Ogre Forums

Hi guys,

This is not an Ogre question, it's a question about gamedev, and copyright, in general.

I'm making a game that as part of the story (it's a weak story but hey) uses a lot of references, terms, ideas and even character names from popular sci-fi novels and movies. The idea is to pay homage to all the fantastic writers that have influenced me and my bud who are working on the game; it's going to be a frickin' meme-fest. So to put it bluntly, I'd like to know what it's possible to get away with in this regard?

I know that books are copyrightable and I have no intention of making our game follow a storyline or anything like that, I just want to call our main character, which is a computer AI, "Wintermute", like one of the AIs from the famous scifi novel "Neuromancer" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer . I've played games like WoW that are absolutely rife with pop-culture references (like the names of NPCs, quest content and banter) and that all seems to be fine. Other games make things less obvious and slightly modify the names. I know things like this are pretty subjective, if I was making a wizard game and called the main character Harry Potter I'm sure that I'd get my arse sued if the game gained any popularity. But in my case it's all pretty incidental and doesn't really define the game, it's just for fun ya know.

So what do you guys reckon? Unimaginative? A bit of light fun? Fair use? Derivative? Parody?

I think it's a kind of grey line. If any copyright owner thinks that his property is misused or put in a wrong context they can sue.
I guess as long as it's obvious that it's a tribute, and when you don't try to sell your material by making an obvious rip-off no one will mind. It also depends on who's the copyright holder, they decide.
In general, as long as they are just small cameos or name references, and don't take a major part of your story or concept I think it'll be fine.

Take the Book of Unfinished Tales game, also made with Ogre. It's rife with subtle references to the Lord of the Rings and other fantasy works.

People use other peoples ideas all the time.

But like said it depends on use puns and comical takes are generally accepted. WoW actually changes the first charecter if its a two word name like Jom Gabber (Gom Jabber from Dune) Haris Pilton (Paris Hilton). It also has alot of lord of the rings bits as well.

If you used made content which followed similar plots to another story you could get in trouble. But to be honest every fantasy work follows a similar plot line (LOTR style story). The most obvious is Terry Brooks which is blatently renamed charecters in a renamed world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara

I imagine it would depend on whether or not you're planning on selling your game. There are massive amounts of fan fiction on the Internet and generally writers don't seem to mind, or possibly even find it flattering that someone has taken the time to expand upon their work, and your game would probably fall into this category. On the other hand, people spend huge royalty fees for rights to use certain characters or stories in other media, so I imagine if you were going to use those characters as a selling point for your game you'd need to make some sort of agreement with the original authors whose work it is based on.

First off anyone can sue you for anything. It doesn't matter if they have a case or not.

As for winning said case, it all depends on if the judge believes you have stolen IP. Name alone (at least common ones) would not get you in trouble in most cases.

Legally you could name a person in your game "Harry Potter" or "Mario" or "Cloud". It doesn't mean you won't be sued for doing so.
Where the line is drawn is if a character share looks, storyline, hell anything other than name with the original character.

Harry Potter might not be a good case example however, because I believe the name is a trademark as well.


If you use "Wintermute" name in your game you're probably safe. If your Wintermute character is the same(or very similar) to Neuromancer's Wintermute, you would probably lose the case if sued.

Fair Use = Think only for self use or educational purpose, soon as it leaves your office or classroom it probably won't be covered under fair use.
Derivative = Doesn't count for IP that isnt' in public domain.
Parody = Fine line, if it's not a comedy it isn't a parody, even so it'd be better to change the name...


Someone else said something about Fan Fiction. Fan Fiction of non-public domain or non-libre work is illegal regardless if you're selling it or not. It violates IP laws. Just because authors don't go around suing people for doing it doesn't mean it can't/won't happen.


PS: This is all based on US law, your laws may differ.