Sometime last night, in between the library, soccer practice, cub scouts, and McDonald's I managed to mail off the first beta kits for Atomic Earth 2.0. Shucks, now all that's left to do is wait for feedback... And then collate the feedback, implement suggestions, finalize graphic designs, write press releases, distribute press releases, promote the product by writing on blogs, forums, kickstarter, facebook, twitter.... All while staying within budget and on timeline. At some point I actually get to be creative again and live my dream job, right?
While doing some of that "being creative" stuff, I glanced at my son's Pokemon cards and noticed that every single one of them includes a copyright notice at the bottom of the card. Now, I'm not making a card game (although cards are a component), but it occurs to me that they do this for a reason. Just not sure what that reason is.
Is this a paranoid legalese thing? Is this because the cards are traded independently and not tied to the game? Is it necessary for me to include a similar copyright notice on all the printed components of my game? I was planning just to include the copyright and legalese on the instruction sheet and be done with it. Insights and suggestions? I sure would appreciate it.
Wow, thanks. Most of my experience is with book publishing, so I'm fairly familiar with copyright and trademark as it applies to other media. Guess I just didn't think about extending that to board games. I've done some small DTP runs for Atomic Earth (1.0), but I'm looking at rolling out into "real" distribution, and have been paranoid double-checking everything that looks crosseyed.
Good advice about the beta feedback. A fair number of my mechanics have changed. I'll take another peek at my schedule and timeline just to be sure.