Board Game Designers Forum

Your answer here is actually wrong, not about copyright, but about sharing and discussing your ideas. Here, I'll explain why, and perhaps why you're seeing it differently than the person who previously answered him.

This is a site for people to discuss game design. This includes general ideas about design, prototyping, marketing, etc., as well as specific game ideas. I can tell you that because I've been here helping to administer it for something like seven years now.

The goals of people here vary. Some people like to to just play with their ideas, with no intention of ever publishing. Some people have a goal of eventually self-publishing. Some hope to have their games published by another publisher. And a few have the dream of making a full-time living off of game design.

What you probably didn't get in the couple of days you've been here -- and mind you, I'm not at all trying to discourage you, you've had some great advice -- is that most of the design discussed here is aimed at what's called the hobby game market. This is a market where there are very few people making a full-time living, as sales of an individual game are most commonly in the 2,000-10,000 range. Games in this market include titles such as The Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, etc., though those are examples of the best sellers in this market, selling in the hundreds of thousands or, in the case of Catan, millions.

This is a very different market from the mass market where Hasbro and Mattel rule the roost. There are many more publishers and, perhaps surprisingly, many more games published every year than in the mass market. Not more total copies, but many times the number of new titles.

In this market, theft of ideas is incredibly rare. In fact, there are only one or two even slightly-well documented examples of it happening. There are several reasons for this.

First, the market is very intimate. Nearly every publisher knows every other and spends time hanging out together at various events every year. Sometimes they even playtest games with each other, and they certainly discuss things in their pipeline. They spend time with lots of designers, discussing their designs, helping test them informally, and quite commonly, being good friends. This means that when an idea might be stolen that is in the submission stage, it will usually become instantly obvious if someone is ripping someone else off.

Second, because there is so little money to be made and the ratio of submissions to published games is so great, it's nearly impossible to tell what is even worth stealing. The idea might seem really great and inventive, but that means very little when it comes to getting the game published.

Third, because the community is so tight, if a publisher becomes known as someone who will rip off an author, their supply of good, publishable games instantly dries up.

Fourth, most designers here are just like me: I have dozens and dozens of ideas that certainly seem great that I'd love to have published. I don't need your idea, nor do I even want it. I want my baby published.

None of this is really true in the mass market. It's much more competitive and the rewards are much greater. People called "inventors" stalk that market, along with "agents," neither of which is at all the same breed as the "designers" we have here.

So in actual answer in this market, absolutely do share your ideas. Every person who has been on this site more than a few months can tell you that their game concepts were immensely improved by discussing them here. Great ideas tend to flood in when you're trying to work through something and at the very least people ask you really key questions about your designs that can help you see what you've been missing all along.

Now mind you, we're not talking about Hungry Hungry Hippos here, or Simpsons Monopoly, or some retread trivia game. We're talking about strategy games of considerably great complexity. We're talking about games that can sometimes take years to polish into reasonable, publishable games.

This will surely surprise you, but I've playtested many games from some of the few designers in this market who do indeed make a nice, full-time living. And get this: not only did they know I'm a designer too, they were quite happy about it because I could provide a certain kind of insight that non-designers can't (though mind you, they can provide their own kind of insights that I can't). And as difficult as that may have been to believe, get this: I have never, ever been asked even one time to sign an NDA before playing. Why? Because they know that in this market, stealing is virtually nonexistent and very, very difficult to get away with.

This is unquestionably true, but here's the kicker: in 99.99999% of the cases, ideas aren't worth squat. I may well pick up an idea from someone else's design, and they may well from mine, but those ideas do not make a publishable game. They're just ideas. Quite seriously, give me an hour and a blank piece of paper and I'll give you 20 new ideas for interesting game mechanics and games. Ideas are easy and incredibly cheap. Finished, publishable games are hard. If you take an idea of mine, I can guarantee you that you won't diminish my game one bit. In fact, odds are great that you won't end up submitting anything that even resembles my idea in the end.

Here's the amazing thing about ideas: they're built on top of other ideas. When Trivial Pursuit became big, thousands of people came up with ideas for trivia games that were slightly different, but there were actually only a dozen or so ideas in there. Taking an idea and advancing it to its next logical step means that people who actually play games end up coming up with very similar ideas all the time. Tom Jolly, a fairly prolific game designer, has a really excellent essay about this, where he notes that a genius idea of his was published by someone else entirely just months after he came up with it, despite having never shared it. It happens all the time, and that same Hasbro exec will tell you about it.

This is hardly fair. Me, I'd be totally pissed if Hasbro published a game of mine where I came up with the idea on my own but insisted on giving half of my money to someone else because he came up with a similar idea. Buy one of our games and pay that person. Each of us has full rights to the idea, so whoever they pick gets the dough.

My suggestion is to do it here. There are lots of super-prolific genius folks here who will help you usher your idea along without thinking for a moment about stealing it. Your game will be much better off for it. There are literally hundreds of examples here over the last seven years or so.

That is precisely what happens here every single day.