   The extent of IP ownership in games
  In music the thing is reduced to what is known as "likeness" - if a track is similar enough to an original so that its components can be identified as copied and a subjective verdict (usually in court) is passed that the copier's work boasts little to no original merit, then that amounts to IP copyright infringement.However, in games which are much more holistic in their reach and gameplay implementation, the whole likeness thing could easily become a secondary category. The question is, what's the first? Overall similarity? How do you copyright that? At what point can you go to court and say "he stole my idea... after I thought of it, pimped it and made moneyz off of it"?An example: when would my fictional game X start to enter copyright infringement territory (please consider all points are cumulative in the mentioned order)?1) when it had the player control hero characters running around a flat terrain with various obstacles (at this point my game might be set in the year 2234)2) when the hero was carrying mystical creatures and the player's objective was to kill neutral groups of mysical creatures3) when the player's objective was to capture towns and build buildings in them to boost his creature count4) when the player could learn spells and store them in his spellbook5) when the spells were called "Mass Haste", "Slow", "Decay", "Mirror Image", "Armageddon", etc (all of which are generic terms by themselves)6) when the mysical creatures were called "Skeletons", "Black Dragons", "Priests", "Minotaurs", "Phoenixes", "Champions", etc7) when the tactical combat were a one-for-one copy of the original and all the morale and luck boosts applied the same way and came from the same sources8) etcI mean - how far could I go with copying Heroes Of Might and Magic before somebody could say "you're not just making yet another domination style turn-based strategy game" or even "you're not making anything new", but could say "you're stealing our product and we can sue you for it"?Let's assume my game's called, err... Killing Fields and bears no similarity to the original name-wise.   
  1. All of the above. - the law allows anyone to sue you if they think you are infringing their IP. Of course a court may not agree with them unless there are distinct similarities. 2. More importantly, if you do a clone of another game you run a big risk that people will dismiss your game as unoriginal and not buy it.   ;  I should mention that this is just a hyopthetical question - I'm asking more out of curiosity and for the sake of discussion than anything else - I do not plan to make game replica of any sort.It's just that when you take certain genres, most notably the RTS genre, the primary difference between any number of games is generally how the units are named, the artwork and gameplay balancing: the rest more often than not follows a very proven and unchanging blueprint.The other implied question is about item naming conventions. The fact that Heroes of Might and Magic happened to be made first down the line and ended up using (reserving) some very generic spell names, which could effectively result in copyright infingement for generations to come (eg over the spell name Disrupting Ray or Mass Haste) is inherently unfair and, more importantly, potentially limiting to all future franchises that might do well to have the luxury of using similar easy-to-understand names.A third question is a bit more iffy: let's take a legacy game that has ended up in legal limbo and hasn't been remade, and doesn't show signs of ever being remade - which effectively removes it from the current market as most people are not very comfortable looking at 320x240 resolution and mounting stuff in DosBox. One such game is Master Of Magic, which I consider to be a brilliant product. Where does the actual legal boundary lie in terms of someone creating a replica-like product (eg a game that borrows heavily from the concept, but is still a unique game in its own right)?;  HOMM is a very generic game in itself.  There is no continuous storyline.  The world is never named and is just a place with knights, dragons, elves, etc.  I could name 100 games or books within a similar setting.  I think differentiating between any new created fantasy world and HOMM would be very difficult just because it is such a basic and common setting for fantasy games and books. The spell names they are using are also common among a variety of games, as is the turn based nature of the game.I think you could make a game that is turn-based, in a fantasy world, with mythical creatures, using generic spell names, and not get into problems because there are hundreds of other games doing the same thing.  As long as you didn't reference any of the story lines or character names or any specific IP from HOMM I think you would be fine.  My suggestion would be to create all content (artwork, spell names/descriptions, storyline, UI) from scratch, and not use HOMM or any specific game as a source.Where I believe you would get into trouble would be if you were marketting it as an HOMM sequel or replica, or if you continued a previous storyline or character, or literally copied word for word out of the spell descriptions or stats or item descriptions.   ;Quote:Original post by ChurchSkizHOMM is a very generic game in itself.  There is no continuous storyline.  The world is never named and is just a place with knights, dragons, elves, etc I thought it was named Erathia?;  Erathia is the name of the continent (or extremly huge island if you prefer), the planet is Enroth :) (check the wiki)And I agree, it is hard to tell with a game where the lines of IP copyright infringement begin and end. Defenitly the story line, characters, certain names, artwork, certain UI and so could be problematic. Then again it is mostly up to the publisher or basicly saying the one who has the rights for the game if he'll sue you or not (considering he feels threatened by you, then again he could always use your advantage to your disadvantage, to promote himself even more), like when you speak of Stronghold, you can actually speak of two different games. One is from 1993, of design. Stormfront Studios (D&D based) and the other is from 2001, of design. Firefly Studios (also neither share the same publisher).Besides that to complicate things even more you have specific types of monsters or spells, weapons, vehicles etc. that became so common, even described to the detail (as in what they sound or they make, how they look, what they need/eat, and so on...), that you can't say someone owns rights to it. So basicaly you could only claim to have rights to a very new distinguish idea that you can prove is the reason of being popular (asking anyone would retrace it's origin to you or your product or owing some solid black & white evidence, that entitles you and you alone of being privilaged to use it), but in time as an idea gets popular, as people try slightly diferent things, it more than less will get standardized.The conclusion is: If a thing is relatively very new and has a strong backbone, don't push your luck, otherwise if it is older, you should have less worries, though try to keep it fresh and avoid at all costs of simply copying other peoples work & putting it together.PS: As for the most middle ages fantasy's, we all know it's mostly Tolkien & old folklore stories to thank :)   ;Quote:Original post by RasturErathia is the name of the continent (or extremly huge island if you prefer), the planet is Enroth :) (check the wiki)I stand corrected.  But the world itself was never critical to the storyline as much as it was just a setting. Unlike Middle-Earth or Pandora or other fantasy works.  So much so that I don't even remember it existed.Erathia could be renamed "Generic fantasy world".   ;  Acctualy it was (I'm a HoMaM freak ;) and this has nothing personal to do, rather a safe fix, that you don't get tortured by the other fans :P), Erathia is important for the whole HoMaM III series and even gets to go *BOOM* after Gellu and Crag Hack fight eachother with Frostblade and Armogedon Sword (if I remember correctly). So in the IV series they start on a brand new planet and New World Computing goes to hell for that :) (that is why the Russians sticked backed with Enroth in the V series, as the IV series didn't even exist ;))So it is actualy very critical to the series of II, III and V.[Edited by - Rastur on June 10, 2010 10:28:31 AM]