Trusting testers

Welcome to the site!

It's very common for new designers to be paranoid about having their ideas stolen. I think you'll find that most of us around here don't worry much about such things. Here are some of the reasons why I don't think there's anything much to worry about.

1. Your idea probably isn't actually that great. I say that not to be mean, but merely realistic (I would say the same thing about my own games). Designing a good game is really, really hard, and takes a lot of trial and error. Treating every game you create like it's the Mona Lisa of gaming is going to put you in a hyper-secretive posture that is probably unwarranted, and will hurt you in the long run. Because,

2. You can't do it alone. Eventually, if you're going to get the game to a finished state, you're going to need to let some people in on it. It's obviously important to find a core group of folks -- friends, family members -- who you trust completely, and they can handle the lion's share of your testing. At some point, you'll want to branch out and expose the game to people you don't well. Happily, at that point, you have even less to worry about because

3. As a corrolary of 1, just as it's hard for you to design a good game, it will be hard for anyone else to, particularly non-designers. The playtesters you have who aren't designers won't likely be competent enough to steal your idea and make a working game about it, and the ones who are designers won't be malicious enough to steal your game.*

That only leaves the concern that a playtester will memorize your game in its entirety and try to sell it. But luckily,

4. There's no money to be made in game design. Seriously. If anything, you're probably going to lose money. The only reason to try to sell a game, then, is because of a love of the game and/or of the hobby. Someone who didn't design the game is unlikely to have an incentive to try to sell your game, which, we know from 1, probably isn't that good anyway.

If I sound pessimisstic, I don't mean to; this is the most fun hobby in the world, and as you spend more time in it, you'll get to meet some great people and design -- and play -- some fun games. Let your goal revolve more around the fun you'll have creating games than any financial benefit you might derive from your games. In general, it's pretty safe to assume your playtesters are decent, upstanding people. It's crippling to think they're not, and there's not really any incentive for them to steal your idea anyway.

*There is one caveat about playing with designers: while fellow designers won't steal your ideas, it's fairly common for a designer to get "inspired" by another's design and springboard off of it into a design of his own. This can be variously flattering or annoying depending on your point of view.

Best of luck with your designing, and again, welcome!

-Jeff

There is an ENORMOUS amount of money in game design. It's just that not many people get to tap into that dough. You will fail more often than not, but some people make it big.

Copyrighting won't help you an iota except against people pirating your work verbatim. Regarding reworking your idea, somebody can put their own spin on the presentation of the game and then the copyright won't protect much of anything.

Patents cost thousands of dollars. You better have a darn good game if you patent it. Since most neophyte designers sell fewer than 500 copies of a game without a cool license, that's a huge costs to add onto development.

I'd say, get your testers to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) that automatically release in 2 years. That way they won't be too timid about signing them. Don't worry about this with your close friends unless you need proof of no public disclosure for a patent. Everyone else gets an NDA. If they won't sign it, get new playtesters. But don't kid yourself. Don't break out the NDA for every design. In fact many designs benefit from completely opening up their mechanics to close scrutiny. In fact, unless you have money already set aside to spend on publishing your design or patenting your design, or unless you are planning on shopping your design around at Toy Fair, don't bother with an NDA. NDAs are not for casual use. In fact they are overused. Never use one unless you are fulling will AND ABLE to take someone to court, because then people can thumb their noses at one and you are losing out on playtesters while failing to secure your design.

Most people who can read and understand an NDA will probably sign one if they are trustworthy. A huge number of people may be frightened by them if they can't understand a complicated NDA. In that instance, you may be losing good playtesters because you have a complex NDA as a barrier to entry.

You know what's generally better than an NDA -- investors. People with money on the line are a heckuva lot smarter about knowing when to shut up than those with nothing to lose. If you want to gain a little more security in exchange for a cut of the profits, look into picking up investors or business partners.

Always promise all folks who sign NDAs copies of your game and credits in the game. Again, you'll generate self interest, and economic self-interest is a good way to secure that people behave. It's often more effective than an NDA.

I posted an NDA here a few weeks ago. A search will find it. Don't abuse it. Use it if you are VERY serious about dropping a lot of cash on the game or if you have some specialized component design (particularly electronic components) that you are designing. Don't use it to protect your top secret game ideas that you have no cash to publish anyway. Don't jerk people around with an NDA. Use it when you have a lot to lose and you are sending a message not to screw up to your playtesters.

Being a Southerner, I often prefer working on a handshake. I used to work on a handshake even from big money until a Fortune 500's offices changed management and cost me over $20,000. Now, I work on a handshake for anything which I can afford to take the loss on. Anything I can't afford to lose the cash on -- I pull out the NDAs and other contracts.

Your mileage may vary.

Good luck with your design.

Triktrak

That's not how NDA's work (at least not how broadly worded ones work). They are blanket agreements that can cover 20 games and all revisions. Depending on the language of your NDA you can:

a) make all game-related stuff automatically confidential unless noted otherwise; or

b) make everything with the label "confidential" covered by the NDA

You'd have to have them sign one agreement on a one time only basis.

You are the second person who has acted like NDAs are impossibly complicated and troublesome to deal with. They take one signature for each player once.

I've been signing them myself for years in business. They are exceptionally common in the software industry and in business consulting.