Independent Games Competition: It’s on

Back in February, when Bobby Kotick spoke at the DICE conference, his speech included a bombshell — something about half a million bucks to be awarded as part of an independent games competition. We finally have the details on that competition today, in the form of an official press release as well as a page containing the official rules and entry process.

I’m going to have Laird Malamed, Senior VP & Head of Development, on my podcast tomorrow to talk about some of the details — but I have already heard some incorrect assumptions (and crushing negativity) about why Activision is doing this, so I wanna address that. This competition is not intended as a way for Activision to buy new IPs or even new studios. The only string attached to this prize money is that Activision gets a “first look” deal at the resulting game. Laird has clarified this to Industry Gamers:

If we do a publishing deal, then IP ownership is discussed, and we get the rights to it. For anything else that is submitted or doesn’t win, they keep their IP. One of the reasons we’re using an independent judging system and also using a third-party collection and submission process is that Activision won’t see a majority of submissions at all. Names will be turned into code numbers and all that sort of stuff to protect privacy and to protect IP if they submitted an idea and didn’t win. The ultimate goal here is that they are making their games, and if they win the prize and we don’t publish it, then that’s great, it’s theirs. We hope it comes out and we hope to get to play it.

UPDATE 6/3 (a few times): I want to clarify the IP ownership even further, because Laird’s statement isn’t entirely accurate. Some folks have interpreted the rules and/or Laird’s quote above to mean that Activision will automatically own the IP if you win. I see what they see when I read that quote, but my podcast conversation with Laird was different, so I looked into it and found that Activision does not automatically get the winner’s IP.

If the winner creates a game that Activision would want to publish, then they would discuss that publishing deal after winning, and that publishing deal would involve, as Laird suggests, a discussion of IP ownership. Many publishing deals do involve IP ownership, so I think that’s why he phrased it the way he did — it’s the norm for the industry, but this contest is the first of its kind, and the winner’s situation and resulting deal might be different. According to the lawyers who drew up the rules — because I went back to them and asked — relinquishing IP ownership is not a provision to enter this contest, and the publishing deal would be a separate negotiation, starting from scratch. And of course, first, you have to make a game and win the competition before you can do that…so in terms of the contract, this “maybe down the road if a publishing deal is agreed upon” aspect actually has no bearing on what will be created this summer. If you want to know the rules of the contest, read the rules of the contest.

The only thing the contest rules state about IP is that, by entering, you are assuring Activision that YOU own the IP to what you have created — that is, you’re not using copyrighted characters or music or elements from existing properties, and Activision would not get in trouble for bringing your game to the market. That is a reasonable thing for Activision to ask you to be very, very sure about. But that is quite different from what people have misinterpreted it to be. So, just for the record, the IP of the contest entry game remains the property of its creator unless the creator chooses to relinquish it as part of a publishing deal that may or may not take place after the contest concludes. First, get the money and make your game. Then you can decide what you want to do with the IP.

(And that, folks, is why the site is called OneOfSwords.)

There’s more discussed in that article, as well as my interview with him on this week’s podcast, but that nugget’s worth getting out there before people start assuming things that aren’t there.

The rules are worth reading. Even if you’re not a programmer and can’t create a prototype or show a video of a work in progress or something fancy like that, you might find that you want to enter based on the strength of your game idea and your ability to articulate it.