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Games Entertainment

Hasbro And Game-Design Lawsuits 225

Posted by Hemos from the bad-news-for-game-design dept.
Athyra writes: "This is chilling news -- Inside Mac Games is reporting that Hasbro has been successful in their attempts to get a number of manufacturers of classic-style games ("taxman," "Missile Defender," etc), claiming that Hasbro owns the gameplay concepts used in these games. Considering how most games are built on just a few stepping stones, this could have a chilling effect -- will the designers of Gran Turismo be sued for ripping off Pole Position? Will Broderbund have to pay Myst's profits to the folks at Infocom and SAGA? And what happens if someone can prove ownership of 3D action games? No more Quake sequels?" Update: 04/20 12:23 by E : It should be pointed out that the companies settled out of court for money, and a promise to not sell the offending titles anymore - no legal precedent was set.
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Hasbro And Game-Design Lawsuits More

Hasbro And Game-Design Lawsuits

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  • There is nothing scary about this lawsuit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did any of you people read the suit? They weren't suing over creative ideas. They were suing because the guilty games were almost exact duplicates. It is not "Street Fighter" sues "Mortal Kombat" because they are both fighting games, it would be more like "Mortal Kombat" sues "Deadly Combat" because the defendent had characters named Red Sonya Sword, Cold Man, Emperor Scorpion Ninja, Thunder God, Kung-Fu Masta, and Cyborg Man with the same selection of special moves, and amazingly identical levels.

  • No more Quake == No more killers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    On the anniversary of both the Columbine killings and the birthday of Hitler (a twin pairing which eclipses even the similar circumstances of the murdering of Waco "cultists" and the Oklahoma City bombing), I think it is important to remember that we live in a very violent, secular society. Schoolyards have become graveyards; peaceful neighborhoods have become war zones, and yet we Americans sit by and say to ourselves "Well, it's not my problem". On Slashdot, we are quick to condem the foolish notion that the choice of entertainment can influence an individual's personality to such a degree that a peaceful child becomes a killer. But ask yourself if a child with a latent predisposal for antisocial acts (by which I mean mainly violence rather than self-isolation) could be further influenced by games in which homocide is not only an option but the only option?

    I ask you, too, to consider if it cannot be considered a sign of a sick culture that oftentimes the only contact friends make with each other is to kill one another in a virtual world? Violence had moved from a contemptible act of destruction towards the community to a way to spend time with "the boys", replacing nonviolent activites such as poker, conversation, etc. Is this a good sign? Can we say that we, as a culture are moving forward? Is the road of progress to be laid atop the trail of bloodied corpses?

    No!, we cry. A new foundation for society must be built. The disease of violence must we wiped from our cities and cleansed from our children. Peace, love, and pacifity must be established, by force if need be. The source of violence has been discovered, and it is resentment, which is in turn founded in thought. The root of this ill may be plucked from the soil as a weed in a garden. A new way of life, firmly based on the Objectivist principles of Ayn Rand will be established whereby the great men and women, the industrialists, will be those who rule for us. As there is a government, it shall be the privilege of those in power to be allowed "thought"; citizens will be given instruction in valuing devotion to country over all else. Under this new system based firmly on the foundations of Reason and Capitalism, America shall flourish and conquer Her enemies, the looters of the world.

  • Ironic (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast who bought TSR who produces Dungeons and Dragons.

    And just last month they announced open sourcing [salon.com] of Dungeons and Dragons (or something). One hand giveth while the other taketh away? Or could they both be playing to the same game plan?

    I suppose I could accept this proprietariness if it was the original creators who were benefitting, but these are just cases of lawyers and business critters sucking marrow. I wonder if they've even played the games they're seeking to exert their control over.

    It just isn't right. Makes me feel strongly that we need to put our full support behind Free games.

  • There ARE good (recent!) arcade games out there, it's just hard to find them. Here's a few in the arcade that I go to here in LA (the Pak Mann arcade): - Crazy Taxi - Battle Balls - that sniper game and its sequel (forget what they are called) - Strider 2 - Tokyo Wars - Power Stone - Virtual ON - Puzzle Fighter II - Time Crisis II - Savage Quest (well, I'm a little partial to this one, since I worked on it) and hey, don't forget about pinball: - Monster Mash - any pinball 2000 game (Revenge from Mars, Star Wars: Episode I) Unfortunately some of the best games never actually come out in consumer arcades - you can only play them at the shows. Two years ago at ASI I played: - Samurai Showdown 3D/64/5 (they hadn't figured out what to call it yet) - Magic: The Gathering (yes, an arcade game version) - The Annoying Maze Game The last two were some of the most unique arcade games I've ever played - which is probably why they never made it anywhere.
  • Calm down. It was a script kiddie exploiting a minor problem in the comments code causing the page not to render, which CowboyNeal fixed within seconds of finding out about it. If anything, blame your web browsing software.
  • Publish something without patenting it.

    Now nobody evil can patent it. Give it a year, and you can't patent it.

    You're good.

  • id != "makers of Wolfenstein 3D"

    The folks at id licensed the engine.

    Apogee is the company that made Wolf3D...you know, the folks who also made Duke Nukem 3D?

    Groovy.
  • You mean to tell me you can use the U.S. judicial system to stifle competition? Wow, if only Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell had known that. :^P
  • no, 2600 Hz (kHz maybe? i dunno) was the frequency of one of the tones used in phreaking equipment.
  • What I don't understand is why Hasbro decided to follow suit on these things. It's not as if Hasbro was attempting to sell these things currently. Like many have said this was ages ago.

    Yeah they are. Note the recent PSX and PC remakes of Centipede, Asteroids, Pong, etc.

    And not only are they still selling, I'm still buying.
  • Back in the early 80's, there were tons of ripped off ideas. Taxman was made by HAL Labs in either 1980 or 1981, which was, for all practical purposes, a direct ripoff of PacMan. The boards were slightly different, and the ghosts had names such as Gollum and Smugpuff, but aside from that, it was identical. Same thing as Gobbler. Even classic Apple][ games like Galaxian existed, and didn't even bother to change the name!
    I'm not sure if the Taxman in question is the one I mentioned, but it's the only one I'm aware of. If it is the one, what's the point of going after them 20 years later? Or are they just pissed off that their Mr Potato Head "Welcome to Rhode Island" mascots are being vandalized and are seeking cheap revenge?
  • I have an idea towards that. FREE SOFTWARE - THE ULTIMATE IN GEEK BUSINESS. Free Software. Don't just take corporate America by storm, take them by wallets.
  • What's your point?

    People have produced great works of art and literature with no protection whatsoever. Modern-day copyright law is effectively unconstitutional by retroactively granting longer and longer durations of copyright, before any expire.

    It strikes me that this has the effect of diminishing the number of works that are created (see many Mickey Mouse cartoons lately?) while not benefiting the public at all. (just imagine if fanfic were 100% unmistakably legal - there might be lots of Middle Earth books instead of the relatively few we've got.)

    Anyway, I too would like to see 10 year copyrights. Gives the author a good reason to keep on typin'.
  • Like I said: the copyright lasts 10 years. So if the artist dies, the copyright passes to his heirs for the remainder of the duration. If it already expired before the artist died, it's their problem. The artists' family didn't create anything anyway - if they had, they'd jointly own the copyright.

    So you've pointed out nicely how holding on to a copyright for a long period of time provides no incentive for the creation of creative work. Why should the poor family actually do something, when they can coast on something created years ago?

    As for trademarks (in another reply to your post), I disagree. Trademarks on characters in copyrighted works should cease to exist once those works are in the public domain. How else are you supposed to use the p.d. work either by itself or by building on it? Again, this only promotes creativity - the company that owned the character will have to make _more_ characters if it wants control, or become one of many sources of material for a p.d. character. Either way, I don't see a downside.

    I _want_ to see some more Mickey Mouse cartoons. There are a lot that would be really good, and not particularly difficult to do. (animation gets cheaper all the time - esp. with cgi) But this requires that both the original works, and the characters become public.

    Of course, it's not like Disney (Snow White, Cinderella, Alladin, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, etc.) has ever used someone else's characters and stories....

    (let's not even get into the Lion King/Jungle King fiasco)
  • If I like it now, I'll watch it now. If I'm out to screw the maker of a work based on something fresh out of the public domain, then I'd wait 20 years and screw them too.

    10 years is a lot for the distribution of the original work (admittedly it doesn't always end up okay, but lots of artists never get famous till they're dead - fat lot of good royalties do them then) but not so much for creating derivative works.

    i'm more fond of seeing more works being created than having a few works make money forever at the expense of anyone who doesn't want to shell out, and who wants to create a derivative work.

    tolkien created a lot of stuff from scratch, i'll grant. and good for him. but there's a lot of excellent stuff that wouldn't exist at all if people held onto their copyright forever. And yet, forever is exactly what the trend we're following leads to.
  • Too bad the Sugar Hill Gang ripped off lyrics from another group, and just rapped over another record (forget the names of both right now)
  • "God Awful?" Well, K.C. Munchkin certainly was better than the 2600 version of Pac-Man...
  • IANAL, but as far as I know this is just an out-of-court settlement, and it does not set a legal precident. Therefore anyone wishing to sue other game manufactures over other games still have to prove the point and make a judge agree. This has not been done yet.
  • Actually analog computers could do bouncing balls before that.
  • "It's equivalent to Doyle claiming all rights to detective stories just because his Sherlock Holmes pioneered the style."

    Poe has about 50 years worth of prior art claim on that one.

  • They posted the explanation in the same place as the explanations for stories that get "disappeared". :-)
  • Does that mean you'll go there to annoy people instead of here? Then let me be among the first to wish you every success with it.
  • "Would we be better off if no more gangster movies had been made after "The Godfather"?"

    Yes, but before would have been even better.

  • So, did you want to wait 10 years and get it for free, or wait 10 years and then pay a lot to someone else, secure in the knowledge that the original creator got screwed?

    If a lot of what used to be your favorite songs are winding up behind commercials now, imagine if advertisers could wait 10 years and use whatever they wanted to for free.

  • It's not unheard of for dead artists to have left behind families in financial need.
  • "Frankly, 10 years period should be more than adequate."

    Sure, look how much Tolkien raked in during the first 10 years after he wrote "Lord of the Rings".

  • Drop into a Radio Shack or generic equivalent sometime and look at the 2 piece plastic boxes they sell for building electronic projects in. The ones that they've carried for the last 30 years are a medium dark blue.
  • 3d Monster Maze on the ZX81 way back in 1981 predates the lot of 'em.

    Heck, Xybots predates Wolfenstein, just don't tell Hasbro, who probably have the rights to that as well.
  • I think Hasbro owns Parker Brothers, like they own the Atari games (and, by the looks of it, their legal department (famed for being consistently the most profitable bit of Atari).

    Think of them as the Microsoft of games. They don't actually innovate much, just buy up other peoples ideas.

  • Actully, Commander Keen was marked as by iD, although both Keen and Wolfenstein were distrubted by apogee (now 3d realms). The first game which id distributed was, iirc, doom. I'm pretty sure that commander keen was their first game as id, too.
  • apogee had nothing to do with the actual creation of wolf3d. they only published it.
  • I am not a laywer (But I play one on TV.)

    IANALBIPOOTV ?

    8-)

    Bye bye little karma, any decent Karma Whore would have logged out for this post.
  • Where does Wolfenstein 3D fit into 3D gaming history? I'm fairly certain that it was the first pc 3D game(feel free to correct me). What were the comparable arcade games before Wolf3D?

    Could it be said that John Carmack owns the 3D fps game? And is the game concept now shared due to quake being under GPL.

    JungleBoy

  • Bah (Score:1)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    Bah, they'd better have licensed the method whereby suing with a cloth-covered object carrying a briefcase to remove competition thereby improving throughput on the money bus.

    Well.. if not.. this whole thing is illegal and I'm gonna sue 'em. If you'd like to sue, please deposit $1,000,000 in my bank account. Thanks.

  • They thought that people could change the first P to an F. :)

    -David T. C.
  • LOL. Amen brother. :)

    -David T. C.
  • If this was a settlement, doesn't that mean it doesn't actually set any legal precedents? (IANAL)
  • You can also generate the 2600 Hz tone if you have an old school whistle from a box of Cap 'N Crunch. Hence the famed phreaker (was it john draper?) named after the famed captain.

    An electric device to generate such a tone is known as a blue box, presumably after the color of the whistle. This in turn gave birth to more phreaking tools such as the red box, etc.

    Yes, I read too many text files on BBSs when I was in Jr. High.

  • For the announcement: "Hasbro Interactive has reached a settlement with two defendants in an intellectual property suit involving several of its games."

    Looks like they did an out-of-court settlement, and as such this does not serve as a legal judgement by a federal court, no? So nothing is decided yet...

  • The Demon ISP case in the UK was settled also, no precident was set, but see what it's doing to the ISP industry in Britain anyway.

    Just because no legal precident is set doesn't mean it won't have a chilling effect, very few computer game companies have pockets deep enough to fight the Hasbros of the world in court.

    ----
  • And what happens if someone can prove ownership of 3D action games? No more Quake sequels?
    Hehe, um, isn't id the pioneer of 3D action games? and id produces Quake and it's sequels..

    Ok, maybe this comment was meaning someone else proving ownership, but if not, then the only worry is Quake clones.

  • Uh- is this a joke? "A new way of life, firmly based on the Objectivist principles of Ayn Rand will be established whereby the great men and women, the industrialists, will be those who rule for us"? It shall be the privilege of those in power to be allowed 'thought'?

    *g* check the quality of your crack, man, I think someone is cutting it with rat poison, Drano, and ergot fungus ;)

  • Wouldn't they have to be almost exactly identical for it to be a copyright violation? If the code is significantly different, could it still be a copyright violation even if the games look similar? I'm not sure I even understand what the hell copyright is anymore. It's getting all bent out of shape.


  • "many" of Willy's are based on prior work? Isn't it all of them except, awe, nuts, I can't remember the name. The last one, on the island, in which he knocks the other playrights of the time? Oh, yeah: Tempest.

    Nothing original about the stories he wrote; it's the *telling* that he did soe well . . .
  • IMHO, mental monopolies are just as damaging as physical monopolies. Someone needs to get out a cluebat for the MBAs running the show.

    Agreed.

    Hasbro claims "Hasbro has a long history of building great game brands. This suit is aimed at ensuring we can continue to deliver the high-quality, high-value games that consumers have come to expect from Hasbro Interactive. If we succeed, our development and licensing partners succeed and, ultimately, the game consumer wins."

    Yet is it in the consumers' best interest to have fewer choices? What if the officially available version of a given Hasbro game is riddled with bugs or missing features? Wouldn't it be more in the consumer's best interests to have alternate versions competing with Hasbro - if not to provide those missing features then to at least force Hasbro to give attention to what consumers wish for, for competitive reasoning. Classic games, by definition, are not areas of innovation! Thus they are very succeptible to the problems inherent in monopolization.

    Well I will tell you what I think: We need to have more Free games, with the source code available for customization and enhancement. And I'm not just spouting opinion here, I've running a net project to develop and promote Free games, both big and small. There is lots to do, and we could use help [worldforge.org].

  • hasbro owns WotC owns TSR. can you see the same thing coming in pen & paper RPGs?

    Actually, it's funny... this already sort of happened years ago, before the buy out. TSR shut down all fan-sites, taking all of those items (including GPL'd software) and relicensing it, without permission. (still there, see ftp.mpgn.com).

    They threatened to sue people who were producing anything in anyway related to TSR materials. (They'd claim trademark infringement without ever publishing a list of exactly what those claimed trademarks were.)

    The claim is that "rules" are a representation of "the idea of a particular game". Thus the rules themselves (and thus any game using those rules or rules derived thereof) are protected by copyright. So anyone producing a D&D knockoff gets sued (even the guy who *invented* D&D got a lawyer pummling for producing a similar game).

    But that was long ago...

    These days, WotC (aka Hasbro) is claiming that it will be putting out D&D/3rd under an open source license. Hmm [salon.com]

    Feh, our games seem to be getting less Free year after year. This is bad.

  • I happened to be scouring around for other game sites and ran across this...

    Hasbro's up and coming games.com [games.com] site!

    3 guesses why they're now starting to crack down on clones, and just one guess what they'll do to all the out there. Hint: Hasbro::WotC::TSR has [cnet.com]done it [ualberta.ca] before.

    Better snag shareware games while you can, and Napsterize them down to the underground. ;-)

  • point of the day :

    hasbro owns WotC owns TSR.

    can you see the same thing coming in pen & paper RPGs?

    i knew you could.
  • Doom certainly wasn't the first 2.5D game. Elite on the Commodore 64 was full 3D, as are a number of flight sims.

    Indeed. And in fact, Elite had been out on the BBC Micro for some time before the C64 version was released (in fact, the enhanced version for the BBC Master is still the best version of Elite ever made). There were many 3D games before Doom (or even Wolf3D). There were the freescape games, "Driller" and "Dark Side", and others such as "Mercenary", "Starion", and of course the flight simulators (all the way back to the ZX81 Flight Sim!) I'm getting all nostalgic now -- must be time to dig out the emulators again...

  • The concept is even older. The original Ultima game for the Apple II featured a first-person perspective as you walked through a maze killing monsters. The program was written in Applesoft BASIC, and the maze was drawn v-e-r-y v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

    I'm really dating myself here. Who remembers playing Eamon? :-)

  • How literate IS /. nowadays? First of all, they settled out of court (for you dummies means a judge didn't make anyone do anything) and all they asked for was these companies not produce obvious rip-offs of games Hasbro now owns. If someone came out with AlwaysQuest which was so much like EverQuest consumers couldn't tell the difference, any smart judge would throw the book at AlwaysQuest, if it even got to that. Get a clue people, even the GPL doesn't allow crap like this.
  • Didn't we already hash this issue out when Apple sued Microsoft for copying their gui design? Microsoft won that case, and now Hasbro won this one... That strikes me as a bit of a contradiction, but not entirely surprising. It's tradition in America that the richest always win. Microsoft only lost its recent court battles because of the shear force of money against them. Need I even mention O.J. or the MPAA.

    Politicians yammer and clammer (both are real words) about campaign finance reform, but what about legal system finance reform? How is anyone who isn't a multibillionare supposed to survive in such a system without caving in to the whim of every large corporation?
  • Read the article, not the headline. Two of the defendents settled, there was no finding of copyright violation or judgement handed down.
  • Depends on how you look at things. Doom certainly wasn't the first 2.5D game. Elite on the Commodore 64 was full 3D, as are a number of flight sims. Might be the first FPS (First Person Shooter), but even then I'd be surprised.
  • Odds are against you ever reading this... but... I didn't forget Wolf3D, it's just that its name is not correct. Wolf3D is actually 2D, just a 3D-looking engine. Doom is 2.5D. Hieght actually matters, though it's not as good as Quake.
  • That would fall under 'trademark'. The name is too similar to the trademarked 'pacman' name.
    Copyright only gives you the rights to an original work.. not other things that 'look ' the same.
  • Correct me if my impression is wrong but the megacorps seem to entering a cultural shark-feeding frenzie in trying to stake out a market stomping ground. It seems that the "best" tactic for "owning" a loyal cult following (whether game or movie show) is take a scorched earth approach to similiar genres. It's equivalent to Doyle claiming all rights to detective stories just because his Sherlock Holmes pioneered the style. Or Disney claiming all cat and mouse stories just because it would clash with their beloved Mickey. Now claiming a cultural franchise with guarenteed audience to sell do-dackies and merchandising to may be profitable in the short-term but how clued is the fan-base to stand for it? One wonders whether creative gaming souls will then become another version of street musicians being squeezed by the music distributors? Afterall, you learn by imitating your peers and predecessors and it would be nice to eat while doing so. Curtailing this outlet for younger souls to practice and demonstrate their talents seems a short sighted goal, if not outright illegal under anti-competitive practices. A company is entitled to protect their stuff developed over the years but attempting to fence in a culture commons will only hurt the public in the long term by depriving them of alternatives.

    IMHO, mental monopolies are just as damaging as physical monopolies. Someone needs to get out a cluebat for the MBAs running the show.

    LL
  • Sorry, my brain is fried today, I meant to say that about pac-man, as tetris was obviously invented by the russians. Anyways neither game, was an original idea of atari.
  • Well accually I believe Atari was only licensed to make the console version of tetris, by Namaco, So Hasbro in no way owns the concept to tetris, but I guess they didn't realize that. But I could be SERIOUSLY wrong.. who knows :)
  • Copyrights are granted by the government because it was decided that some protection of written works benefited the public by encouraging authors.

    This protection is enforced by the justice system, paid for by the public, if they don't get eventual access to the copyrighted material, why should they bother paying to protect it?

    IMHO, any copyrights longer than 25 years are unconscionable. You're asking people to pay for copyright protection that will extend for upwards of four generations, and by that time, will almost assuredly have been extended. They're paying for something that not even their great grandchildren will reap the benefits of.

    I'd say that 25 years from the date of creation is pretty good.

    If that's not good enough, perhaps trademarks and copyrights could be merged a bit, to prevent the use of trademarked characters even once the copyrighted material goes public. That way, Aladin, and Beauty and the Beast would both be public, as would all the content in a Mickey Mouse cartoon, except the image of the mouse. But you could replace the mouse with another character and display the work.

    I really don't see why we should bother protecting copyrights when they last so long.

    And if someone's family needs to eat, they've had 25 years to do something about it.

    As we grant wider and wider protections, so that any talking mouse with big ears is a violation, and so that any game with the same basic gameplay is a violation, we limit the scope of what people can do without stepping on the toes of the corporation that snapped up some old IP, not for its direct value, but for its value in blocking any material the competition could make.

    Anyways, I think it's fairly obvious that the only entities really server by 100+ year copyrights are corporations. I personally value the rights of people over those of corporations. Perhaps my off-the-cuff ideas aren't the best, but something needs to be done to change the IP laws to help the people, not the corporations. To some degree helping the corporations helps the people, past that degree, the people begin to lose these benefits and eventually suffer. Some reworking needs to be done.
  • Hasbro IS still selling these games.
    They're mostly bargin bin/3in1 compilations under the title "Atari Clasics".

  • a 2600hz tone used to be able to be used to let you do all kinds of things to the phone system when you pumped it into a phone line, and let you 'hack' the telephone network (called phreaking). You can't do this anymore, AFAIK, but there used to be a lot of connection between the hacking and phreaking movements in the 1980s.
  • Interesting that you mention Final Fantasy, since Squaresoft has attempted to PATENT it.

    http://www.patents.ibm.com/cgi-bin/viewpat.cmd/US0 5649862__ [ibm.com]
  • I don't remember the year, but Philips used to have a game for their P2000 computers called 'Happelaar', which was also a pacman clone. They did loose however, even though the graphics were different. Not that you could ever get quality graphics on a P2000... Happelaar probably never made it to the international market, just the Netherlands.. must have been the name too, which is not exactly international.

    //rdj
  • On the first screens, you have a copyright notice with the year usually. I'm pretty sure Galaga and all those old games have them.

    And copyrights last a long deal longer than patents also (I think it's something like 25 years about the death of the author for books).

    If it was based on a patent, they'd lost because they didn't make any move to protect those patents earlier, if you don't want them enough to try to protect them, the courts ain't going to give them back to you years later when you finally wake up.

    But here the companies didn't loose, they just decided to settle to get Hasbro off their back. If the lawsuit would cost you more than those game would give you in 10 years, I understand why they would want to settle as well. This doesn't mean that every Tetris clone is illegal, though it could encourage Hasbro to go against them in court of law as well now that they settle with those two.
  • Just look at the 'Mac Man' screen:

    http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jimg/pourri/ma c_man.gif

    Hasbro has a case here, a rip off this close deserves to be punished. Though, the ghost design is pretty neat.

  • A couple years ago, Hasbro bought up several classic titles to have software companies rewrite them in all the modern 3-D splendor that wasn't available to the orignal designers.

    A few years ago, I was a programming intern for a game programming company in Gaithersburg, MD. We worked on Centipede there and Hasbro was the publisher, they had brought the project to us. For those who never played (quite a few), the main game wasn't like the old one, it was given a plot and a hero (Wally), and 3D Scenery, etc.. An action game with an objective to stop the evil Centipede Queen. Well Hasbro had plans to work on several more classic games ("retrogames" as they called them..). They asked us (and probably any other developer working on one of their "retrogames") to make sure we included a classic version of those old games which was supposed to be the exact same game as the old one only with 3D graphics.

    Now Hasbro is tired of paying royalties after purchasing the titles so I guess now they have successfully argued they don't have to. This won't stifle modern game design, it doesn't have to. Modern game design, according to most publishers, not just Hasbro, is retrogames. Not just retrogames, but sequels, and just more of the same. Publishers want to be sure that they will get a return so according to some boardroom line graph, new game ideas never sell. I mean cmon, what works for EA Sports has to work for everyone. Look how Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy haven't changed since the last time you played em. There are some publishers out there appreciate orginality, probably the most daring one being Gathering Of Developers, but their problem is that they don't have the financial backing companies like Hasbro have, so they only put money behind very few titles, and their requirements are strict. Our company couldn't put a game out with them because one of their requirements is to have _aready_ put out a succesful game. Others, like id Software (even though Quake 3 is another fps, it was an untested idea that #1, you need a 3D Accelerator to play it, and #2, the big one, that there is really no single player), and Bungie with Halo, and Sierra when they put out HalfLife (valve was the developer, and I still give them credit for putting out the greatest game of all time) and a couple others who put out quality software. They have the money to do this tough..The solution? Support small-time games, support shareware games, and find out before hand that sequels and retrogames suck. Play something fresh.

    karma whore.
    --------

  • I don't see how this could happen. There's no way to "own" an idea unless you copyright or patent it and I don't recall a galaga type patent anywhere. I see this as a foreshadowing of more crappy hasbro improvements to games that were great alreay, and invariably get worse.

    Colm Atkins
  • Did 3d Monster Maze have any sort of animation? My thinking is, Dungeon Master had a few frames per second of animation and was first-person based (you could see your sword etc.?? On another note: Hunt the Wumpus.... man, that'll take ya back. I recall playing a cheezy takeoff called "Wampus Hunt", IIRC, on the old TI-99/4A
    ---
  • Heck, for that matter, wasn't Dungeon Master on the Atari ST pre-Wolfenstein? This was like 1988? I'm not up on my id history, so I don't know when it came out. dungeon Master, btw, was a first-person dungeon game similiar to the Catacombs 3d mentioned above. Damn fun game btw, with some fiendish puzzles.
    ---
  • Wolfenstein 3D was a re-exploration of a concept created for the Apple II, "Castle Wolfenstein."

    Creating a new adaptation from an existing concept is always a risky proposition. The original creators lose their hold on a possible money-maker (Virtual Defender, or Space Invaders 2000, for hypothetical examples), if the image of the original concept has been hurt by cheap clones.

    (On the shoulders of Giants =anagram>
    ... onto this dangerous shelf,
    The foulness tarnish Good)

  • A lot of the gameplay ideas (and certainly the story lines) are Unique. At least, in my experience. Not that I do a whole lot of gaming, console or otherwise...
  • How come none of the games you link to are the versions under dispute? The games you link to are made by companies which did not settle any lawsuit with Hasbro. I believe that is called misinformation.

    Exactly what does this mean? The games are the same, GT Interactive and Varcon are being sued for packaging them together and selling them. Secondly if you had read the article or my post you would see that GT Interactive and Varcon delisted the games as part of the settlement so the exact copies cannot be linked to because they no longer or on GT Interactive's page [gtinteractive.com] and I could only find this link [pcgame.com] for Varcon System's game pack.



  • The lawsuit is undoubtedly based on copyright law, similar to the look & feel lawsuit of apple v microsoft. And the "look & feel" of the game clones is so close to that of the origional games in these cases, it is very hard to tell the difference. Even the NAMES are almost identical, such as "Mac-Man" or "Patriot Command".

    Also, this is simply an out of court settlement. GT interactive and one other just agreed to stop and pay an "undisclosed sum", probably a token amount. The companies acted in their best self interest, since it is not like these atari clones are making any significant money, and fighting it out in court would cost more than capitulation.

    It is unclear whether this lawsuit could really win, it would undoubtedly come down to a case by case, game by game basis in court.

    Even if Hasbro won some of the counts against some of the companies, it would not have the chilling effect that the prophets of doom may cite. You can't copyright concepts, and there are no patents on gameplay (yet). Under copyright or look & feel suits, Unreal Tournament and Wolfenstein 3D are so vastly different, you won't mistake one for another.

    Yet how do you tell the difference between MacMan and PacMan?

  • I was pondering just the same thing. Doom wasn't the first 2.5D FPS, Wolfenstein was! None the less an id [idsoftware.com] game. So yes, I think id then has ownership rights on every FPS?
  • Correct. 2600 Hz (a slightly flat E, 2 1/2 octaves above A-440) is the frequency that 1-800 numbers used to use to signify a free line. Phreaks hacked up "blue boxes" to emit that exact frequency; this C program (for Borland Turbo C [borland.com] and DJGPP [delorie.com]) does the same thing:

    #include <dos.h>
    int main() { sound(2600); return 0; }

    I'd post a binary at my web page, but I'm booted into GNU/Linux at the moment. But don't try phreaking with it: the phone company now has a "blue box" alarm.

  • Young computer programmer sued by Hasbro over IP infringement.

    A man who goes by the handle 'Elendale' has been undergoing a lengthy lawsuit by Hasbro due to the proliferation of a computer game he recently re-wrote called 'Pong'. This game is owned by Hasbro who acquired the rights to it just recently. Hasbro's lawyers commented "This kid broke the law by distributing Pong through the net without paying Hasbro its IP fees, we must destroy this evil threat to humanity with extreme prejiduce. Oh, and we need a raise from $1000 to $1150 an hour."
    Elendale was quoted as saying "This is just a warning from Hasbro. Soon they will charge royalties for everything, from D&D to the most basic game of 'tag'." He is also attempting to negotiate out of court unsuccessfully. Hasbro will settle for nothing less than $150,000 and his soul. Next on the news, Microsoft head Bill Gates seen grovelling at Steve Case's door. The Department of Justice thinks this is a ploy to give Bill sympathy, but is currently performing an in-depth investigation.

    -Elendale (Now that i think about it that might just work... hmm...)

  • If you read the article, the lawsuit was fairly limited in scope. They were only suing over titles that were obvious rip-offs. These games not only took advantage of the method of gameplay, but they also tried to invoke the legacies of those games which Hasbro has rights to. That's stepping over the line. It's one thing to make a 3D shooter, and quite another to make one called "Escape from Nazi War prison, with simplistic rectangular VGA graphics that will run on an 8088." Whether or not it's friendly, it's certainly fair, and as a business, they have to enforce their intellectual property rights. Either that or they could let it go until everything becomes a standard, and then demand royalties. *cough* Unisys *cough* That certainly didn't go over well. Come on, they're playing by the rules. They haven't even asked for retroactive royalties, merely a cessation of distribution of these ripoff products. I'm quite certain that anyone who wanted to make their own asteroids game could probably get licensing fairly cheap. Or, heaven forbid, think up something new.
  • If this is the case, does that mean it could extend outside of computer games?

    By this I mean could Steve Jackson games sue Activision for Interstate 76, after all it borrows heavily from Car Wars.

  • Wasn't there a law suit some years ago where Capcom sued data east for some sort of copyright infringement? I belive it was over the look and feel of street fighter and Data East's first fighter. (i belive the boss was karnov of nintendo fame) AFAIK the suit was dissmissed on the grounds that Capcom didn't own the rights to martial artitsts fighting styles'. Wouldn't this also apply in this situation? A concept as loose as fighting styles could also apply to 'similar to' as reported. Of course I could be a serious fighting game fan and be wrong.
  • Hasbro has Shockwave versions of several of the disputed games at atari.com as a sales hook for the online store (play Missile Command for free, eventually lose, hey look, click here for the online store, repeat).

    The Atari game market (I'm talking strictly about the titles marketed at the atari.com web site) now seems to be nostalgia games, so it seems logical that Hasbro would want to shut down other nostalgia titles which "rip off" their trademarked/copyrighted titles.

    They also market a brand of play-by-email games [emailgames.com]. Hasbro claims to have rights to some of the originals (X-Com and Scrabble are the two I confirmed, possibly also Clue), which means they might pursue lawsuits against knockoff-makers of those titles. X-Com you'd expect, that's a newer title than the Atari titles, but what surprised me was that they also aggressively protect Scrabble.

    The board game has been around for ages, and after some brief poking around, it appears Hasbro is indeed requesting that people who author free knockoffs, well, knock it off. I've seen three or four web sites in the last hour or so with Java scrabble (and such) that have been shut down, usually with a note to the effect that Hasbro made them do it. This link [toronto.edu] to a FAQ for a scrabble-playing MUD seems to describe the line between knock-off and acceptable use reasonably well.

    So after a little digging around, it seems to me that this instance (Hasbro bringing a case against other game manufacturers) is a little bit noiser than other similar legal actions by Hasbro, but that Hasbro is following a standard operating procedure of protecting its intellectual property.

    Whether that's a bad thing or not... I don't know.

  • I've already patented the "wait for lawsuits" business process. I will not sue not-for-profits and schools, but will vigorously defend my intellectual property in all other circumstances.


    ...................

  • Does this mean...? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @05:10PM (#1122740)

    Does this mean we won't see a digital ripoff of Hungry Hungry Hippos?

    Maybe we could port it to Linux, GPL it, and update it for today's tastes -- "Pimpin Pimpin Penguins".

  • The Onion scoops gov't response (Score:3)

    by Forkenhoppen ( 16574 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:33PM (#1122741)

    Well, it looks like The Onion [theonion.com] got the scoop on the government's response before any of the others.... kinda scary, actually...

    (For those of you too lazy to go look for yourselves, the headline reads "Federal Judge Rules Parker Brothers Holds Monopoly Monopoly"--Parker Brothers did the computer game in conjunction with Hasbro.)

    James

  • Bad news for gaming (Score:3)

    by Ryan Taylor ( 32647 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:37PM (#1122742)
    I should right a fiction in which a major company sues people for violation of idiotic patents, patent the finished book and the ideas within, then sue hasbro and other litigous idiots for violating my patent.

    -rt
    ======
    Now, I think it would be GOOD to buy FIVE or SIX STUDEBAKERS
    and CRUISE for ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING!!

  • This is a creativity issue (or lack thereof) (Score:3)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Thursday April 20, 2000 @03:46AM (#1122743)
    Let's look that this calmly, without going all nuts about big corporations and patents and the GPL and so on.

    If someone writes a game that really is a clone of Asteroids or Pac-Man or Centipede, as is way too common among shareware authors, is there really an issue about whether or not they swiped an existing design? The arguments I've seen against this are from people who seem to think that they can write an Asteroids clone and claim it as an original they can make money from. Now we're not talking about games that are simply in the same genre, as Pole Position and Daytona are, but games that feature a ship that moves via thrust and rotate that shoots floating rocks that get smaller each time, the only things that shoot at the player are little spaceship things that come out occasionally, and the game ends when all the rocks are gone. Is that Asteroids? You betcha.

    Legal and moral issues aside, I see this as more of a complete lack of creativity on the part of many amateur game programmers. There are endless concepts for games, just as there are endless concepts for stories (Orson Scott Card has given seminars on this topic). Starting with the basic Asteroids concept, you can go crazy in all directions. How about eggs instead of rocks and groups of creatures come out when you shoot an egg, instead of simply breaking into smaller eggs? How about making the rocks explode into showers of sizzling, trail-leaving pieces when they collide, making for great chain reactions? How about replacing the rocks with spinning flowers that throw seeds that can grow into new flowers? Those seeds can be collected by the player by running over them before they get fully grown.

    All of these ideas are off the top of my head, and yet all of them are way more creative than any existing "Asteroids enhanced" that we've seen over the years. Perhaps the best example is Atari's own Millipede, a 1982 sequel to Centipede. This game included all sorts of great additions to the original game: DDT bombs the explode when shot, swarm attacks, an inchworm that kicks the game into slow motion mode, mushroom growth, a moving mushroom field, a ladybug that turns mushrooms into unshootable flowers. But look at what enhancements have been done to Centipede by oh-so-creative game designers over the years. Powerups, mostly. Higher resolution graphics. Digitized sound. That's not creativity, that's just out and out knocking off.

  • Pop-a-matic Trouble (Score:3)

    by toh ( 64283 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:45PM (#1122744)
    It's not clear just what aspect of these games Hasbro could have acquired rights to, or what component of intellectual property law they feel they need (or merely are able) to defend them. The dreaded "look and feel" perhaps?
    It seems likely that they're merely exploiting their position as a deeper pocket than most any video game company to win out-of-court through fear-induced settlement. Hopefully one of these conglomerates (with acquired copyrights to old games) will eventually come up against someone (a) large enough to defend the matter in court and (b) with a sufficient financial and moral motivation to actually do it.
    In this particular case, they probably only own the rights to some games in some contexts (Pac-man is the Midway licence of a Namco game, for instance; AFAIK Atari only had the rights to home computer renditions, via the 2600 licence and later Atarisoft). Tetris was probably just the arcade version licence.

    In any event, this sort of chill on new versions of old games might actually be invigorating; I've enjoyed playing retro versions of cool 80's ideas, but I'd always prefer to see a new idea, and those have been few and far between for the last fifteen years or so. Since the game market isn't going away and this sort of precedent also makes any *new* ideas that much more valuable (since you can shake down later derivative versions for, um, protection money), new innovative development becomes that much more appealing and valuable.

    Gawd I can't believe I used the word "innovative".

  • Copyrights go 70+ years I think (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:54PM (#1122745) Homepage Journal
    I am not a laywer (But I play one on TV.) I think these suits are based on copyrights and copyrights, IIRC, go for 70+ years.

    To make a case that a copyright (not a patent) was violated, the people you're suing have to have duplicated almost exactly the program that it's claimed is being infringed. I don't believe you can claim you own an entire genre of games simply because you got there first (For instance, HalfLife and Quake are different enough that Id would have a hard time suing the creators of HalfLife.)

    Your mileage may vary.

  • Re:Reality check (Score:3)

    by John Carmack ( 101025 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @05:52PM (#1122746)
    Apogee distributed the shareware trilogy of Wolf3D.

    Id wrote the game.

    John Carmack

  • 1st intelligent: Is anything original? (Score:3)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:35PM (#1122747) Homepage Journal
    Most hits rip other games' concepts. No, Nintendo didn't create the side scroller; Activision did in Pitfall for Atari 2600 (no connection with 2600 [2600.com]). Alexey Pajitnov of Tetris® fame didn't create polyminoes; that was from the Romans. I think you might want to play some "infringing" games [rose-hulman.edu].

  • Game themes and story themes (Score:3)

    by mrdlinux ( 132182 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @04:52PM (#1122748)
    This is all rather ironic to me, as just before reading this article, I was driving home and talking with my dad (who is a trademark lawyer) about how themes of stories (shakespeare was the example) are not copyrightable, they are so basic and so representing of humankind that for every story there are tons others with the same theme. (I'm talking about theme such as 'guy meets girl..' or 'family feud, but one member of a family has fallen in love with a member of the enemies family aka Romeo and Juliet or West side story') This seems to me to be about the same thing, themes in games, themes in stories... why are they any different? Often a game is a story (zelda,etc..). Even Doom has a theme... something about aliens..;)

  • I didn't think they could do this... (Score:3)

    by Scrag ( 137843 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @05:07PM (#1122749)
    http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/m akegames/page2.asp says otherwise.
    From their page:
    Something I need to mention is that when you make your Tetris game, you can't call it "Tetris". Tetris is a trademark of the Tetris Company who is owned by Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. It is his exclusive right to use the name Tetris, and I believe they may have won a lawsuit saying that you cannot make a falling blocks game with the syllable "tris", as it is obviously playing off the popularity of the of the name Tetris.

    However, this means nothing to you if you call your game "The Sky is Falling", or anything without a "tris" in it, as they do NOT own the gameplay, interface, or idea of falling blocks. If you hear anything differently from anyone, tell them you can't own ideas, and if you require further proof you can look up information on this subject at the USPTO (http://www.uspto.gov/ ).

  • Here's what I don't understand (Score:4)

    by codejnki ( 16214 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:47PM (#1122750) Homepage
    What I don't understand is why Hasbro decided to follow suit on these things. It's not as if Hasbro was attempting to sell these things currently. Like many have said this was ages ago.

    If I develope a game and a month or two later somebody comes out with a near clone of my game then yeah I'll get pissed and probably take them to court. But come on, Pac Man is a legacy from nearly twenty years ago. Hasbro isn't loosing out on cash from the sales of these game packs.

    What next, does some relative of some dead English Lord sue over PONG because it looks awfuly similar to Badmition or Tennis?
    ----
    "War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"

  • Whoop-de-doo (Score:4)

    by gunner800 ( 142959 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @04:36PM (#1122751) Homepage

    Come on. You market a game that looks just like Pac-Man, plays just like Pac-Man, and call it "Mac-Man". The original game is not only copyrighted, but Hasbro is still making money off it.

    If not for legal reasons, then for common sense reasons, they deserved to be taken to court.

    This isn't a matter of a game being inspired by a classic. Mac-Man and the like are games with no creative process to them.

    Besides, there is no legal precedent when the case is settled. The outcome might encourage companys to sue though. If a software company wants to sue when they are being so blatantly hosed, more power to 'em.


    ---
    Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!

  • This already happened (Score:4)

    by InFerN0~ ( 169873 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @05:10PM (#1122752)
    In 1982 (I think) Atari sued Sierra for the game jawbreaker, a Pacman clone. They lost when it was proved that the game was different and had different graphics. Also the suit isn't over yet, If what I read was correct they settled with two of the defendants. Story at: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2552 599,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01 Also see the Extreme Games LLC(one of the defendants) website at: http://www.xgames3d.com/ And one article by a game designer: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/business/features /hasbro1/ If this suit is upheld it could kill the game industry. John Carmack will go from just rich to filthy stinkin rich(if he lowers himself to that level). John if you read this please don't.
  • About a year ago, I took a creativity class at school (yes, I know, someone will argue you can't teach creativity. Not the point of this post). One of our assignments was to develop a game -- any sort of game, board, puzzle, card, what have you. Our instructor claimed to have come up with several games himself, and sold them to companies such Mattel, Hasbro, Parker Brothers, etc.

    Now, obviously, how much our games could be like other games was a big issue. It's hard to come up with something new, as most of the posts in this thread recognize. Apparently, the rule that has been agreed on in the industry at large (not necessarily computer games) is that your game must be "25%" different. How you figure what % of a game is alike and different is something beyond me, but our instructor informed us that court cases have been decided over this rule. It also explains the state of things to some extent; there are a lot of games that are somewhat alike, but maybe changed 1/4 (there are also complete knock-offs, but I don't think you find them so much in the market at large).

    If this is all true (and I don't have any documentation or references, sorry), then I wonder how much of this might go over into the computer game industry...

  • Re:Wolfenstein (Score:5)

    by MortimerK ( 22530 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:44PM (#1122754)

    The people that made Wolfenstein 3D must be jumping for joy.

    Yeah! They could sue the makers of Doom, and then the makers of Quake and make a fortune!
    Boy, I wouldn't like to be in those rip-off merchants shoes right now!

  • In Related News . . (Score:5)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:53PM (#1122755)
    Wed, Apr 19, 2000 2:01 PM - Pablo elbo C.A.(/.) Microsoft has won a decisive legal case against "Joe's Salvage" for using crashed cars in it's product. Microsoft owns the concepts used in these crashes, and has spent years perfecting their use.

    Acknowledging Microsofts rights to crashes such as HEAD ON, SIDE SWIPE, MEMORY LEAK and BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. "It's just a bunch of useless junk" said Joe of Joe's Salvage.

    Joe's Salvage has agreed to cease and desist the use of crashed items based on these and other properties Microsoft owns or licenses.
    ___

  • GOOD! (Score:5)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @03:48PM (#1122756) Homepage Journal
    Maybe this will shake the game industry up a bit. Been in a coin-op arcade lately? You will find a total of 4 games:

    1) A bunch of first person gun game clones like House of the Dead.

    2) A bunch of street fighter clones.

    3) A bunch of racing clones all of which date back to the original Pole Position.

    4) An occasional pre-1987 game. It's usually Ms. Pacman.

    Console gaming is in slightly better shape. At least you can find some original concepts in the epic role playing games like Final Fantasy or Star Ocean.

    It's a shame that distributing those ROMs is illegal, though. We're in serious danger of losing a lot of those old classics from back when game developers were still creative. I'd love to be able to show my kids space invaders running under MAME but that's probably going to be impossible by the time I have kids. Thanks, Hasbro and way-outdated Copyright laws.

  • Quoting Out Of Context (Score:5)

    by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @04:18PM (#1122757) Homepage Journal
    If you are going to quote the article don't quote out of context, how about adding
    • Not only will they pay damages to Hasbro, they will cease selling the products in question (which were for the most part "game packs" of bargain-priced titles). The result is that Hasbro's right to control these intellectual properties - which have been copied, imitated, modified and expanded throughout the history of video game development - has now been established.


    I cannot say exactly what the legal ramifications of a cash settlement plus an offer to stop selling the disputed software will do to the industry as a whole but we must remember this: The disputed games were complete rip offs of the Hasbro games with graphics changed. Look at MunchMan [rdg.ac.uk], Mac Man [globalnet.co.uk], and Missile Defender [lycos.com] which are three of the disputed games. I am not so sure that this settlement will translate directly into lawsuits based on game genre.

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