Highest Rated Comments


owlbearmanpig19 karma

Leaving aside the legal issues, what are the ethical concerns that arise when you sell a game someone else designed and keep all the money?

When we talk about why innovation can flourish without copyright, we often point to norms that govern the use of intellectual property within particular communities to meet their needs (e.g. comedians and joke plagiarism). What are the relevant norms for the board game community, and what did you do to follow them?

Clearly plagiarizing someone else's design and selling the result is not generally acceptable among board gamers - see the recent furor over the Nostromo board game.

Attribution obviously helps, but I don't think the Nostromo publishers would get more sympathy if they admitted to ripping off the designers they cloned. Did you talk to Clopper before publishing?

A big difference here from the Nostromo situation is that Clopper was paid to make the game for his day job. But many game designers design games or scenarios for particular organizations (I believe this includes Randy, though I apologize if I am mistaken). Is it generally OK to clone and sell a designer's work as long as the original was made for someone else? Does it matter that it was made for the government rather than a private group?

Would it be more of a problem to sell a clone of work by Volko Ruhnke (i.e. the other CIA game) since he is a major published designer who presumably makes a significant chunk of his income off board games?

Lastly, do you see a public interest in making the game available, and how does that change things?

I think these are genuinely tough issues, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

owlbearmanpig9 karma

Thanks for the thoughtful and persuasive response. Glad to hear you reached out to Clopper.

I am a religious reader of your blog, btw, and I greatly appreciate all that you contribute. (I have also gamed with Randy, which puts me in what I have to imagine is a pretty small crossover demographic).