What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Washington
Just to briefly give some background, I have always played turn-based strategy games like the Civilization series, Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civilizations, and many others, but lately I have grown tired of everything the industry has to offer, none of it is good enough. I've become too snooty, my standards impossibly high. A chess player locked in a warehouse full of only checker boards and pieces. Civilization 5, the latest version, is awful, a huge step down in gameplay quality. My faith in the commercial industry to produce the kind of game I want has gone to below 0.
So I've decided to design my own game, and one day have it programmed into a low-budget production, maybe even make a small commercial release out of it. I know I can handle the design portion of it, that's not a problem. And once the design is flawlessly, immaculately documented out, describing every last nut and bolt in the game, programming does cost alot, but it can be outsourced (to India, China, Brazil, etc) and thus limited to the tens of thousands of dollars range, making it feasible for a small independent entrepreneur like myself to eventually contract out.
Now, graphics, on the other hand, that can be costly to do, and this is where the copyright questions comes into play...
I wouldn't need the game to boast the latest eye-popping 3D graphics, this is a turn-based strategy game after all (think a gigantic chess board with thousands of squares instead of chess's 64, representing the entire world, continents, oceans, etc and many land/sea/air unit pieces moving on it turn by turn). Luckily, or not, depending on copyright law, there has always been tons of community/user-generated content made for every version of Civilization. Civilization 3 is the version I'm aiming to emulate graphically with my game, just because it was simple and yet graphically pleasing, with small but fully moving/animated 3D units and attractive landscapes, so let's make that the case example.
There are sites like Civfanatics.com, NOT official game sites or owned by Firaxis games who originally made Civilization 3, where users in the "Civ" community have hand-made their own graphics for virtually everything in the game, usually for special historical scenarios (i.e., WWII, feudal Japan, etc) but sometimes just as standalone graphics resources for anybody to use as they please. These graphics include excellent original terrain, units, cities, special effects, everything, basically replacing all the original graphics of the original game. These graphics and the scenarios/"mods" that they come in are all free to download and play using the original commercial game (Civilization 3) which they run off of. Most if not all of these content creators working for free on their spare time have NOT directly copyrighted their work, aside from any automatic intellectual property laws that may be in place the instant they create anything.
So my actual questions involve the ownership and usability of these essentially "free-source" graphics resources, which were made for a specific commercial game but also stand alone on their own right, and the feasibility of someone like me using them freely for my separate and unaffiliated game production:
1. Do the original creators of these graphics, who made them on their home PCs then submitted them for free download off the internet for the whole Civ community to freely use and enjoy, "own" the content they made personally and directly, wherever it ends up, because of automatic intellectual property laws somehow, even if they never actually copyrighted any of their work?
2. Does the video game company (Firaxis) who originally made the game (Civilization 3) for which all of these extra graphics were made to be played on, somehow hold some level of protection on all user-made graphics even if none of it is included in any version of their official releases, expansions, etc?
3. Do websites (such as Civfanatics.com) where many of these graphics and scenarios are submitted and available to download from, hold some sort of protection over user-made graphics, simply because they were the first (or one of) the sites that the users submitted the work to, without actually ever "giving" or transferring ownership of said content to these sites either intentionally or implicitly?
4. OR, (and hopefully), because all of this extra free-source content was made with the intention of being played on using the engine of a copyrighted commercial game, but was made individually and freely dispensed by users who are mainly not concerned with money or copyrights, could they be downloaded, modified, used and otherwise freely integrated into a separate and totally unnaffiliated commercial game product of my own, as free resources, without any legal repercussion?
5. And, lastly, if these resources were free to use, would I need the written/signed consent of each actual individual creator for each specific piece of graphical content (i.e., these 10 units by Mr. A, those 5 landscape tiles by Mr. B, etc) that I used, or did that content become public domain available for anyone to use however they wished the minute they were submitted for free download without direct and official copyright protection?
This is all assuming, of course, that if it were possible to do so, in my final game absolutely ZERO of the original Civilization 3's graphics would be used in any way shape or form, even if highly modified, ONLY user-made, 100% original, made-from-scratch graphical material.
I would appreciate any and all feedback on these questions, but of course the most substantiative and authoritative the answers the better, so that I have an accurate idea of how to proceed and what to plan for during game production.
Thanks!
Just to briefly give some background, I have always played turn-based strategy games like the Civilization series, Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civilizations, and many others, but lately I have grown tired of everything the industry has to offer, none of it is good enough. I've become too snooty, my standards impossibly high. A chess player locked in a warehouse full of only checker boards and pieces. Civilization 5, the latest version, is awful, a huge step down in gameplay quality. My faith in the commercial industry to produce the kind of game I want has gone to below 0.
So I've decided to design my own game, and one day have it programmed into a low-budget production, maybe even make a small commercial release out of it. I know I can handle the design portion of it, that's not a problem. And once the design is flawlessly, immaculately documented out, describing every last nut and bolt in the game, programming does cost alot, but it can be outsourced (to India, China, Brazil, etc) and thus limited to the tens of thousands of dollars range, making it feasible for a small independent entrepreneur like myself to eventually contract out.
Now, graphics, on the other hand, that can be costly to do, and this is where the copyright questions comes into play...
I wouldn't need the game to boast the latest eye-popping 3D graphics, this is a turn-based strategy game after all (think a gigantic chess board with thousands of squares instead of chess's 64, representing the entire world, continents, oceans, etc and many land/sea/air unit pieces moving on it turn by turn). Luckily, or not, depending on copyright law, there has always been tons of community/user-generated content made for every version of Civilization. Civilization 3 is the version I'm aiming to emulate graphically with my game, just because it was simple and yet graphically pleasing, with small but fully moving/animated 3D units and attractive landscapes, so let's make that the case example.
There are sites like Civfanatics.com, NOT official game sites or owned by Firaxis games who originally made Civilization 3, where users in the "Civ" community have hand-made their own graphics for virtually everything in the game, usually for special historical scenarios (i.e., WWII, feudal Japan, etc) but sometimes just as standalone graphics resources for anybody to use as they please. These graphics include excellent original terrain, units, cities, special effects, everything, basically replacing all the original graphics of the original game. These graphics and the scenarios/"mods" that they come in are all free to download and play using the original commercial game (Civilization 3) which they run off of. Most if not all of these content creators working for free on their spare time have NOT directly copyrighted their work, aside from any automatic intellectual property laws that may be in place the instant they create anything.
So my actual questions involve the ownership and usability of these essentially "free-source" graphics resources, which were made for a specific commercial game but also stand alone on their own right, and the feasibility of someone like me using them freely for my separate and unaffiliated game production:
1. Do the original creators of these graphics, who made them on their home PCs then submitted them for free download off the internet for the whole Civ community to freely use and enjoy, "own" the content they made personally and directly, wherever it ends up, because of automatic intellectual property laws somehow, even if they never actually copyrighted any of their work?
2. Does the video game company (Firaxis) who originally made the game (Civilization 3) for which all of these extra graphics were made to be played on, somehow hold some level of protection on all user-made graphics even if none of it is included in any version of their official releases, expansions, etc?
3. Do websites (such as Civfanatics.com) where many of these graphics and scenarios are submitted and available to download from, hold some sort of protection over user-made graphics, simply because they were the first (or one of) the sites that the users submitted the work to, without actually ever "giving" or transferring ownership of said content to these sites either intentionally or implicitly?
4. OR, (and hopefully), because all of this extra free-source content was made with the intention of being played on using the engine of a copyrighted commercial game, but was made individually and freely dispensed by users who are mainly not concerned with money or copyrights, could they be downloaded, modified, used and otherwise freely integrated into a separate and totally unnaffiliated commercial game product of my own, as free resources, without any legal repercussion?
5. And, lastly, if these resources were free to use, would I need the written/signed consent of each actual individual creator for each specific piece of graphical content (i.e., these 10 units by Mr. A, those 5 landscape tiles by Mr. B, etc) that I used, or did that content become public domain available for anyone to use however they wished the minute they were submitted for free download without direct and official copyright protection?
This is all assuming, of course, that if it were possible to do so, in my final game absolutely ZERO of the original Civilization 3's graphics would be used in any way shape or form, even if highly modified, ONLY user-made, 100% original, made-from-scratch graphical material.
I would appreciate any and all feedback on these questions, but of course the most substantiative and authoritative the answers the better, so that I have an accurate idea of how to proceed and what to plan for during game production.
Thanks!