I'm brand new here but thought I'd share a personal experience after finding this website while looking for publishers currently accepting submissions.
So then, I have been designing board, card, Rpg, and a host of other products for some time now. My greatest hope in life is to be able to devote myself to these loves full time, but I’m sure we all know how well this path pays.
During my younger days I spent a great deal of time working on a non-collectible card game called X, (since the name is now trademarked we can just refer to it as X here). I spent literally the better part of a year crafting the game to a fine edge as I added and removed points and parts in a ttempt to make something truly special. After a long year worth of work and a lot of lost free time I figured it was time for some blind play testing. This is, literally, the finest test of a game, and for any of you aspiring game designers if you have not had a blind play test, do it.
Takeing my game to a local hobby store I came across a big group of folks, some I knew some I did not, I asked them if after their current game of “Awful green things from outer space” they would like to try something new. I hastily called to order them a pizza and some two-liters as they agreed and awaited my turn, clipboard in hand. The players spent the better part of four hours playing the game repeatedly and seemed to have a great deal of fun, with one of the group asking a myriad of questions forcing me to continually point to the rulebook and restate that it was a “blind” playtest.
Gathering my things at the end of the night I went home contented with my results and carrying valuable notes for some minor and possibly major changes to improve the game.
Now we jump ahead about 6 months, its summer and the game has grown a thin film of dust sitting on my desk for no less than a month untouched as work has driven me away from my true love once again.
Marching in from my car I open the door to my living room to find my roommate and a friend from the hobby store enthralled with a game their playing on the carpet. I’m interested so I plop down on the couch to watch the drama unfold.
No sooner had my tail touched the couch then I realized the setup of the cards on the floor identical to my own design. This design element is so unique that it has literally only been used in my own game and the game design before me. Completely derailed from any other element of reality I became focused on the game, noteing placement of dice, and action in turn sequence.
I seized my rulebook and began asking questions. “So for the beginning of your turn your gonna do this?” “So on your next turn you’ll probably wanna use him to do that and this?” I asked questions based on my pre-existing knowledge of the rules, reading from my rulebook as I did. Within a few minutes my roommate asked, “Have you played this before? Pretty kool game, right?”
Handing my roommate MY rulebook I retired to my bedroom for the evening. That was nearly the end of any dreams I had for game design, it turns out one of the people at my blind play test was a graphic designer for a much larger company and had simply stolen the idea in full.
Now given that my rules were scribbles in a notebook and that the cards etc I used were printouts from my home PC I figured I had at least SOMETHING to work with when I contacted a lawyer in the following weeks. This could not have been farther from the truth, I had, in fact, nothing. The lawyer suggested and this is a quote “If I were you Mr.X I’d go design another game and this time you should look into a copyright.”
Since this initial lesson I’ve become a much more wary person. Thiers a lot of people out there that know good and well, most game ideas are crap. The fact remains though that should your idea be “the one” and you haven’t shown any precepts of control or protection, it’s literally “up for grabs”.
Why share this? Because I would loath to go through those events a second time and so hope to prevent any of you from experiencing a similar outcome. Fully understand that my own experience was a rarity, but that these things DO happen, should you fail to protect your work it will be your own fault.
As far as a copyright goes this places a time of creation on the product, allowing you at least the chance to go to trial. I certainly wouldnt say this means you can wreck anyone that comes near your design, it just offers you the chance to attack a clone, depending on your bank account and drive to press the subject.
As far as "sideways copyrights" you can do a great many things to show proof of an established idea. I imagine the only real impact this would have however would only become evident after a worst case scenario had already taken place, at which point it may be worth very little.
Either way you wanna go I simply accepted my fate. I no longer hold any anger or hate towards anyone over the subject and have since simply taken it as the only kind of silver lineing I could imagine, they proved my concept worked and made me want to redouble my efforts on further products.
As far as the name of the product or company, lets leave this dead. I let it all go years ago and pointing fingers or smearing names wasn't the intent of the post, only awareness.