NAF response to possible BB2 rule changes

[Wulfyn]

Oh so sorry to use the wrong word. All right, Cyanide use GW copyrighted artwork (the Orc red sun for example). The rest of my point is correct. GW would have won the case, the award would have probably closed Cyanide down. GW felt they would make more money by letting Cyanide make an official version. They didn't give them the license becayse they couldn't stop them, they could have shut them down, they gave them the license because doing so got them more money than theyd have got from the vourt case.

You really don't seem to understand how copyright law works. There are 2 ways that GW could have claimed damages for copyright infringement:

1. The value of damage done to the copyright owner (inquiry to damages)
GW were not selling, or planning to sell, a digital version of blood bowl, so no loss there. They could have claimed to have lost sales from the physical copy, but this would have been a spurious claim as sales were already low, GW were not actively marketing it, and there were no plans for a big future release. GW themselves had stopped offering miniatures and had 'retired' the game to their specialist games website under a living rulebook.

Realistically this would have been zero.

2. The profit made by the infringing company (account of profit)
The artwork in question was not a core part of the game, so GW's payout would have been low. Also these payments have to be proportional and not punitive. And as artists that are massively ripped off will tell you these payouts are incredibly small. So if Cyanide were making (say) £5 profit from each sale, you'd expect the award to GW to be a few pence per sale they made.


Note that neither of these would have shut Cyanide down. Neither of these would have prevented Cyanide from selling their game. Nothing as part of that law suit would have made any difference to the mechanics of the game. It is also why they cannot shut down FUMBBL.

[RoterSternHochdahl]

Cyanide is the official ruleset because they own the rights. As long as GW let them then there is really nothing we can do to prevent them changing the rules however they want. We don't need to adopt those rules, but if you want official that is as official as it gets.

Everything else is just house rules. The NAF and FUMBBL can do whatever they like because nobody can stop them. If the NAF say "we have a group of people that want to play a certain way and to join you have to agree to it" then they can. It's just like FUMBBL bringing in the Simian team. You also have a ton of leagues that all do their thing. Even on FUMBBL the different leagues can have adapting rules (e.g. Right Stuff preventing Tackle from working against Dodge on a Block/Blitz), and there are plans for greater customisation I hear. So the base point is that everyone can do what they like.

The reason for this is that you can't IP a game's rule set. Copyright protects an author's expression of that game (artwork, literary, etc.) but cannot protect the game mechanics from someone developing a similar (or near identical) game. They will scare you with their big bad lawyers, but they won't win. That's the real reason why GW gave Cyanide a licence option.

So you can't call your game Blood Bowl (registered Trademark). You can't use troll slayers with bright orange hair (artistic expression in both visuals and naming). You can't use Cabal Vision (established piece of literature). But picking a ball up on a 3+ with AG4 in one tackle zone you absolutely can do. This is why GW has and always will push the story, artwork, and modelling of their games as it makes them more money, is much better, and can be protected from copying. So anyone can change all or any of the rules, in part or in full, at any time with no permission from anyone required.


All this boils it down to just one question: How much does the community value a single ruleset?

There is obviously value in keeping a common ruleset for simplicity and clarity. But if people can't agree there is nothing to bind them to the ideas and values of other designers. And looking at the theme of this thread there are a lot of people with a lot of different ideas. So if you really value a common ruleset then you are going to have to make compromises. Cyanide have an obligation to their employees and shareholders to make the game as enjoyable as possible, so they are not going to keep a ruleset they think is broken just because JJ was on a committee a few years ago.

The alternative is that the NAF decides to get ahead of the game, and work with Cyanide to adapt the rules in a way that is mutually beneficial. There is a lot of skill and experience in the TT community that can identify the issues that occur, and by doing this in advance you can prevent the drip drip of changes that although are well adapted to the digital communities are much harder for offline play.

@wulfyn: Thank you for cutting down the bush I shied away from some pages above. Owe you at least one beer for this at the world cup or next dungeon bowl.

@comments: Like it or not but use it as a basis for considerations who can do what in this game. Maybe a good starting point to tackle the use of "official" too

[Darkson]

@Wulfyn - well, seeing as I was told that by a Cyanide rep at the press day for BB1, I think ill believe them over you internet musings.

GW had the case won, they had Cyanide bang to rights. This wasn't like the Chapterhouse where they thought thet owned x, y and z, this was blatant lifting of artwork. And the game was supported when BB1 game out, with box sets and models on sale in stores.

And I didn't say they would shut Cyanide sldown, I said the award would have probably forced Cyanide out of business. GW did not go to court fof game mechanics, I never said they did, the went for artwork infringement, and they had the case won. If Cyanide had been a big company with enough money to pay the settlement GW would have gone that route and there would have been no digital version. Cyanide weren't, didn't have the money, so GW saw a better return in allowing them to make an official version.

[Darkson]

And they don't "own" the rights, they "license" them, seeing as you want to be pedantic on word use.
Even says so on their splash screen.

[VoodooMike]

This is only true if winning is the one and only goal for playing.

Are you able to have fun if you play a tier 1 team with your mates? If so, then your entire argument is wrong... why? Because the rosters, as they are now, certainly do work for your type of play but do NOT work for competitive play.... conversely, if there were no substandard rosters they would STILL work for your type of play, but would also work for competitive play. In essence, you're saying that there should be no change because how things are now doesn't bother you.... but if it were changed it still wouldn't bother you, it'd just work better for other types of play in addition to your type.

Keep that in mind.

When playing the game the way it was designed, you don't need to talk about it on the internet or record the results anywhere online. So tricky to measure.

Something that cannot be measured effectively does not exist - certainly such things are outside the purview of the NAF. If the only environments in which the game is being played per its original intentions lie outside the influence and vision of the NAF, then for the sake of this discussion we can completely ignore them, can't we?

It makes me nervous when people talk about changing the rules and possibly making entire teams obsolete in the process.

I think you have it backward if you're referencing the recent discussion. Nobody was talking about making teams obsolete... it was about making teams relevant that currently aren't.

The thread has morphed into a right/wrong of NTBB.

Lower level than that - it was a brief discussion of whether or not T2 and T3 teams have a relevant and useful place in the Blood Bowl that is actually being played (tournaments and online), and whether the game would be better if all 24 rosters were viable options (reasonably viable, not "well you never know... the dice could <blah blah>" viable). While that's the goal of NTBB, it's not NTBB's implementation that is being argued for. Personally, I think NTBB is crap.

I consider that Cyanide will do exactly as they want and TT tourney rules seem pretty balanced. So wouldn't a new BBRC would have pretty limited scope?

While Cyanide certainly makes the final call for its own products, the additions and changes we've seen have stemmed from community-based offerings. Cyanide has tried to drag in people they think are key members of the BB community to "consult" and/or participate in their changes. That suggests, to me, that Cyanide is interested in perceived legitimacy, not simply in steamrolling through the wants and opinions of the community. It doesn't mean they're good at pulling that off, but it does seem to be their goal.

Are we really suggesting getting the best minds in BB together from TT, Cyanide and FUMBBL, to discuss rosters and core rules, only for Cyanide to ignore it completely and tourneys to have a couple of new or slightly amended rosters? Because if so, a BBRC might only really benefit FUMBBL (and they are more than capable of making any tweaks themselves).

So what we're really talking about is a crippling fear of failure? Man up... failure is always a possibility, but we're starting from a position of abject failure - Cyanide is already at the wheel because they're the only person who bothered to step up and take it. The NAF and various people who consider themselves the "best minds in BB" are boning up on their hand-wringing, but precious little else - if that's the best the community can muster then maybe it's too weak to lead itself and we should welcome our new corporate overlords.

As far as a committee goes, then things like this are always subject to the influence of "motivated" people or the same guys who are in the click, but what are their real motivations.
It's abit like a job interview, the right person dosnt always get the job, it's ussally the person who bullshit enough in the interview who dose and they are always the first person to go on long term sick once they passed their probationary period

If you're saying that you question whether or not a new BBRC would be a meritocracy rather than a useless popularity contest... well, that's legitimate, but it's a problem that you're going to see in anything that styles itself as a democracy (which is, itself, a system based on popularity contests). I'd suggest that BB has been weighed down with this problem for years and years already.

That said, the current BBRC is a couple of chuckleheads over in france who are involved because their boss told them to be. I'd like to think the people who are involved with the game by choice and out of love could do better. I'm not certain they could, though, seeing how things have gone over the years.

As I stated at length there is no such thing as the rights of a game ruleset because it cannot be copyrighted. I could make a 'new' game today, with exactly the same rules as Blood Bowl, call it "Field of Death", rewrite the rules in my own words, do a deal with ff-fields and willy miniatures, grab some ausbowl dice, put it all in a box and sell it and GW could not do a thing about it.

Good luck getting this point across... I've mentioned it repeatedly over the years. There's no legal IP protection for "rules of a game" which is why you DO see copies of existing games under other names, and when there are lawsuits over knock-offs they're always work-arounds, like the Hasbro's lawsuit against "Words with Friends" in which they claimed the design of the Scrabble board was unique enough to qualify for copyright, and thus, their copyright was being violated... resulting in a change in the knock-off's board (placement of special squares).

Anybody can recreate BB and make money off their recreation so long as they are careful not to trip over the copyrighted material (different images, not verbatim copying of rulebook paragraphs) or trademarks (you'd have to search on anything unique-sounding just in case... for all I know, they trademarked "Skaven"). This becomes more and more relevant the farther we get past the point where GW has abandoned the game.

<edit for language - sann>

[RoterSternHochdahl]

@Wulfyn - well, seeing as I was told that by a Cyanide rep at the press day for BB1, I think ill believe them over you internet musings.

I know it is hard to believe lawyers if the result seems non-intuitive. But believe a sales person instead

[Darkson]

Better to believe a person involved than someone not.

[RoterSternHochdahl]

Better to believe a person involved than someone not.

Verytrue. It seems though we are still not clear on the dimension of the involvement

[frogboy]

Hold up a minute, so with this argument about what's official rules.

Do Cyanide even produce a rule book?

Personally I think it's better to stick with the official rules that was released by Games Workshop otherwise people will have to start bringing their PCs to a tournament to explain the rules "hang on mate while I log in"

Anyway I don't own a fully functioning PC anymore so ill stick with my printed icepelt and rosters and my old notepad for FUMBBL. Seriously though someone should try and get this freight train back on track before it goes out of control...

[Wulfyn]

GW did not go to court fof game mechanics, I never said they did

Right so not game rules? So what exactly is your point here? It still boils down to how much the community values a single ruleset.

@wulfyn: Thank you for cutting down the bush I shied away from some pages above. Owe you at least one beer for this at the world cup or next dungeon bowl.

Thanks - I will take you up on that and return the favour also (hopefully at both events!).

Good luck getting this point across... I've mentioned it repeatedly over the years. There's no legal IP protection for "rules of a game" which is why you DO see copies of existing games under other names

Exactly, and thanks, but I think my point will be lost. Really my point is that Cyanide will go ahead and work on the rules, so we either engage with them to try and reach an agreement, or we accept that there will be one set of rules for Cyanide and one set of rules for the NAF.

I'm in no position to answer the relative merits of either side, but I think we have to define the question.

[Digger Goreman]

sNAFu

[sann0638]

I like Sann's idea of a survey but I'm starting to think we may need someone to run for President on a platform of reforming the BBRC and updating the ruleset in order to get a definitive answer from the NAF membership.

I don't think positions (for anything, really) tend to get elected on a single issue.

[sann0638]

Something that cannot be measured effectively does not exist.

Possibly metaphysically, but not necessarily a practical viewpoint.

[Darkson]

GW did not go to court fof game mechanics, I never said they did

Right so not game rules? So what exactly is your point here? It still boils down to how much the community values a single ruleset.

You were the one that claimed that was the reason they were given the license - I corrected you. That you can't even remember why you're arguing just shows you're arguing for arguments sake.

[sann0638]

OK, I'm going to try something. The thread has developed, as they always do. There is a certain amount of semantic argument, but it would be interesting to focus some discussions, possibly?

For discussion of a possible new BBRC, could that go here: http://talkfantasyfootball.org/viewtopi ... 81&t=41419

I may try to spark other threads off, and/or move posts into their own subjects (e.g. GW, Cyanide and the law) but it's a bit tricky at the moment!