world called 'BoogieBoogieLand'
populated by boogie boogies, you play one, you have a complete, open
ended city life boogie boogie land comparable to the sims
online. Now firstly why would I do this, licencing the art and
trademark as gpl?

  - Ideological; Gamedevelopers will be able to even more simply, as
  they have everything rightly available, make games. There will
  pop-up more variations of boogie boogie lands. The market for
  interested boogie boogie gamers will be broadened as there are
  more different boogie boogie games and worlds available. The brand
  will become big without me putting that much affort in it. If we,
  the original boogie boogie land, creators, keeps up with the
  market and incorporates good things from others into our world
  than I will prosper from the bigger market that has been
  created. Ofcourse I can't stand still as then I would fastly be
  outcompeted by others.

  - Marketing; I will defenetly get some extra attention from the=20
  gamedevelopers community as they are interested in a business
  model that works with an online world, completely gpl'ed. This
  would give my boogie boogie world, when launching the servers,
  some extra interest, more gamers.(ofcourse the game will have to
  be good but the start, the necesary exposure will be more easy to
  get.)

  - Future competitive advantage; As mentioned above, since the gpl
  obligates others to gpl their work too I can always incorporate
  changes they made to their boogie boogie world that proves to be
  good. Since I'm the original creator, I'll understand the world
  the best and thus will be able to take the most advantage of the
  whole boogie boogie developers community their efforts in making
  interesting things with the brand.

One thing that people have problems with when thinking of gpl'ed
artwork or trademarks is 'but what if people use your trademark or
art for things that you do not agree with and that will hurt the
reputation of your mark or artwork?'

I don't know, I wouldn't probably like it, but hey, no gain without
any pain, meaning, you can't have positive surprises without having
negatives from time to time. But I do love surprises! And gpl'ing
the complete world allows for nice surprises and big fights! hm
lovely ;-)

I'm very interested in your arguments why not protecting your brand
would be a bad idea? Are their any examples of people having
consciously chosen to make a film, a book, a picture, a drawing, a
piece of music, in short a personal piece of art, copylefted? And
what were the results?

I think that if George Lucas would have made his star wars brand
gpl'ed than, yes maybe he wouldn't have earned that much money but
you defenetel would have higher quality movies and games and
whatever people come up with.

Point is, why wouldn't you allow people to build on your work. There
ain't much difference between the so called 'art' and the functional
art that you call software. It's all vision. And it can be all
functional, at least if you CAN build on it.

MarcDM

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