IP - the last word

My last post received a rather lengthy and well-considered response from Yehuda. For the most part, I agree with the comment and I'd like to include it here and respond:

"You've spent a lot of the first few posts of this blog talking about IP.

As a long-time member of the world's largest discussion groups on board games and board game creation, I can tell you that this focus is way off the mark.

Millions of ideas for board games exist; a scant few ever make it to production, and scant fewer ever sell well. Nobody needs your idea, and nobody is going to steal your idea unless it becomes a big hit.

In the board game world, someone who worries about IP is a sign of a newbie and non-serious designer."

(The comment continues, below...)

I certainly hear what you're saying, and as I just mentioned, for the large part I agree. The only point of difference here is to note that I do believe I am a serious designer - although completely newbie as charged.

No doubt there are countless thousands of people who one day will say to themselves "I have a brilliant game idea" and then they'll trudge all the same steps I'm trudging. If just a few find this helpful, then I'll be happy :)

"No wants your idea; you can't even pay someone to take it until it becomes a hit. And the world is full of inexperienced people who are sure that their game is the next hit. I read about them every week in the news."

So far so good...

"Furthermore, you have to distinguish between the different types of IP, as you've only just started to do in this post. There's copyright, whose protection is automatic even if it's not enforced , but doesn't protect a game idea. There's patent which requires thousands of dollars and several years; I track patents and no more than one or two board game patents a year are worth a penny. And there's trademarks, which must be vigorously pursued."

Good point. There are many different systems in place designed to protect intellectual property (products of the mind) and given this may well be my "last word" on the subject, allow me to expand on them here... at least those I've learned about as they apply in Australia.

Copyright, as you note, is automatic and applies to the expression of an idea. For example, this blog entry is automatically copyright and no-one may legally reproduce it without my permission. However, you could write your own blog article giving the exact same message but in your own words, and you wouldn't be breaking copyright.

So what's the relevance for a game? Well the instructions are automatically made copyright but someone wanting to sell their own product using your game idea can write their own instructions to convey the same message in their own words.

The packaging design (photos, illustrations, text, etc) is also copyright, so they couldn't legally copy your box package, but no doubt they could create a similar, but different version.

Before I get to patents, there are trademarks. Generally these are corporate logos and expressions. Therefore, you could trademark the game's name if that is in fact a mark of your trade. Trademarks can be applied for in a number of "categories" (I think there are about 25). There's only 1 category that board games fall into - so someone else can legitimately trademark the exact same expression as your game's name, if they're using it in an unrelated product or service category.

Further, some things will not be approved for trademark. I doubt anyone could trademark the expression "chess" - it's just too popular already.

Third is the big one Yehuda mentioned - patents. Patents generally cover methods. This often refers to methods of manufacture - for example, if you manufacture a clothes line in a specified way, you end up with Australia's "Hill's Hoist" (a brand). No-one but the Hills company may manufacture clothes lines in this way because Hills owns the patent for this method of manufacture. (This may not strictly be correct if the patent has expired or been onsold, etc, etc) The government gives Hills a monopoly in the marketplace on their product. In exchange, society at large gets to read the patent and learn how Hills makes their clothes lines. Using this knowledge, competitors may develop new methods which, in turn, they may patent and market.

How about games? In a sense, the total package of a game - it's pieces (if any), board (if any) and instructions can be used with a specified method of play. From my enquiries to date, certainly if a board design is novel (new) and not similar to other existing boards, then the game may qualify for a patent. As Yehuda points out, however, patents are comparatively expensive and may well not be worth the expense if your product does not sell. The next piece of advice was to playtest - which is where this blog really began, although in the back of my mind I'm aware that people can sell games which play like dogs - but ultimately, the real successes generally play well.

A fourth form of IP protection is to register a design. For example, a particular mold for chess pieces could become a registered design. Competitors could manufacture their own chess pieces, but not ones that look like the design you've registered.

My present thinking is not to worry about patents - they are too expensive for a small start-up which is publishing independently. I may well trademark the game name and a logo and certainly the instructions and packaging design will be copyright. Possibly - but probably not - I might register the design of the pieces. Their design is, to a limited extent, relevant to the game play - adding an extra reason to do so.

"But like I said: a game designer who spends a lot of time on IP issues is a sure sign of a failed game waiting to happen. First create a good game, playtest, and market it; if you can sell it, and it has real significant mechanics or processes different from other games (like the mousetrap), go ahead and patent it then."

This is the trick. From what I gather, you cannot patent something which has been disclosed - for example, through public demonstration at a trade show, or by selling the goods. I realise Yehuda has a lifetime experience on the subject, but I am fairly certain - at least in Australia - that a patent would be rejected if I took my game to market or the Australian Game Expo before setting a "priority date" by applying for some form of patent protection first.

"Copyright is automatic, but the publisher is the one who will register it if necessary. Until then, forget about it.

Yehuda"

And again, in this case I'm at least starting by self-publishing, but would be more than attentive should a publisher approach me once the game is on the market.

Again Yehuda, thank you for the considered reply. I've been offline for a little while, but there are new developments to report. Stay tuned.

One postscript: nearly all of the IP protection I've described above, applies in Australia only. (Copyright extends outside of Australia) - and it costs a whole lot more to start protecting IP in foreign markets.

I suppose I'm in a somewhat more disadvantaged position due to location. Australia with it's measly 21 million people is a miniscule market compared to most. This has other implications - for example on importing, exporting, public and product liability - but I did say I'd be back with another post soon! :D

Hasbro, Facebook, Scrabulous and Boggle

Well believe it or not, board games and intellectual property (IP) are front page news.

I received word a few days ago that games publisher Hasbro had requested online social community service provider Facebook to remove the plug-in game Scrabulous from its site.

Today's news is that Hasbro has now directed online game creator Roger Nesbitt to have Bogglific - an online version of the Hasbro game Boggle - removed from Facebook.

The wording of the news is interesting: according to the article, Hasbro claims Bogglific infringes copyright. Nesbitt retorts that copyright cannot protect game logistics.

So my questions are: does Hasbro have a patent on the game concept (ie logistics)? Is Nesbitt really breaking any law?

And back to my own game: it's all well and good to purchase IP protection rights, but if someone is in breach, you may well have to fund the legal effort to enforce those rights.

Is it still worth attempting to self-publish a board game?

Or do you just go up to Hasbro and say "hey - I've got the latest and greatest!"? Apparently Hasbro accepts 1600 game submissions a year - none unsolicited; they source them all themselves.

Australian Game Expo

The Australian Game Expo is on in Albury in June this year. This annual event was launched by Phil Davies in 2006 and allows game players to "Try out some new games or revisit old favourites, play in a tournament, or just watch what's going on".

The exhibition centre allows retailers, distributors and publishers to brandish their wares, and the question arises: should I bring my game to the Expo?

In its short lifespan the expo has attracted a huge number of visitors, including internationals that make it a point to be in Australia for the Expo. A part of the goal is to facilitate dialogue between games creators at all stages of the development process. (Oh, and there's a flea market where you can buy or sell those hard-to-get titles!)

So with a new game idea, what are my options? Revealing the game publicly without any IP protection does, in theory, allow anyone in the world to market your game without any obligation to you. Certainly game designers have displayed their concepts before and yet still secured ongoing contracts with established publishers (see Chess4).

The alternative, of course, is to protect the material, and as I wrote the other day - that costs money. The cheapest alternative covers you only for 12 months, and only in Australia, but gives you time to decide whether you want protection for 20 years - again only in Australia. If you decide it's worth protecting your game, then a) you need to be able to fund all that, and b) you need to also pay to bring your product to market.

Again that question looms: just how good is your game?

With my recent play-testing feedback (see "Not a dog, but not a diamond") the game is probably not quite ready yet. A few minor tweaks and a broader range of testers should put me in a better position to decide, but June looms and I'd still like to protect the game if I decide it's worth it.

With exhibition registration fees being $750 to $850 plus the cost of IP protection (about $1000 - $6000), and if it were your money, what would you do?

Not a dog, but not a diamond - playtesting!

I wrapped up last post saying that all decisions will ultimately come down to this: do you really believe in your game? Will you put money where your mouth is? Are you confident that the money you invest you will recuperate - with a profit that makes it worth your while?

Basically, how good is your game?

There comes a point where every game developer discovers this advice: play test. First play the game yourself, then try it on your friends and relatives, and ultimately, take it to people who won't be shy to give you honest opinions.

Of course, it's also well documented that first-time game developers are overly cautious about letting the cat out of the bag: they want to keep their ideas secret until they can secure a sale.

If you go to the intellectual property (IP) websites, they're quite emphatic about the importance of protecting your IP - but then - they turn a profit by processing protection applications in all their various forms.

Sticking to the safe side, I drew up a confidentiality agreement by using IP Australia's free downloadable utility for the job. I'd asked two friends earlier if they could test the game for me - including signing the agreement, and they said yes.

Next, I designed a list of questions for me to address as I watched them unravel my game. The idea here was that I'd hand over the game board, the playing pieces and the rules, then just watch. It probably wouldn't be overkill to use a video camera, but I forgot. (At the least, a camera would let you more easily calculate how long various aspects of your game take)

My questions ran along the lines of:

Before Play:

1) Watch the testers' initial interaction with the game. Describe their initial response.

2) What parts of the game do they look at first?

3) How long do they take from opening the box to starting a game?

During Play - time each "segment of play" (not the term I used, but the term I used gives away too much of the game design to repeat it here just yet...)

4a) How long did the first "game segment" take?

4b) What was the longest "game segment"?

4c) Did they play through to the end of all objectives? (paraphrased again for the same reason)

5) Once started, did they refer back to the instructions? If so - which points needed clarifying?

6) What is the ideal number of "game segments"

7) What words did the testers use to describe the game and/or experience?

8) Did the testers have specific questions?

9) Did the testers have specific feedback?

The results, I have to say, were completely surprising ... and I guess that's the whole point. Allow me a little background: during my own play testing (me playing against me) I found there was a point early in the game which seemed to occur every time. Anything that happened before was almost arbitrary although in theory the "before" events might have an impact on what happened after that bottleneck point.

I was concerned that the bottleneck might make the early parts of the game tedious.

Further, I had play-tested with one other person previously (playing against me) and we flew through "game segments" in a matter of a few minutes each.

Because of the relative ease of "completing game segments", and the fact that there seemed to be an early bottleneck, I was concerned this would be exposed in play-testing, resulting in a negative response to the game: too predictable early on.

Finally, I had also self-tested the scenario where one person plays incredibly defensively to see whether the whole thing would grind to a halt. Fortunately it didn't.

The results of play-testing with people who had no prior knowledge of the game were astounding! Both players were extremely defensive in their gameplay from the outset. Individual moves were being contemplated in amounts of time that should be reseved for chess only. The "game segments" which I had earlier flown through typically in under 5 minutes each took 19, 11 and 26 minutes!

(After that the testers were suitably frustrated and didn't proceed to complete the first objective of the game).

What went wrong???

Well I'll tell you what went right: the play-testing went right! My perspective on the game had become too narrow and too intimate. This objective approach revealed some design shortcomings... maybe.

Their frustration begs the question: is the game - or are parts of it - poorly designed at present, resulting in slow, defensive, impasse play which serves to frustrate new players? Or rather, did I happen to strike - with my initial experiment - just the kind of players who just simply wouldn't enjoy the game?

I think perhaps there's a bit of both. There may well be players out there who would strategise differently and indeed enjoy the game. At the same time, one specific shortcoming was highlighted (and quickly fixed).

In more online advice I read recently that ultimately, industry experts can provide all the opinions they like on whether a business proposal will be a success, but ultimately only the market decides the answer to that question.

So for me, I will indeed revise some of the detail in the design, and then look for new testers who have had no prior exposure.

My current goals?
1) Improve the game speed for first-time players.
2) Reduce the complexity of the instructions (it's a simple game after all, and to be fair I knew these had not yet been refined).
3) Fix two specific design shortcomings. Solutions have already been proposed; these just need including in the instructions and then the game needs further play-testing.

How good is my game? In my testers' words: "not a dog, but not yet a diamond either. There's something there, but there's just not enough at this stage to make me want to come back and play it again. "

The "long road" (as it was described to me by another game inventor recently) has begun.

Manufacturing, and just how good is your game?

Any way you look at it, board game development does hinge on one crucial question: how good is your game?

These past two days I have been sourcing manufacturers using large aggregate websites like Alibaba, that list manufacturers from around the globe. This process has given me a good overview of the costs involved in manufacturing.

For example, my game is a lot like chess when it comes to building it: you have a playing board with a design on it, you have two players each with a set of pieces to move on the board. There are some other minor details, but they're the major components.

So I go and search for existing board games to see what's on offer. Materials I could use for the board include: stone; wood; plastic; metal; cardboard; glass.

This list is quickly whittled down because I have low (read: practically no) starting budget:

Stone boards cost about US$50 each, meaning I could only buy a few. Selling them would probably be hard when it's a new game concept, so they're out.

I got a glass chess set for Christmas. Fingerprints everywhere; yuck. They fail my (dwindling) quality testing. Out.

Wood. Now I really like wood. It looks good, it feels good; heck, even the chess set I bought last week smells good, but... you guessed it - they're not cheap.

The other thing to consider when it comes to manufacturing is the "minimum order quantity" (MOQ). Thankfully, for more expensive materials, the MOQ is less - so again, like stone, I could order fewer wooden boards and try to push those.

I took a good look at Chess4 - a game designed in 2006. It seems to me that initial print runs were produced on cardboard boards with a high quality "marble-effect" printed pattern on top, and with plastic playing pieces. Now, however, you can buy top quality wooden offerings, and that makes sense - test the market with a cheap starter and build up your catalogue from there.

A friend suggested that that might cheapen the value of your game - people are happy to pay money for a heavy wooden set; putting 5000 cheap plastic sets out there will just make it look, well, cheap.

My personal decision, well today anyway, is to go with the cheaper sets. I think the initial goal has to be to gain popularity whilst recouping the outlay costs. You can't gain as much popularity shifting 50 wooden sets slowly as you might by shifting even only half of your 500 cheap sets, more quickly.

So wood is, well, not *out* - but deferred for now.

Plastic, metal or cardboard. I put in some enquiries for the manufacturing costs for a number of existing game sets. All differred from my design in significant ways - that is, in ways which are likely to affect cost. For example, I have fewer pieces than a chess set, so less material is required, but if I require a new mold to be made in order to manufacture plastic pieces, then add about US$1000 to the bill. My board design means that I don't want it to fold in the middle. If I use a "box" design (with the pieces being stored inside), then the "lid" or playing surface can't be hinged - it has to be whole. This may mean nearly double the amount of material to manufacture the box.

So the prices for some plastic and metal sets came back - some magnetic, others not. (My personal quality choice is to include magnetic pieces, but again, startup costs might win out on th first - or first few - production runs, hence my comment about about "dwindling" quality testing!)

But a surprise player came in near the end - pine. This is wood, but it's cheap. It looks a little cheap, especially as the board design is printed on the wood, not manufactured from differently stained woods, but - it is still wood, and it can be a box design, meaning the pieces can be stored inside, and manufacturing new piece shapes can be done without a mold, meaning there should be a reduction in materials price, and (the biggy) even without this reduced price it's already cheaper than the plastic and aluminium alternatives I've considered. As a bonus, the manufacturer actively supports small order quantities, further reducing my manufacturing costs.

A few days ago, based on material, product size, use of a magnetic board and minimum order quantity, I was looking at first-run manufacturing costs of A$4,100 (2000 units of 11x11cm aluminium folding boards), A$14,000 (5000 units of 25x25cm plastic magnetic folding boards)
and A$3,330 (300 units of 20x20cm nice wooden boards).

My current best options are along the lines of A$795 (500 units of 20x20cm pine box-style board) through to about A$1,785 (500 units of 31x31cm solid wood, non-folding) - and that's quite some difference for a few days' research: anywhere from $800 to $14,000!

So where does that leave me?

Well, manufacturing costs for a small initial run seem to be in a managable range. After receiving a shipping estimate (being under A$800), it seems that intellectual property (IP) protection is the most expensive start-up component. Going alone for a few trademarks, perhaps one design protection and a patent (copyright is free), will cost around the A$2,500 mark, give or take about A$500. Using a patent attorney - which seems highly recommended, will add about A$4,000 - A$6,000.

That brings me back to my opening question: "just how good is your game?"

If the game is good, it's worth protecting the IP, but if it's that good, then Australia is a really small market in which to obtain protection - you want protection internationally, say: US, Europe and/or Asia. Now your IP costs really add up!

A start-up option is to protect (patent) for 12 months in Australia. I can then confirm the 20 year patent before the end of the 12 months - for an extra fee. However, yet again, to gain international protection the sums really add up.

The problem is - starting with a small run means you're less likely to see how successful the product will be in the marketplace - there are simply not enough people being exposed to it to discover how well it will sell. (Well, at least that's what I currently think). Likewise - even if it sells hot off the shelves, building the funds slowly to gradually increase production runs and expand the market is likely to mean you still won't have enough left at the end of 12 months to secure proper protection. Worse - the world now knows about your game and can jump on it if it proves to be a hit which you can't afford to secure.

Some early advice to view the process as starting a business is very sound indeed! Do I want this business? What of my other plans - for children's books and a range of other ideas? Hang on - in post #1 I said I was going to make this happen. Having a growing business that you don't know what to do with is a problem I'd like to have!

I'll leave it there for today, suffice it to say: there are plenty more factors going into these decisions than just the costs. Money does not a good game make, and a good idea on it's own does not a make sales succes. Having both, together, at the right time however, might give you half a chance.

Introduction

Okay, so what's this about?

In a nutshell, here is the back-story ... eight years ago I designed a board game. I filed it away. I took it out again last year and refined the rules slightly. I filed it away. I dusted it off one more time this year thinking "man - if I'd spent the effort eight years ago, I could have eight year's worth of sales and market presence by now".

I'm sick of not making the time to chase up good ideas - and this game is a good design - so for the past week or two I have jumped headlong into researching exactly how you bring a new board game to market ... successfully.

Have you been down this road yourself? Do you find great ideas endlessly streaming into your brain with not enough time, money or other resources to test them all out? Feel free to share your story... this is an ongoing dialogue - but more than just a tale, there are some real questions that many people want answered about this exact topic. I'm here to share my experiences with you - as they happen - so you can get an idea of what it's like "on the ground" taking an idea from woe to go.

To date the following have all seemed important:

1) Protecting your intellectual property (IP)
2) Self-publish, or licence?
3) Researching your financial plan
4) Creating a business plan
5) Launching a business
6) Manufacturing, shipping and distribution
7) Raising capital
8) Generating sales
9) After-sales follow-up

I have had experience in the past with obtaining a trademark for a business name, so I begin with at least a familiarity there. (I'll explore each of these topics in more detail in coming posts...)

I have a background in retail store management and, well, let's face it - anyone who thinks they've invented a brilliant game has to have an entrepreneurial streak somewhere, so I'm not lacking confidence in promoting and selling the product or providing top notch customer service.

What I find myself most engaged in presently is researching the financial plan (which includes costing IP protection, manufacture, shipping and distribution) and thinking about how to raise capital.

And this last point is most pertinent. As mentioned above, I shall explore each of these more fully but suffice it to say: If you want to give a donation you'll not only be helping me launch my game (thank you), but you'll become a part of this online experiment in entrepreneurial exploration! :D

Stay tuned... maybe one day you'll be asking me to publish your latest brainwave, or maybe I'll sell-out a financial success and move on to the next idea ... whichever comes first!

How to invent a new board game ... successfully!

So you've come up with an idea - you've invented a brand new board game that will take the world by storm.

What do you do next?

Stay tuned and watch this real-life drama unfold before your eyes. Yours truly is about to embark on a path that many people dream about, but few realise: designing, developing and marketing your board game idea to success.