Card Game Creation Quest Part 2

Protection

So if you don’t already know from Part 1 of these Card Game Creation Quest posts, my partners and I at FlubberKnuckle Studios are hard at work creating a new card game called Flipz.  At this stage of the game I am researching what we need to get the physical version of the card out of the idea phase and into production and on hobby store shelves.  Before production and self-release, I believe our first step should be protecting our IP so that the idea isn’t whisked away while we’re shopping our product around.

So this thinking has led me into the world of copyrighting, which I am considering for my own book Average Joe and the Extraordinaires.  Further research has taken me into the realm of trademarking and patenting as well.  So I wondered which one of those we would need and looked up the differences between them.

So which one does our group need? 

Well I’ll tell you, first however I’d like to explain the difference in layman’s terms because I’m a simple man and found most of this very confusing.

Each of these methods: copyrighting, patenting, and trademarking are used to give you (the creator) certain protections on your creation.  You can sell your product all willy-nilly and make money off of it but if someone suddenly wants to market that product, idea, or service themselves or take the steps of copyrighting, patenting, or trademarking the work/invention that you made then they have that right.  What’s more, they can tell you that you can’t market the product that you created/conceptualized and they would be valid because the law would be on their side since you didn’t have the proper protections.  If you create anything and think you’ll sell it or want credit for it then one of the below methods of protection should be sought out.

So I’ll start with copyrighting, since that’s so near and dear to my heart (and my novels).  With copyrighting what’s protected are intellectual properties (IP’s) such as books, music (lyrics and beats), plays, movies, T.V. shows, and scripts.  In a nutshell, it protects any images, words, or sounds that have been authored and considered tangible forms of expression.  It does not however protect a slogan or a single word (trademarks do that).  It has to be substantial and it has to be original.

To seek out a copyright you want to head over to the Copyright Office over at the Library of Congress.  They have a phone number which is, (202) 707-3002 or 1-877-476-0778.  They can also be conveniently reached at their website (http://www.copyright.gov/).

Copyrighting is said to be a much quicker and cheaper process than either Patenting or Trademarking/Service marking.

After reading up on copyrighting it definitely looks like what we’ll need for our card game.  But I still want to read up on the other two, so next is…

Trademarking or service marking is actually explained by looking at the word itself.  When I read up on what trademarking does I had to go “oh, that makes sense.”  I’m sure many of you will have that moment too.  You see, trademarking is used to basically separate your product, or service for service marking, from other products and services.  Useful for federal trading of your product, and local too.  This is done by registering a symbol, word, or phrase to your product.  Think the McDonald’s yellow (golden) arches and the words McDonald’s.  These are trademarked symbols for the company.  Trademarks are basically used to stop others from using similar symbols to confuse or steal your customers.  A trademark does not prevent your product from being used or sold by someone else though.  Trademarks/Service marks can be sought at the Trademark and Patent office.

Patent and trademark info can be found at http://www.uspto.gov/.

Trademarking didn’t seem like a NEED to us but I figured we’d need to it anyhow.

So now we get to patenting.  A patent is used to protect an inventor’s inventions.  It prevents others from being able to make, use, offer for sale, or sale your invention but only applies to the boundaries of the United States.  A patent does not protect you from having someone overseas recreate your invention and sell it under their name overseas.  You’d have to seek a patent in that country to secure your rights to your invention there.  Patents, like trademarks, can be sought at the Trademark and Patents office.

After extensively researching each of these methods I’ve come to the conclusion that our card game will need a copyright…and a patent…and a trademark.  The copyright will be applied to the game’s concept, artwork, and rules.  The patent will apply to the actual physical card game and the overall mechanics.  The trademark will be used for the logo to ensure branding.  We’re going to have to spend a lot of money to get this board game off the ground.  Next up, I’m going to check out the costs of manufacturing and see if I can get a few of these companies on the horn.

Here are some links to the articles I used for research:

Copyright vs. Trademark vs. Patent
http://www.lawmart.com/forms/difference.htm

http://www.copyright.gov/

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trade_defin.jsp

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/index.jsp

The Cost of Various Patents
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/?spammer=confirm

Patenting Board Games
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/12/22/patenting-board-games-101/id=21356/

Card Game Creation Quest Part 1

The Rundown

I, your humble blog writer, and the group to which I am a part of, FlubberKnuckle Studios, have a plan to release an awesome card based videogame called Flipz.  Our card game started, ever-so-humbly, from a college assignment made by my close friend and business partner, Hawk.  Back then it was a physical card game and made with random graphics taken from the internet taped to the back of playing cards and placed inside of a card sleeve with the picture facing outwards.  The game proved to be a hell of a lot of fun.  Because we haven’t officially released anything yet or even copyrighted the thing yet I’ll hold off on describing the game itself, for now at least.

We’ve been hard at work making the digital version of said card game for well over a year as our studios first foray into videogame production.  It’s been a hard road and the journey has taught us a lot about ourselves and our potential.  I’ve demoed that game a hundred times at least and can say that it’s very faithful to the physical card game which we’ve been perfecting these last two years.  Now, however, we want to pull back a little and go for a different approach than the one we were planning.  We’ve had some changes throughout the group, mainly in how we operate and what we’re shooting for.  We’ve come up with a new strategy and new software to use for Flipz.

Now the first step will be to make the physical card game and release it.  That is our current focus.  We will use Hawk’s prototype and expand it to actual production and we will sell it to as many hobby stores as we can and market the hell out of the thing.  These physical copies will let the purchasers know that pretty soon, they can look forward to a digital copy of the same game.

I will chronicle out steps to production here on my blog for anyone else interested in learning about indie card game production. 

My NaNoWriMo Story Part 5

The Win

Sooooo…I won.  I submitted my story, Average Joe and the Beauty, a whole day ahead of the deadline of November 30th.  I cranked out some crazy production in the last six days thanks to coffee, excitement, and a pure “fuck this I’m winning” attitude.  My chapter outlines kept me focused and on track throughout the story.  I’m so glad that I had wrote them out ahead of time but at the end I had surpassed them and had no time to write new ones so I just wrote from the seat of my pants like many other NaNo “Pantsers” out there.  Admittedly most of this huge production of words was complete crap, stuff I should have erased as I was writing it and I know that later I’ll groan when I have to go back and read this stuff.  The point is that it got done and I did something I thought impossible.

As I was writing this portion of my NaNo story I wondered if I should be more suspenseful.  I obviously decided against it (XD) so I’ll just tell you how the whole submitting process went.  So I arrived at work really early, hours before even the early morning cooks, and opened up NaNoWriMo.org.  On the website I searched the FAQ section.  I had seen that there was a way to “scramble” the words of a submission before it’s submitted for validation.  I followed the steps which was really just using Find and Replace on MS Word to replace all letters with capital and lowercase A’s.  I did this because I am way too paranoid.  Now I will admit here that I cheated in validating my novel.  I hadn’t kept up with transferring my written words into virtual text and had given up before even the halfway point to focus strictly on writing the story out.  Knowing this I simply used my previous novel, Average Joe and the Extraordinaires , to validate this one.  Underhanded I agree but I assure you that I kept very accurate word counts in my notebook.  I took a count after every page and wrote the number at the top of that particular page.  I only validated what I had written.

After submitting my novel for validation I got my official word count (51,816).   I watched the awkward-ish (though charming) video of the NaNo crew and could do nothing but smile.  I felt so damn good.  I downloaded all of the cool winner’s graphics that they put up on the page and marveled at my wonderfully inaccurate word count.  The website shaved off 16 words but what’s 16 words between friends—a lot if my novel was 50,015 words.  After I sat there a while and quickly pondered over the month I couldn’t help but feel sad.  It was all over and I knew what I would do next but also knew that I would have to come out of this intoxicating bubble—this solitary private party—and join all of you back in the real world.  Life demands balance and I desperately needed to get back to mine.

So I was now done and I had won and won big.  What did I win?  A headache I suppose.  A 51,816 word labyrinth that I had to search through to find something worthwhile.  NaNoWriMo doesn’t really give it’s winners a prize but I believe that it does reward winners with something very useful.  The contest rewarded me with the ability to silence my inner editor whenever I want and helped bolster the production of my writing.  I can now put myself in a “NaNo state” at any given time in order to shut all the distractions out and get serious production going.  Towards the end I honestly did see a glaring weakness in the way that I wrote.  I wrote mainly to satisfy my plot with all other elements coming in second to that.  Now I don’t think that this is the proper way to write.  The character should always come first and not just the main character but every character in the book.  Your mains should have an arc and your supporting characters should all have interests and fully developed lives outside of the plot.  If you can find the time you should fully flesh out every character even if you use them once.  Character growth and themes have always been important to me but now they’ll be at the forefront of my works instead of at the background like before.

Now that I’ve won this year’s NaNoWriMo will I participate next year?

I really, really want to!  I can only see myself participating if I have the proper time, workspace, and no other projects looming.  It’s tough to dedicate a whole month to just one thing and NaNo 2013 demanded that I dedicate any and all hours of my life that weren’t already spent at my job.  I can’t do that again.  There has to be a balance.  I can’t run around like I was forced to do this year.  I must start building a proper workspace well in advance of the contest.  I also won’t participate if I’m working on any video or board game projects with FlubberKnuckle Studios.  It’s just way too much work for me and way too much stress.  I’ll know for sure later on, most likely in the middle of next year.

So I won, what’s next?

The next step for me is actually a backstep.  I want to return to my first book and boost the content there and make the transition from Average Joe and the Extraordinaires to Average Joe and the Beauty much smoother.  I want to make sure that the first book is also a much smoother read overall by tuning up the prose a bit, adding more detailed character descriptions (since I seemed to have nailed them in the sequel), and foreshadowing some of the outlandish concepts that I have in the second book.  I think these changes will strengthen the first book a great deal.  The primary goal is to perfect that first book and get it out ASAP.  I’ll most likely learn some HTML too in order to start perfecting the book for Kindle release.

So all in all I love this contest; the pep talks from real authors, the goals, the preparation month leading into the contest, the local writing events, the fervor, and just the basic aspect of man, imagination, pencil, and paper (or Word Processor) all coming together to complete a seemingly impossible monthly goal.  If you haven’t tried a NaNoWriMo yet then I suggest you do.  You just might learn something new about yourself and about your project.