Quote: Original post by Capitalist
OK, here's what I've concluded.

1. Lawyers cost money

Getting sued costs more money, as a legal defense costs much more than the few hours of getting a realistic ToS in place.
Going to court costs much more money in addition to defense lawyer costs.
Even if you win in court, you still lose money since you have had to pay for your own defense.
Losing in court costs even more money, since now you have to pay everything above PLUS pay the other side.

Quote: 2. Lawyers work at the same time I do, so it's hard to see one.

Then you shouldn't be in business.

Quote: 3. It's easier to seek forgiveness than to seek permission.

Not in legal issues.

Quote: 4. Wait for revenues to be worth it, THEN do all the legal stuff.

That is a stupid decision to make. It is like walking through a minefield, waiting until you are halfway through before trying to get a metal detector.

Quote: http://webpages.acs.ttu.edu/mmetheni/Internet%20Gambling%20and%20the%20MMORPG.htm

Which doesn't apply to you for what should be obvious reasons. If you can't see those obvious reasons, reread section II.B and read the references. If you STILL believe it applies to you and protects you, then you need to mature a little more before entering business. (Which seems like a good idea anyway based on your posts.)

Quote: I also looked at some articles regarding in-game casino operators inside Second Life. The upshot there was the same. The courts and the Justice Department don't seem to even be able to provide Linden Labs with guidance on what does and does not constitute online gambling. So people are running huge casinos inside SL and no one's going after them (yet). And I'm pretty sure that they'll go after Linden Labs LONG before they come after me for doing something that isn't even close to what's going on inside SL.

Second life has invested a fortune in lawyers. Their ToS is ten printed pages, in addition to several other (longer) documents that are incorporated by reference. They have also been sued many times, and revised those documents based on those lawsuits.

Quote: HyperDonut doesn't meet the definition.

That is for the judge to decide, not you.

Quote: While going through all this research and doing a search for a good e-commerce attorney in my area and so forth, something suddenly occurred to me. Why am I worried about being sued? I don't even own a BED. What are they going to take, my last two packages of Ramen noodles?

Then you cannot afford to be in business.

Even if you don't have assets they can still ruin you financially. If you do something stupid like not show up to court (and lose by default) or if you lose and face punitive damages, or if any of countless other things happen, you can have your wages garnished for many years. You can have a nasty blotch on your credit history. You could be forced to declare bankruptcy even though you have nothing, making it hard for you to move on with life for several years. When you eventually do own a few things, if you lose in court, you could lose them all and be in worse condition than you started.

Even worse would be if you end up in a criminal situation rather than a civil one, which could happen if you are on the wrong side of gambling laws.

Quote: So while seeking legal advice is a good idea if you can afford it, I've decided to put that off until such time (if ever) that the revenues from the game warrant it.

That is a stupid decision. Every reply to this thread has told you that. But it is still your decision to make.

Quote: SL banned casinos quite some time ago;

SL banned nothing. They simply wrote a policy which everyone ignored. People are running blackjack tables in the sewers now. They also "banned" in-world banking, but I doubt that will stop either. The only way Linden Lab can ban any activity on SL is to shut down their own servers.

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/08/14/virtual-speakeasies-defy-second-life-gambling-ban/

What's happening on SL is a microcosm of what's happening online in general. The net is a hydra. Regulators try to ban an activity in one place and it springs up in ten more. Look what happened when they went after Napster. Someone came up with the idea of torrents. Voila! ThePirateBay.

The bottom line is that people are going to do what they want, legal or not, especially when the vast majority disagree with the morality of the law in question. This happened during prohibition too. The net just makes disobedience much easier when the issue involves non-physical values like information and money.

Ok, so I'm a rebel. And maybe someone who plays HyperDonut will actually sue me over 30 bucks, as Kafkaesque as that seems. Maybe all the dire predictions here will come true. Maybe they'll throw me in prison and I can share a cell with the Linden Lab execs. At least I'll have a bed. Maybe I'll have to go live in my car. I've done it before and it's actually a hoot. Life is fun. Lighten up.

HyperDonut is now open for beta testers. If there are any humans left among you who refuse to cower in the face of the almighty state, then wish me luck.

I'll throw in my 0.02 €.

The website HyperDonut doesn't contain any real contact information. The owner introduces himself as simply the Capitalist. I certainly would be reluctant to send any money to a person hiding behind a pseudonym. Not to mention that not providing valid contact information may even be illegal.

The Terms of Use are bogus. In particular the fourth term is not legally binding: "You further agree not to attempt to sue or otherwise hold the owner(s) of this site liable for any loss you incur as a result of playing HyperDonut." Also suggesting that private information of users can be bought certainly does not afford much trust, even if it was a joke.

There's not much information on the sell-back scheme. Specifically the site does not mention (or if it's there, it's not easily located) how the HyperDonut Dominion intends to ensure that it actually has sufficient liquidity to cash all the territories sold back.

The site contains at least one copyrighted image. Without permission, I presume.

In any case, the whole game doesn't seem like worth playing, especially if you need to pay for it. It seems like those, who have invested a lot of money in the game, or won many systems, will be able to just take the money from those, who just want to try out the game and are not willing to spend more than a few bucks. Considering that the game itself appears to be a crummy version of Master of Orion, I don't think that there'll be any worries of lawsuits, since I predict that the game will never make any money. Certainly not enough to sue over or even get the authorities interested.

I read this whole thread, which has gone to trash imo, and have discovered one useful piece of information that the OP should take into consideration: Second Life has a 10 page printed ToS.

Lets think here for a minute...

*ding*

1. You cannot afford a lawyer
2. Your game is similar to SL
3. SL put money into the legal sector and most likely their ToS was revised and edited by lawyers
4. You need a ToS
5. You need a ToS that would have legal significance in court

Solution: Base your ToS off of Second Life's. You still need a lawyer, but you'll have some protection until you can afford one. Yes, this is risky, but business is all about risk and reward. Good luck and don't mess up :P

Might I suggest something?

Back to this 'free trial' idea - set up a concept server, where everything is based on in-game money and not real money. See how it goes, monitor spending trends, see what kind of complaints you get from the money system and above all use it as a big bug test.

You never know, the game might turn out more of a success based on fake money, people won't see playing your game as a risk and you'll avoid all of the lawyer comments above.

EDIT: And your website doesn't look very inviting to people and their wallets, invest in something a little more professional if you want people to part with their cash :)

There are something that you need to learn:

Human beings are GREAT at discovering a way to dig money from others, specially cheating...

You say that you will have money to buy-back all territories, because you sold them yourself... So, what happen if a player manage to f**k your database? What will happen like happened in Ultima Online, that a player discovered how to copy items that were supposed to have a fixed amount? You will lower the price of the territories? If you can lower the price of the territories to solve the problem of territory spam, playerrs will also want the possiblity of the price rising, what will happen if you sell 100 territories, and they get valued a bit more and everyone sells back?

And sorry, I will not play the game of sir capitalist, I am communist...

To maximize potential revenue, for a game of this format, I would try to present it in as many incarnations as possible. By that, not only do I mean cross-platform as in Linux, Windows, Mac(whatever you guys use... hyena? sex panther?) but also as a sidebar gadget for Vista, perhaps as a standalone app that serves as a sidebar gadget for other systems. For a game with a very specific target audience, you should try to capture all of them. (Not like you should every not try to have everyone buy your game, I just mean really put yourself out there)

Quote: Original post by deadstar
Might I suggest something?

Back to this 'free trial' idea - set up a concept server, where everything is based on in-game money and not real money. See how it goes, monitor spending trends, see what kind of complaints you get from the money system and above all use it as a big bug test.

You never know, the game might turn out more of a success based on fake money, people won't see playing your game as a risk and you'll avoid all of the lawyer comments above.

EDIT: And your website doesn't look very inviting to people and their wallets, invest in something a little more professional if you want people to part with their cash :)

I'm in 100% agreement with this.

Set up a trial server, let the game run sans real world money for a few months. If you stop to object that "real money is the hook" then your game probably isn't any fun and won't succeed anyhow. As a matter of fact, having a trial server might serve to draw in players later as well -- host month-long trial periods, maybe with some prizes (but no cash) after the full game has gone pay-to-play.

One issue that hasn't been addressed so far is balance -- do long-standing players with lots of land become too powerful to overthrow, and will they simply feed on new players, blocking them from getting even a foothold of their own?

I'm still monitoring the thread and appreciate the constructive suggestions. Here's a rundown of some steps I'll take based on the advice here.

1. LmT suggested that I base the ToS off of Second Life's as an interim patch until I can get real legal advice. This makes a lot of sense. What I'll actually do is create a TOS based on language in several different games which have similar issues, including Second Life, Entropia (although that's based in Sweden), Ultima Online, etc.

I'll be keeping my silly version of the TOS on the "about" page though. Although it may not appeal to some here, it is targeted to a more irreverent audience to whom the concept and philosophy of the game might be of interest.

2. Speeder was concerned with the possibility of hacking, or finding cheats whereby players inflate the number of existing territories. HyperDonut is much simpler than most games, taking place in a big "cube" consisting of 1,000,000 star systems (100 x 100 x 100). There's no way that I can see to inflate this number; I'd catch it right away in my accounting system. However, Speeder brought up the fact that Ultima Online ran into a similar situation, so I'll be looking through their TOU to see if they addressed this and how. Thanks for that info!

3. deadstar & Ravyn both mentioned a free trial type system. I'm actually going one better with the beta tester program I've started.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HyperDonut/message/4

Not only is it risk-free to be a beta tester, but a tester has the potential to end up with much more than the free $10 account with which they start (others will end up with nothing because HyperDonut is a negative sum game like a securities or derivatives market). The caveat is that a tester account isn't authorized to withdraw cash until the game has reached certain goals, one of which is the sale of 1,000 systems. This protects me financially from a situation where people just sign up as testers in order to withdraw the free $10.

Before anyone points out that it's possible for a single person to snap up all 100 beta tester spots and potentially make an easy $1,000, I'm already aware of that. It's fine with me since the person would only get to withdraw the cash when the game's revenues reaches $1,000, so they would be in the same position as a commission salesperson.

4. Ravyne also brought up a couple of other issues regarding whether the money is the "hook" for the game, and the balance between older larger empires and newer empires. I don't want to ignore those questions but they go more to the actual design and philosophy behind the game which is OT for this business thread. If anyone's interested, I'll be happy to open a thread in the design part of Gamedev.net to discuss this in much more detail. Let me know.

Thanks again to everyone for your input! :)

[Edited by - Capitalist on May 9, 2008 4:29:41 PM]