Protecting Multiplayer Concepts?

I've noticed the Multiplayer concepts such as Capture the Flag are used by nearly all Multiplayer FPS's. What I want to know is if I came up with a new concept could another game use it?

I have an idea that I've not seen or played before and I want to be the only one who uses it. Is this possible?

The answer is probably no, it's just that I thought ideas could be patented and protected.

Any opinions or info would be appreciated. :)

You can't copyright or patent game rules I think.

If you write the specs down, then you'd be copyrighting that text, but not the ideas.

As for my opinion, I think its very lame and stuff like that shouldn't be allowed to be restricted. If you're very selfish, you'd probably only make people never experience your special multiplayer concept because of the lack of games using it. Its a very american way of looking at stuff, and does NOTHING good for mankind.

Think of your kids, and their kids. When they grow up, they would probably not be allowed simple street games anymore since someone owns the rights to it. Thats not the way to go in my opinion.

If you lived in America you could patent pretty much anything, though it's not supposed to be that way. It's not cheap either.

In theory, copyright is for intellectual property ( not ideas ) patents are for processes or methods ( again, not ideas ) and trademarks are for names ( once again, not ideas. )

In theory, ideas are fair game.

Thinking more about it, restricting other games from using your implementation of a certain multiplayer "strategy" or "game type" is not just stupid, but also not the great idea you might think it is.
If only one game ever used Capture The Flag, do you really think we would be talking about it now still?
Restricting such things is a sure way to pass quickly into oblivion in my opinion.

>The answer is probably no, it's just that I thought ideas
>could be patented and protected.

Nope, only implementations can be patented, and an improvement on a patent can only be patented if is a significant improvement.

For example, the idea of a flying car can not be patented, but the actual implementation can.


Andy

Well, thanks for the replies. I might aswell post the idea I had. Thinking about it now the idea isn't as good as I thought it would be but would make for some cool fighting.

IDEA:

2 Bases, 1 for each team. Each base has an energy level and both start out with the same level of energy. Players have to reach the enemy base and steal energy tubes. The more energy a base loses the more inacurate, slow and powerfull the team becomes. So the battle is to steal energy from your enemy and protect your own. If the energy levels reach a critically low amount for a team then the team loses the match.

So, the more energy you steal the more powerfull your team becomes and the less energy you have the less powerfull your team becomes.

In my mind it plays well but don't know how it would fair in a proper coded game.

It sounds like a good implementation in my mind aswell.

I think you should go for it and create something around it.

Sounds to me like a recipe for massively unstable equilibrium...

Think of a marble at the top of a mound.... A few nudges left or right and everything is fine.

... but once you pass a certain point then gravity takes over and there is no way that the small pushes can ever return it to its starting point - the downhill acceleration ensures a rapid descent for whoever started to tip the balance.

A better idea might be to reverse the scenario... The more 'energy' you lose the more powerful you become. Then you would be introducing a strategy element to the scenario, because you need to hedge your bets for long enough to be able to deliver a Blitzkrieg like strike that reduces the emnemies 'energy' to the point of losing, but does it quickly enough that they don't get a chance to use their enhanced power.

Obviously 'energy' does not make sense in this context - it has to be a restraining force.

Blitzkrieg ... now there is a good name for the game !

I'm thinking that replacing 'religious icons' for 'energy' might be a possible context. The icons have a 'pacifying' effect on your team and are essential to spiritual health.

Or how about narcotics... the less you have, the less 'doped' you are (= more agression) but without a supply the tribe goes terminally strung out.

So it's kinda like the original Starsiege: Tribes then?

An idea on how this could work...

2 less energy tubes than the number of players. For example:
8 players per team, 6 energy tubes per team
7 players per team, 5 energy tubes per team
etc.

And this type of gameplay:
Once a player steals an energy tube and brings it back to his base, he must continue holding on to it (say, holding some kind of suppressing element to it), or it will become unstable and (after a few seconds, say 10) explode (thereby destroying everything around it, including the base, causing a loss of game).

If one does become unstable, a suicidal teammate has the opportunity however to pick it up and run with it as far as he can in order to get it out of the base and detonate beyond harms way (resulting in his death though).

A team that has secured (brought back to their base) all of the opposing teams tubes wins.

This kind of setup would create some interesting strategy scenarios:
-An 8 player team, in order to win, would have to have 5 teammates holding onto tubes within their base (vitually sitting ducks?) with only 3 remaining members left to retrieve the last tube and bring it back. As BlackJumper suggested, a blitzkrieg may be a very viable strategic plan so as not to have too many 'sitting ducks' left at the base.

-If implemented well enough, just one player could turn the whole game upside down, by killing one of the enemy 'sitting duck' players thereby causing the tube that enemy was holding on to to become unstable and explode the base.

-However, in the situation above, if the teammate 'sitting duck' players react quickly enough, they may be able to run the unstable tube from the base in time to save it.

I think this could be a very fun and challenging game variant.
A few balancing techniques might be required to get the gameplay just right.

For instance, maybe the tubes don't become unstable unless left alone for more than 5 seconds (and then 10 more seconds until they explode). This way, a player could drop a tube for a few seconds to deal with an opposing player, and then quickly pick it back up before it goes critical.

And, Or, the 'sitting duck' players may or may not have the ability to fight back while holding on to a tube. Perhaps they can use the tube as a (close proximity) weapon? Perhaps the tube is too fragile to use as a weapon.

A few trial games might be necessary to find out the most balanced gameplay.

I think I would love to see this become a real multiplayer game variant. It could work.

EDIT: I realize now that if a tube exploded, there would be an imbalance in the game (one less tube to retrieve). Maybe this could be dealt with by the team that lost the tube to just create another one... any ideas?

Hey, I like the ideas I'm hearing. I suppose i could try and code this to test it out. I could use Torque for it methinks.

Why does the team that is loosing get less to fight with reduced firepower in their bosss? It's very RTS, but it's very contra-gameplay curve of everything else - games should get harder the better you are so if your winning, make 'em win with cap guns and bottle rockets to prove their worth.

More team winning energy sticks could meen less room for weapon sticks in your useful-game-mechanic-weapon-generator-device or something like that.

I have to agree that the original idea sounds very unbalanced and pretty poor really.

Unbalancing the teams during play never seems to work right in games, people like to have a stable and consistent baseline of health, armour, ammo etc.., so that the outcome of a battle between 2 enemies depends upon the skill of those 2, not that one of them has all the ammo and 200 more armour units.

I remember that old 2d game by the Bitmap Brothers - it was a sort of RTS type thing but I can't remember the name - and the amount of resources available was directly linked to the number of key points you controlled - so once the game tipped just slightly one way or the other it was almost impossible for the underdog to win. It was total rubbish.

Imagine a game of UT Domination - if the amount of team players per side was directly linked to the number of nodes they controlled, once one team got a slight advantage they'd easily win almost every time.

"Z", by any chance?

That's the one. What a poor game. Total Annihilation was much better. RTS games always seem to suffer from this imbalance though, whereas in a FPS it's possible for a long player of sufficient skill to win a game against impossible odds, but I suppose there's no way if emulating that in an RTS, unless the player has direct control of the units. An AI superplayer would be highly annoying.

>>I suppose there's no way if emulating that in an RTS

Yes there is, you just need to handle resourcces different to the genre defecto standard - therefore it will never happen.

What you need to do is employ a game mechanic that works transversely - giving the loosing player more resources.

Whether it is capturing control points meens the war office starts sending resources elsewhere or whatever is up to you, the point is, RTS' do it backwards right now.

It sounds like robots would be perfect for this type of game. What would really be even cooler is if you could transform into a vehicle, drive to the enemy base, transform back into a robot, then proceed into the heat of battle with laser-blasters blaring away.

I think it is normal and natural that when a given idea manifests in the mind of any given individual, it is then easily `conducted` to the minds of others, and the same idea may spring up in the minds of several individuals at about the same point in history. I have invented several things which I then find out have been invented already. That doesn't mean I didn't invent it. So, which of those individuals deserves to say `this is MINE, nobody else can have it`? How about you just take the idea that you have, make the best of it, do it well, then be known as somebody that inspired others into a new directions, and enjoy the knowledge that its presence in so many other games is because of your originality, rather than have it locked in the little dark corner of a small game that not many people will experience just for the sake of having ownership?