
A Brief History of Online Terra Mystica - nprincigalli
https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2014-11-27-history-of-online-terra-mystica/
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acqq
Can anybody explain the trademark and IP issues with making an online version
of a commercial board game? Actually I'd like to know how the author addressed
that.

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jsnell
In this specific case, I have permission from the publisher to implement the
game, as long as I put in the appropriate trademark notices and don't use the
original graphics.

I got that permission in a bit of a roundabout way though. The system didn't
start off as a full implementation of the game but just as a tool for making
it a little bit easier to manually moderate a play-by-email/play-by-forum
games, and the publisher was clearly implicitly ok with (in fact one of the
first uses of the tool was for an exhibition match of sorts with one of the
designers of the game). Once it became clear that this had slowly morphed into
a full implementation of the game, I asked for formal permission and exactly
where the limits were (e.g. on the graphics). So there was a bit more "asking
for forgiveness rather than permission" involved than I'm really comfortable
with. In general you should always ask up front.

This area is a bit of an interesting balancing act for the publishers of hobby
board games. On one hand it's almost certain that a free online implementation
gives the game a lot more longevity and thus drives long-term sales. It means
the game continues to be played a lot more by the existing players, which
means they continue discussing it. This in turn attracts new players to the
game, and sells more physical copies. It also means that people are excited
for any new expansions, since they've played the base game enough to want the
variety.

On the other hand free online implementations do probably make it harder to
license the game for a commercial digital implementation. For example tablet
implementations of board games looked like a big deal a few years ago. But my
feeling is that it didn't actually turn out to be a viable business in the
long run. Making the tablet implementations is just too expensive and outside
of a handful of games with massive pre-existing mass market appeal (talking of
the Carcassonne / Ticket to Ride tier of games) the sales just aren't there.

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tostitos1979
Thanks for your efforts!

Terra Mystica is the current king of board games in our family. If there was a
commercial, multiplayer iPad version, I'd buy it in an instant.

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mizzao
As I read this, I can't help but think it might have taken a fraction of the
time if implemented in Meteor.

