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<H1>[Nel] Game Rules</H1>
<B>John Cosby</B>
<A HREF="mailto:jcosby%40gscyclone.com"
TITLE="[Nel] Game Rules">jcosby@gscyclone.com</A><BR>
<I>Sat, 30 Jun 2001 17:31:17 -0400</I>
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<PRE>I've been observing for a bit, and feel a need to jump in here.
In many jurisdictions (America and England that I know of), the rules of a
game cannot be copyrighted. Specific presentation, game boards, pieces,
etc. may by trademarked and copyrighted, but the rules that define gameplay
cannot.
This leads to an interesting notion when looking at making a game's source
code public. There is no legal protection for the rules themselves - the
graphics, user interface, etc. may be protected, though.
In this fashion, Nel seems to have a business model that will work, in that
they will be charging to play on their servers using their bandwidth. If
the rules of the game are defined and implemented in source code, then those
rules may be taken and adapted or reused. If the rules of the game are
implemented in libraries using a public API, then those may be "protected"
in so far as the original source and documentation is not available,
although anyone who wants to reverse-engineer (on the basis of behavior,
given the licenses attached to EQ and UO) can come up with their own
implementation of what they believe the game rules to be.
All because I wanted to reimplement a game Prodigy let die, years and years
ago....
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