Inspired, Reskinned, Stolen, and Ripped Off
On Saturday the Kickstarter Towering Purrfection was cancelled after raising $6,645. It was a relatively small campaign by a small publisher (Flame Point Games) with two prior names under their belt.
The cancellation came after accusations that Towering Purrfection was a stolen design.
Designer Connor Wake took to twitter laying out similarities between his unpublished game Flowering Heights, along with evidence that the designer of Towering Purrification, had play-tested his game in 2021.
Flame Point Games contend that:
We believe our game is different…
And, according to their announcement, plan to relaunch the campaign.
…will send a note to all when Towering Purrfection is ready for Kickstarter again.
I haven’t played either game, and don’t have a relationship with either party.
Comparing Connor’s material side-by-side with the Kickstarter shows an uncanny level of similarity between the two designs. Including specific mechanisms such as how cards are drafted.
Consensus among forums and online communities seems to be that Flame Point crossed an ethical line in too closely recreating and re-skinning Connor’s Flowering Heights design.
We All Borrow
The initial design inspiration for Nut Hunt was wanting a mechanism to break made routes in Ticket to Ride.
The game evolved substantially from that initial seed of inspiration, and the core Fox mechanism of the game is something I’ve never seen used elsewhere. But, the fact remains, that all board games are on some level derivative.
That said, there is an unspoken line, that most people would agree we shouldn’t cross. A line across which inspiration bleads into replication.
It’s hard to believe that Flame Point intentionally crossed that line. It’s the kind of social infraction that can ruin your reputation in a small community and be very costly (Flame Point spent at least thousands bringing the game to Kickstarter).
Coming up with a great game idea isn’t easy – but it is only a fraction of the effort and investment it takes to bring a game to market.
Indie Idea Theft is Rare
Theft of indie game designs is rare. After some googling and poking around forums, I was able to find one other potential instance.
The bizarre case of Drink Drank Drunk & Sotally Sober.
And two examples of indie publishers allegedly reskinning an established designer’s game - Crypto Cartel and Money Buns, which each appear to be reskins of Uwe Rosenburg’s Bohnanza.
The risk of your unpublished idea being stollen seems vanishingly small. And, I want to be clear, that I believe the solution to this fear is to playtest broadly – rather than keep your ideas secret. Building a community around a game is the best way to protect your IP.
If you’re aware of more indie-publishing reskins or stolen designs, let me know.
The Exception
The most successful reskinned board game is likely Cards Against Humanity.
It has a couple of minor rules adjustments – but is, for the most part, an adult themed reskin of Apples to Apples. And to be fair, the adult theme does substantially change the feel of gameplay.
As racy as Apples to Apples gets
It’s a fascinating example of a highly successful, tongue and cheek, stunt marketing strategy that included buying an island, digging a giant hole, and increasing prices on Black Friday.
I wasn’t entrenched in the board game industry, or active on forums when Cards Against Humanity came out, but I am not aware of any controversy over their heavy adoption of rules from an existing game.
This is the earliest forum post I found on the game.
I wonder if Cards Against Humanity came out today (social reaction to the content aside), whether the adult theming is enough of a departure from Apples to Apples to pass the same level of scrutiny that some of the indie projects I mention above faced.
It is also worth noting that Apples to Apples was already a highly successful game when Cards Against Humanity was released. And, I think we as humans have more of an emotional response to an action that is viewed as unfair to an indie publisher, versus an established brand.
Here’s the Rub
Ideas are nothing, implementation is everything.
Cards Against Humanity was an iteration on Apples to Apples. But Apples to Apples didn’t invent the card matching mechanism that makes it famous. Parker Brother’s Komical Konversation Kards, a game from 1893 is eerily mechanically similar.
According to game design professor, and game historian Jared Bendis – there was a whole genre of games in the late 1800s using the mechanism.
Apples to Apples is definitely an evolution beyond the 19th century designs with its introduction of scoring, card selection, and much more interesting cards.
My point is that every game is derivative. Our job as designers is to build upon what’s come before, to create novel combinations of mechanisms, and themes. And, to execute on those ideas, to make balanced games from them, make them functional and beautiful, and market them.
To be a board game designer is to steal, and re-invent, and re-imagine.
And obviously, there are some moral and ethical lines that we don’t cross. We evolve rather than copy. And, our end products are a unique expression of our ideas and the games we take inspiration from.
Limited Protections
There are three types of intellectual property protections for board games:
Patent
Copyright
Trademark
If you want to learn more about the protections you can hold, I suggest checking out this article from the American Bar.
For most games this means that their illustration, graphic design, name, and the verbiage of their rules are protected. Rarely some mechanical element will be further protected. But for the most part, they aren’t.
Creative works, like illustration are copyrighted
You could go out tomorrow and re-skin your favorite board game, and no one could stop you.
But unless you have a really good, and innovative spin - like Cards Against Humanity did – then you almost definitely won’t be commercially successful.
There are a few things that protect established games from re-skins or knock-offs:
Strong brands
Established distribution channels
Economies of scale
But, there are some strong incentives to evolve successful design concepts and themes. They have proven demand, and often consumers look for games that are similar to their favorite existing titles.
Indie designs have their own protections:
They are unproven
Ideas are cheap
Reputational risk
There is very little incentive and a lot of risk for anyone to steal your game design. It can destroy the reputation (and end the business aspirations) of smaller and mid-sized publishers. And larger established publishers know that ideas are cheap – and don’t need the headache.
Musings
At the end of the day, you can’t do much to protect your board game design.
And, that’s ok, because it’s very unlikely that you’ll have to.
And even if you did have to, the best way to protect your ideas is to do what you should be doing anyway - share them and playtest them broadly.
If you truly have something unique, building a community around it, and getting people excited about it is the best way to build social pressure that will not only insulate it from being replicated, but also help you publish and sell your game.
It also doesn’t hurt investing in hard to replicate IP that is inherently copyright protected – like great illustration.
What games have inspired your current designs?
