Selling OpenBoR Indie Games?

[Crimefighters2]

About indie beat em ups not doing well?

what about:

Scott Pilgrim (I think some obor games play better than this imho)
Castle Crashers (I thought it did pretty well?)
Dishwasher

and a few others. If done right I think there is a chance to make money. I think Marketing would be an issue though.

[Damon Caskey]

Sorry, but I'm curious on this too. With a name like OpenBor I would assume it would have a license under a free and open source license, but it seems it's under an all rights reserved-non commerical mix license. Why not change the license to LGPL or zLib/BSD?

That way you won't have to get everyone's permission if an indie developer wants to sell the game or package it in a repository.

The problem with that is we want sellers to get our permission first, mostly so we can make sure their project uses original content. We don't want developers using the engine to piss off copyright holders to the point they come after our community. Selling games with ripped resources is a sure fire way to do that.

Besides, we have tried the open license approach before, and it doesn't work. All that happened was a bunch of engine branches with incompatible functionality that effectively competed with each other. Then you get the occasional d-bag who tries to take partial ownership of the engine by rewriting some code and claiming a personal copyright over it.

OpenBOR is somewhat unique in that it's been proven to be better off when all the eggs are in one basket so to speak.

Yes there are ways to deal with all that stuff, but it's a PITA we want no part of, so the license was written to squelch it up front. Those are the main reasons. There are a couple of others too.

DC

[Duality360]

Hey all,

I'm very interested in the answer to this question, as I would like to try my hand at releasing a beat 'em up with all original content. Is there any progress on coming to a decision? 

Also, is there anyone who's working on a port to Android platform, or will we have to do something like pursue the option of making a stand alone Rom for a console emulator, for example, a Neo Geo emulator (easier Since Neo Geo and pretty much all it's company entities are now non existent, and the people who make the Neo Geo emulators have already dodged alot of bullets on usage for us already), sell the Rom itself as a separate Homebrew game Rom, but tell people the emulator app(s) that its compatible with from Android market, or from PC for that matter  .

Not sure what would be involved for porting to a Rom from scratch using this engine, or how much heat that would bring  . I'm sure there would be some technical constraints depending on the console emulation used, (which is another reason I used Neo Geo as an example, because its known as a 2D powerhouse, and hosted the original games from whence the characters in Senile's BOR come from).

Thoughts on this or any alternate ways of going about that are welcome. It's just that I think that PC is one thing, but if you can somehow get something like this on a handheld device that is in a more general everyday person market (Say a "flash cartridge" of Gameboy DSi, a Pandora or GP32X handheld, or especially a mobile device market), half of the marketing work is done for you, even if you sold it for a buck each. I've seen horrible, sh*t apps on android market make the developers not just move out of their mom's basement with the revenue sort to speak .

Thoughts??? 

[BeasTie]

I haven't read this entire thread but this subject is been around for sometime.

Originally in the early days of BOR mods (before openbor even) there was a problem of people having there mods packaged on dreamcast discs and sold on ebay. This opened up concern for a lot of modders using sprites from commercial games, including myself who was working on a mod using sprites from LucasArts games, I was already in jeopardy of getting a 'Cease and Desist' letter from big George's lawyers, having someone trying to sell the mod could only of been bad.

the subject of selling anything BOR related will always be controversial.  But lets look at this differently, we have to face reality and the world we live in today.

It comes down to a few things i think that could be potential issues

I think I can safely say kungpow has the best intentions, but lets say he makes his game, it's successful and his company is doing good business, lets say hes doing really good business, the company has made millions.  His game appears on several consoles and their on line counterparts.

- Others are going to copy what he has done, most of which will be outsiders to openbor scene, every dodgy guy and his dog will be ripping openbor code and doing as they please.  Possibly even a major company will outright steal openbor and do as they please, if it's a company with money, possibly a major company that has more money/power that anyone can oppose.

- The OpenBor 'TEAM' does not have,
  * legal defence
  * fund for legal defence
 * the means or possibly the will to pursue legal action against companies/individuals

perhaps the game is so successful that it's out doing a major competitor such as SNK.

- SNK sues openbor team, Roel and kungpow's company for the original BOR being based off their creative work blah blah. no one can afford to contest them.

- Actions of others now copying openbor code and using it commercially results in lawsuits against Roel as being the original creator. and/or commercial projects of Senile Team are also challenged on basis of bor/openbor supposed infringements.

Then theres a flipside,

I agree that it should probably be decided the openbor team is officially current lavalit staff/developers that have contributed the majority of work over the past 5 years to what is the current engine today.

That being said thou, when it's all said and done and years later and there is individuals who have made a lot of money or even got rich from selling openbor related games, where does that leave those who contributed who are now old retired and possibly struggling to make ends meet.

Where does it end for people to make claims against one another?

Although nothing we did really survived, myself and Kirby2000 were the founders of openbor, that being said it was merely a merger of kirby's work as well as Lord_ball's work, who had really made the most dramatic changes, and lets face it opened the door at the time for interest in bor coding.  Also there was other variants starting to emerge, who knows who could come out of the woodwork laying claim one way or another.

It doesn't take much to get a court to order you to settle a matter with a $ amount.

I know this is a lot of speculation, but it's a crazy world we live in these days.  I think the conclusion always becomes in this matter is

if you are serious about making a game that is going to reach these platforms it would entail the company has the money to do so, therefore it would be more practical to create your own game engine or license one commercially to develop the game on.

otherwise the company doesn't have money and is relying on using opensource project to create a full/final product that can attract a larger commercial sponsor and/or distribution with major retailers etc. (herein lies a problem)

I believe thou as someone said the main people involved in openbor are the reason for it still existing and thriving, they should decide it's future.

If lavalit turned around tomorrow formed a real comany with the main Dev's and turned openbor into a shareware game creation suite, or something commercial like that with Roel's blessing, I'm sure this would be supported, I definitely would. 

Just an example of where things could go in a better direction to allow 'commercial' games etc. 

Otherwise I think it would be great to see it stay completely free, i think with the advancements that are happening there will be a whole new era of bor modding and interest in the community like never before.


edit: for spellcheck

[Crimefighters2]

Dude that isn't even a worst case scenario it's a doomsday type scenario lol. I highly doubt that kind of scenario.

I know of the gaziilion halflife/UT etc mods and other high profile FPS engines mods that use trademarked music resources, art resources etc and as long as they're not for sale, it's okay. Who is going to sue them for the countless games made on those engines for all those mods. Is someone seriously going to sue Valve for making TF2 with the same engine?

At worst a publisher will send a C&D letter and then you have to, no choice. But I don't see how they can do that if all the content is all original content. They can maybe C&D existing games using trademarked  content (Too late the people that wanted to play it already have, see SORR) I don't see them being being able to C&D an original project, that's seems a bit silly.

Lmao.

[BeasTie]

but we are talking about having mods actually for sale, and mainly Im saying is for every good person like kungpow doing the right thing, there is sure to be few more of those to follow who wont do the right thing.

I know i was gettin a bit silly with what i said but basically...

- who has/would have claim to any monetary funds in the event a game was to be a major sucess. once a game has turned profit, (as in the game has made more money than it cost to make), does a modder owe cash to Roel and lavalit dev's?

- Who is legally responsible for OpenBor in the event of any legal issues ?

but yeah what you're saying is a lot more grounded in reality, but all I really mean is this thing can open up a big can of worms, it would be a shame to see this lead to people trying to sell other peoples mods, like what happened in the past, except it wont just be some $10 dreamcast burns on ebay, it will be people taking released mods, porting them to mobile devices and selling em off. etc.

I guess it's not a big deal,  I just hate people trying to sell off stuff they diddnt even make.

Diddnt DC have issues with people selling his megaman game  back in the day?

I hate to see people making cool stuff for free and others are just ripping it off and making  cash off it. 

But as far as real developers from the community making games, then selling it like shareware (as in your purchase gets the full product)  i dont see any problem, such projects would attract more to the scene and in turn increase donations to lavalit and openbor, this only further builds the community.

it's only those that would take advantage of the community that is of concern.

[Bloodbane]

 I just posted to clarify this:

Diddnt DC have issues with people selling his megaman game  back in the day?

 I believe DC refers to DCSteve NOT Damon Caskey.

[BeasTie]

yep, shoulda clarified sorry

[Computica]

Hmm, I'm surprised that after reading the entire thread and that over a years time that an conclusive answer wasn't able to be made. I guess it would be better if the 100% original game was made first to show proof then asked for permission 2nd.

[Plombo]

Yeah, pretty much.  I think the problem is/was that there's no pressure to settle the small details until we're faced with the actual pending release of the game.

[Damon Caskey]

The only two things left to deal with are getting definitive permission from Roel, as the codebase is all derivative from his work, and then removing the last few libraries that belong to third parties, which Plombo said shouldn't be too difficult. After that, we are free to license the engine how we see fit.

How we see fit is pretty simple: You must get permission to sell from the OpenBOR team before you sell, but we'll always be happy to give it so long as everything in your module is original work.

DC

[zamuel]

Hmm, I'm surprised that after reading the entire thread and that over a years time that an conclusive answer wasn't able to be made. I guess it would be better if the 100% original game was made first to show proof then asked for permission 2nd.

The only two things left to deal with are getting definitive permission from Roel, as the codebase is all derivative from his work, and then removing the last few libraries that belong to third parties, which Plombo said shouldn't be too difficult. After that, we are free to license the engine how we see fit.

How we see fit is pretty simple: You must get permission to sell from the OpenBOR team before you sell, but we'll always be happy to give it so long as everything in your module is original work.

DC

This combination puts me in a weird spot.  I have released a game.  However, I was under the impression that I had permission since I had mentioned it various times over the past year in PM.  I mistakenly assumed the third party code bases had already been removed since it had been mentioned as being easy and the engine is constantly updated.  Plus, I posted the link to the final version in the Street Team: Reign of the Iron Dragon WIP page here so I figured it was okay since the thread wasn't locked nor was the link removed.  So with that said, where do I go from here?  I'd hate to have worked on it only to have to remove it.  I also assumed kungpow12345 had done something similar already when he posted in this thread.

[Damon Caskey]

They might have been for all I know, it's hard to keep up and I've been away more than here, though I'm trying to get back in the groove. It's probably not going to amount to anything, we just want to be able to say 100% that it WILL be OK.

DC