pigeon_of_doom:
As a non-coder, and not one enamoured of Zero Punctuation, I have little to add to this. However, disqualifying Zero Punctuation games on the grounds of it containing:

Excessive vulgarity, lewdness or profanity

seems a tad ridiculous.

Well just have some bleeps there. Sometimes the bleeps make something funnier then hering the profanity in the langauge. Sometimes makes it easier to make the background sound more realistic for it to go off. Take for example having a fart sound being heard instead of the word s**t, or a car honking its horn when someone says f**k. Plus having it partly said because of the sound bleeping it out in one way is funnier. Take for example *uck instead of going with f***. That way you could say something like *ucking ducks because of what was heard instead of what wasn't heard is funnier. Most would think, what is ucking, is it ducking, lucking, f**king, rucking, or sucking ducks. Which on it own sounds very funny since it sounds like all of it is happening when you say *ucking ducks which adds a deal of humor.

Other thing for murdering people, if you have people turn to pie when they die. So the question of eating pie for heath means cannibalism. If so, why is it so tasty to eat it then? Right there has a good deal of humor by simply working with what you can't do as well as what you can do. It is all in how you are thinking about it.

Spinwhiz:
In short, you are welcome to re-skin the game and use any underlying materials as your own. It was never our intention here at The Escapist to take your IP. We only wanted what was necessary to protect our IP and publish contest entries.

Great, thank you! :D I'm really glad to see you guys responding to the concerns here, as I'm very intrigued by this contest and I'm trying to think of a good game to make for it. I still think there could be quite a bit of improvement made with the terms, to bring it up to par with typical Flash game contests with little effort on your part, but so far I am heartened by your attention and responsiveness.

So, Zero Punctuation. I've been fascinated by the style of this series ever since I first encountered it, and I've been wondering about how its unique presentation might be applied to a game. This contest seems like a great opportunity to investigate this further!

To start things off, I've written up some thoughts on how you might translate Zero Punctuation into an interactive format and posted them on my blog.

It would be great to hear what you think about this, maybe get some game design discussion going here. :)

Any thoughts?

Platinum Sorceror:

Well, it can go two ways here: either the Escapist gives the rights to ZP to anyone who wants it, or anyone who wants to enter gives the rights to their games to the Escapist. It can't go both ways here.

It doesn't have to go either way. They can own the rights to their art, characters, etc. and we can own the code which goes in the game. They can then license to us the right to use their art, characters, etc., but restrict our right to do so such that we're only allowed to use them to create a game for their contest. That way we would still own the copyright to our work, but not be able to go spewing it all over the internet while still using their art.

What do you think happened when Acclaim made the Spiderman game? Do you think that Marvel gave them all rights to Spiderman? Do you think that Acclaim gave all rights to the game to Marvel? Of course not. Neither of those things happened and neither needs to. Instead they set up reasonable license agreements which gave some rights and benefits to both parties. That's what The Escapist needs to do as well, if they want people to participate.

What this really comes down to is that The Escapist doesn't want to spend the money to have a competent intellectual property lawyer write an appropriate license which would cover this situation. So they've done the simple thing and said that all submissions have to sign over copyright to them. This may be easier for them, but it also means that any game developer with any talent would be wise to stay away from their contest (and yes, that means that I just called some of the people who have posted to this thread unwise).

I'm a big ZP fan. I develop flash games as a hobby. On the face of it, it would seem like I would be more or less the ideal participant. But there's no way I'm going to sign away all rights to something I produce with only "promotion" in exchange. This agreement is far too one-sided.

What's especially funny to me is their being worried that if they gave their intellectual property out to let just anyone make a game with, then that would be horrible. But, if they did, well, all those games that people would make would be tons of promotion, which is exactly the same thing they're promising us. They don't think that promotion is worth giving up their intellectual property, but they expect us to. Personally, it makes more sense to me to have your users create flash games and spread them all over newgrounds, kongregate, whirled, etc. in order to promote Zero Punctuation than it does to use Zero Punctuation to promote one flash game. But they don't trust us to do good things with their intellectual property. And then they're surprised when we don't trust them to do good things with ours.

And to those of you who say that they aren't doing this to take advantage of people: they are going to make money from this contest. When people play the game or games, they will display advertising. The advertisers will pay them money. The developer will not get any of that money. So whether or not I think that they are trying to take advantage of people, they will be taking advantage of people.

These terms are not something set in stone, just posted on the web. If they wish to change them, they can. I would honestly love to participate in this contest. I would consider it an honor, but I'm not going to give The Escapist or Yahtzee or anyone else total ownership of my code. Yahtzee may give games away for free, but even he doesn't give the copyright to his games away for free. So, if you change the terms to have a more reasonable set of licenses, you can count on my participation, but with these terms, I am staying far away and would encourage others to do the same.

KeithIrwin:
These terms are not something set in stone, just posted on the web. If they wish to change them, they can. I would honestly love to participate in this contest. I would consider it an honor, but I'm not going to give The Escapist or Yahtzee or anyone else total ownership of my code. Yahtzee may give games away for free, but even he doesn't give the copyright to his games away for free. So, if you change the terms to have a more reasonable set of licenses, you can count on my participation, but with these terms, I am staying far away and would encourage others to do the same.

I totally agree with this sentiment. However...

I think they just changed this, actually. :p

"Except for Contestant Materials, (defined below) all games submitted to The Escapist become property of The Escapist, including any intellectual property rights in Escapist materials or derivations thereof. The Escapist reserves all rights, including intellectual property rights to publication, re-publication and distribution. However, contestant shall own all intellectual property rights in any art, design, or source code, that is not based on or derived from The Escapist's existing intellectual property ("Contestant Materials") and Contestant hereby grants The Escapist a royalty-free, non-exclusive license to any Contestant Materials as they are incorporated into any entry for the purpose of publication, re-publication and distribution of the entry."

Yay.

Are we allowed to use open source libraries in our games? As long as we just haven't reskinned an open source game?

I've already begun production... ;)

well, i guess this is a good enough excuse to learn flash...

Spinwhiz:
The rules are set such that we are protected as much as you are. This is our brand and our copyright and we would like to keep it that way. If we did not add those rules, that means anyone could just make a ZP related game and we would have no protection at all.

Can we extract from/use whole ZP eps for the games or is it limited solely to the dev. pack?

Spinwhiz:

As for the chance for "monetary compensation"...do you honestly think we would take a game that we didn't create to market? And if we did, don't you think it would be in our best interest to INCLUDE the developer? It doesn't make much business sense to leave out the person who created and grab a bunch of bad PR from the market, industry and community.

Hey, it worked/works for Microsoft =P

Well, its good to know something got worked out on the game rights. Now all I really want to know is the rules on using different software libraries.

After reading through this thread, I think that the Escapist should definitely host the top three games for everyone to play...preferably the top five.

Exactly what I wanted to hear, Spinwhiz. :)

I'll jump right on this, though knowing me, I'll work on it for like one day and then realize that I'm too lazy to code it all.

I can make damn good intros and menus though.

Hey there was a couple of things I was wondering about the competition.

Can the creator of the game put their logo/link to their website on the game? Also can they put the game on a website or in a folio (have screenshots of the game and a link to a page where the game can be played - to the community games page if it wins)?

Spinwhiz:

^Mimi:

Fairn:

^Mimi:
We make the game, then send it in expecting monetary compensation, but after we submitted it's already *yours*. You're legally released of any consequences.

The people you are referring to should learn to read all contest information (instead of assuming the info) from this point on because there's no reason anyone should be expecting monetary compensation from this contest. Like you stated, money isn't a prize here.

Friends,

The rules are set such that we are protected as much as you are. This is our brand and our copyright and we would like to keep it that way. If we did not add those rules, that means anyone could just make a ZP related game and we would have no protection at all.

As for the chance for "monetary compensation"...do you honestly think we would take a game that we didn't create to market? And if we did, don't you think it would be in our best interest to INCLUDE the developer? It doesn't make much business sense to leave out the person who created and grab a bunch of bad PR from the market, industry and community.

We are looking forward to seeing some awesome games that we and the community will enjoy playing.

In answer to your statement. =)

Money is not a prize, that is correct and we aren't even looking into that avenue. We wanted to create a fun event for all of the ZP fans, that was the main point. The prize is to have Yahtzee himself judge your game and have it featured in an upcoming ZP. Not to mention the game will be up on our site.

Yes I can see the community is really chuffed about this friendly competition you have here, such goodwill in the air on this forum and no mistake :). People seem apprehensive about investing time in this.

It could be because people are not so extatic about yahzee verbally assaulting them for three minuets about a game they would waste weeks or months of their personal time crafting.

Or it could be because they get minimal credit despite their lone production of the game. Or the lack of any compensation for their efforts at all, or the £500+ price mark on the creation software.. Or because they have better things to do and better lives to live. Expecting the fan base to become self sacrificial over an opportunity to have something that for all legal purposes is only very loosely connected to them touched or experienced by a man they will never meet, never talk to and know almost nothing about is beyond presumptuous.

On another note me and my brother began work on a game for this contest only to realise that the game is expected to be ZP related, and that this was not mentioned in the specifactions. Am I right in thinking that? Because we were making a game entirely unrelated to ZP. But evidence suggest that is not the objective. Are we supposed to assume it is to be ZP related? Am I dumb? An answer would be appreciated. Apologies for the wall of text.

Edit: Also "yahzee himself" Is simply delightful.

Hey all, I was skimming through the thread, and I didn't see this addressed.

This is the part of the rules I want to ask about:

All games submitted to The Escapist's Stonking Great Game Contest must be the exclusive property of the contest entrant and have never before appeared or been playable in any form anywhere.

I was thinking of having some friends test a game out before I submit it, but this part of the rules implies I can't do that.

Thoughts?

harryjre:
I was thinking of having some friends test a game out before I submit it, but this part of the rules implies I can't do that.

I think you're taking that statement farther than it was intended. Saying it's "never before appeared" (my interpretation) really just means that it has never been a publicly available game. Having someone else play it is fine, provided they cannot distribute it in any form. I understand trying to follow the exact letter of the law, but give the Escapist a little credit in discouraging any "cheating" while not trying to screw you out of any opportunity to fairly improve your chances of winning.

In particular, I'd like to point out harryjre's post as a perfectly reasonable response to a part of the contest rules. He read a statement, made an assumption (albeit a logical one), stated his concern, and asked for clarification.

What he did not do was rant about how ignorant the Escapist was in the game development process, and point out how the vast majority of games made are subject to external playtesting, and that more serious and talented developers would consider entering if they were allowed the simple rights that all other developers around the world have.

My point being, while the question of reskinning your game was still being looked into, everyone decided to get up in arms about how horrible these rules were, and how disgusted with the Escapist they were for being so obtuse about intellectual property rights. I just don't see what's wrong with asking for clarification, and if something is clarified in a way you disagree with, politely explaining your reasons why, and requesting that they be revised.

My apologies, that got a bit tangential, I just wanted to explain my responses to other posts.

harryjre:
Hey all, I was skimming through the thread, and I didn't see this addressed.

This is the part of the rules I want to ask about:

All games submitted to The Escapist's Stonking Great Game Contest must be the exclusive property of the contest entrant and have never before appeared or been playable in any form anywhere.

I was thinking of having some friends test a game out before I submit it, but this part of the rules implies I can't do that.

Thoughts?

I'd probably be fine as long as long as no one downloads it and distributes it to other sites. You'd be held accountable and your entry would be null and void.

What I'm wondering about is the file size limit.

harryjre:
Hey all, I was skimming through the thread, and I didn't see this addressed.

This is the part of the rules I want to ask about:

All games submitted to The Escapist's Stonking Great Game Contest must be the exclusive property of the contest entrant and have never before appeared or been playable in any form anywhere.

I was thinking of having some friends test a game out before I submit it, but this part of the rules implies I can't do that.

Thoughts?

To avoid the possibility of having your half-finished game published all over the internet (which I assume this rule is here to prevent) you could simply code in a block that doesn't allow the current build to be played on any other date, or if you have your own website and know some server-scripting language, you could build a simple password-protected version that changes every time someone logs in, which only you have access too.

That is unless this rule is to be taken literally, in which case you wouldn't be allowed to build and test your game yourself. I really doubt that.

Now that the rules have transformed into a shining beacon of fairness I'll most likely throw my hat into the ring... hat-throwing based gameplay, of course!

aamesxdavid:

harryjre:
I was thinking of having some friends test a game out before I submit it, but this part of the rules implies I can't do that.

I think you're taking that statement farther than it was intended. Saying it's "never before appeared" (my interpretation) really just means that it has never been a publicly available game. Having someone else play it is fine, provided they cannot distribute it in any form. I understand trying to follow the exact letter of the law, but give the Escapist a little credit in discouraging any "cheating" while not trying to screw you out of any opportunity to fairly improve your chances of winning.

I might be making an assumption and taking the statement too literally, but it was enough of a possibility to ask for clarification. I don't think the Escapist is out to get me, but I don't want to screw myself either.

I actually was thinking about using a different "skin" for testing, then throw in the ZP bells and whistles after the game play is tested and submit that.

Does anyone have any experience with putting a game up for testing and preventing distribution without permission? From what (little) I know, it seems like putting it on any web page means anyone could download and distribute it. That limits me to only allowing people I trust to access the game web page or testing the game offline.

Bringer of information:

To avoid the possibility of having your half-finished game published all over the internet (which I assume this rule is here to prevent) you could simply code in a block that doesn't allow the current build to be played on any other date, or if you have your own website and know some server-scripting language, you could build a simple password-protected version that changes every time someone logs in, which only you have access too.

This is helpful info, thanks!

harryjre:
Does anyone have any experience with putting a game up for testing and preventing distribution without permission? From what (little) I know, it seems like putting it on any web page means anyone could download and distribute it. That limits me to only allowing people I trust to access the game web page or testing the game offline.

And now it occurs to me that this may not be the proper "forum" (haha) for this specific kind of advice, so if you have any to offer on testing flash games, please send me a private message. I will use my Google-fu to look for this information on my own.

harryjre:
I might be making an assumption and taking the statement too literally, but it was enough of a possibility to ask for clarification. I don't think the Escapist is out to get me, but I don't want to screw myself either.

I completely agree, which is why I commended your response. In no way did I mean to take anything away from your question by saying it was based on an assumption; I'm sure other people made the same assumption, and it's always good to have clarification for that.

harryjre:
I actually was thinking about using a different "skin" for testing, then throw in the ZP bells and whistles after the game play is tested and submit that.

That sounds like a lot of work, but certainly a plausible solution. There's also the issue of how ZP-related your game is - if anything beyond some graphics make reference to ZP/The Escapist, they'd have to be stripped as well (presumably). Personally, I'd prefer to only let people I trust to play it, or only let people play it on your computer with you present, so they don't actually have a copy of it to distribute.

harryjre:
Does anyone have any experience with putting a game up for testing and preventing distribution without permission? From what (little) I know, it seems like putting it on any web page means anyone could download and distribute it. That limits me to only allowing people I trust to access the game web page or testing the game offline.

I'm no authority on Flash, but I'd say putting it up (in ZP form) is dangerous under any circumstances. AAA titles are hacked all the time, I'm sure a Flash game is subject to the same vulnerabilities. It's more a question of someone being willing to put the time into it. I don't really think it's a wise chance to take. I think for a Flash game, it's not necessary to go beyond you and a couple of friends playing it, for playtesting purposes. If you want to do something with it after you enter the contest, that's when I'd go through the trouble of stripping out all the ZP stuff and releasing it. Just my thoughts.

I used to do flash stuff, but its been a long time.
I can give it a shot though...

Would it have been so hard just to allow submission of Indie games? The whole "browser-based" idea initially put me off, and then "created in Flash" just strangled the last bit of excitement out of the idea.

This seems interesting - even if it is just for portfolio & glory, people have developed entire operating systems and graphics engines for free so getting publicity for it seems pretty good actually.

One question: Do we get to decide what the game is about or does it have to be about Yahtzee and using the assets provided? Are you expecting a million Trilby clones?

can i do an FMV game? I dont know how to use flash.

i think they should have all the games, with a top 10 list being reccomended games.

This seems like kind of an odd mix of mediums. A game about a game reviewer (and possibly his pet Imp)? I'm totally stumped. Needless to say, I won't be entering. Among other things I have no Flash programming skills whatsoever.

I did download the resource pack just to see what was in it, though, and was rather disappointed to discover that all the graphics were raster rather than vector. Um, you guys do realize that Flash uses vector graphics, right? And that if any characters were perfect for translating into vector graphics it's the fellows from Zero Punctuation.

On another note: The people complaining about "their" intellectual property rights being taken away (i.e. those of the other people who actually enter) are making a way bigger deal of this than it is. This is essentially a glorified fan art contest. Frankly, if you honestly think you're being cheated out of potential fame and fortune here, you've got a bit of an ego problem. I'd love to hear what Yahtzee would have to say about that; he LOVES ripping apart people with swelled heads.

But more importantly, if the game you're planning is generic enough that you could replace the ZP characters with original ones and it would still make sense, it might still be a good game, but it won't be a great ZP game. It'll just be a generic game with ZP characters in (to paraphrase Yahtzee's Left 4 Dead review). So really, you would be better off just ignoring the contest, using your own characters, and putting it on Newgrounds or whatever, because it would be a better game without the unnecessary use of ZP characters. Like all those licensed Monopoly versions that are all just the same damn game with different skins.

If the subject of the game wasn't so obscure, I would enter

MasterOfHisOwnDomain:
Would it have been so hard just to allow submission of Indie games? The whole "browser-based" idea initially put me off, and then "created in Flash" just strangled the last bit of excitement out of the idea.

Although I would rather make a Windows executable for this contest the browser based requirement makes sense. It is the one of the few formats that is cross compatible with PC, Mac, and Linux. Despite the PC's much larger install base the escapist probably doesn't want to discriminate against the Mac and Linux minorities.

hamster mk 4:

MasterOfHisOwnDomain:
Would it have been so hard just to allow submission of Indie games? The whole "browser-based" idea initially put me off, and then "created in Flash" just strangled the last bit of excitement out of the idea.

Although I would rather make a Windows executable for this contest the browser based requirement makes sense. It is the one of the few formats that is cross compatible with PC, Mac, and Linux. Despite the PC's much larger install base the escapist probably doesn't want to discriminate against the Mac and Linux minorities.

Agreed, getting judges to install executables would be very difficult - although it's a shame it has to be Flash. Java (Not JavaScript mind) is totally free and much more flexible and powerful than Flash, and just like Flash can be played in your browser... never mind. The trick is to not have too much stuff that could collide with each other floating around because Flash algorithms are SLOW.