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Making parody game to Settlers

6 replies [Last post]
Fri, 09/10/2004 - 18:05
Anonymous

Hi,

I want to make a game which has the same mechanics as Settlers of Catan but with a different theme. If I changed the title of the game, changed the resources (wheat, ore, sheep, wood, brick to other resources), and changed the special cards (knite, monopoly, etc...) to different items, is it legally allowed?

The things I would keep is the mechanics (dice rolling and getting resources depending on which hex corner you are sitting on), the trading resources option, etc..etc...

Basically, I want to make a game and market it to the people of the middle east. Can someone advise me on what else I need to do so I "won't" get in trouble.

Thanks in advance.

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Sat, 09/11/2004 - 08:54
#1
Dralius
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Making parody game to Settlers

Parody is defined as;

1 : a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule
2 : a feeble or ridiculous imitation

Settlers is already sold worldwide and being the king of German style games it’s hard to imagine that your going to find a gaming market that has not already seen it. Also to be fair to other designers out there you need to design your own games not just change the graphics on other peoples work. I am not saying you shouldn’t make a settlers like game, you just need to add in your own ideas until it becomes it’s own entity.

A few down points

-If you’re trying to sell this to a company they will likely drop it as soon as they see that it is just like settlers. There is a good reason that there are some games that could be imitated aren’t like scrabble, you can’t compete with a powerful name brand.

-If you are planning on footing the bill and producing it yourself the cost of just going over your project with an intellectual property lawyer to keep you out of litigation will make your companies start up cost skyrocket.

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Sat, 09/11/2004 - 17:44
#2
Scurra
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Making parody game to Settlers

Yes, you are on very shaky ground simply copying an existing game and changing the bits, despite all the frequent comments on this board about there being "no copyright in ideas" - with a known brand like Settlers you need to go a different way.
For instance, I'd suggest getting in touch with Cactus games who have licensed variants of Settlers and Carcassonne to target at the Christian gamers market - you might find someone there willing to talk to you about their experience.

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Sun, 09/12/2004 - 18:18
#3
Anonymous
Making parody game to Settlers

if it would be the same game.... why do you call it a parody? a parody has to be better than the original. you want to work like a strange xerox machine, how this question is related to game design?

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Mon, 09/13/2004 - 12:04
#4
Scurra
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Making parody game to Settlers

jenoe wrote:
how this question is related to game design?

I think it's potentially very relevant. When does a game stop being a copy and start being something else? It's not ususual to start from an existing game and change aspects (normally the ones you don't think work!) to see (a) how the designer fitted it together and (b) to see what effect the changes have.
For instance, I've done a complete retheme of Knizia's Lord of the Rings as a Harry Potter game. I thought it would be fairly easy but I had to consider all sorts of theme-related things that worked in the original but needed good analogues (e.g. the "Ring" mechanic.)
It's currently still so close to the original that I wouldn't dream of trying to pitch it to anyone (except, perhaps, Herr Knizia ;-) but as an exercise it was extremely illuminating.

That's why I pointed to "Settlers of Canaan" as a great example of how an existing game can be interestingly adapted for a specific market.

Maybe the word we're looking for here is "homage": a tribute to the original that has many things (but not all!) in common without an assumption of humorous intent which the word "parody" implies. (Hey Jeff, fancy a quick argument about the English language again? ;-))

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Mon, 09/13/2004 - 12:44
#5
Anonymous
Making parody game to Settlers

Scurra wrote:
Yes, you are on very shaky ground simply copying an existing game and changing the bits, despite all the frequent comments on this board about there being "no copyright in ideas" - with a known brand like Settlers you need to go a different way.
For instance, I'd suggest getting in touch with Cactus games who have licensed variants of Settlers and Carcassonne to target at the Christian gamers market - you might find someone there willing to talk to you about their experience.

I couldn't agree more. You're talking about at best a licensing arrangement whereby you get permission and pay the licensing fees to do a variant of an existing game. It's only fair to the person who designed the game.

To design your own game, you would need to creat your own game system and set of mechanics. This is where you may expand upon mechanics seen in other games (for example, laying hex tiles) and create your own unique experience. You just can't simply lift a full or nearly full set of mechanics from an existing game and tack on your own theme/cards/etc.

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Tue, 09/14/2004 - 04:10
#6
Anonymous
Making parody game to Settlers

i think a comidic parody of sitlers would be funny, like you could have the sheep tradeing mofia or have the game use a 12 sided dice that would just simply not have a few numbers on it ( god dangn it the dice just never roll eght!).

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