I've done the majority of my game myself, while a role or two has been filled by a person or two. I'm not exactly sure what to go about putting in the "credits", because although I've been involved in every facet of my game, I really don't know how many facets there are. I don't want to put my friends in their roles and then have "Everything Else: Me", because that would look dumb, and I don't want to have a thousand different categories + ": Me" because that would look dumb also. Is there a good blanket-word that most independent game developers use? EDIT: And here's a mini-question, what's the best way to ensure that my game remains my game? If I have the credits in an image, the image can be edited and redistributed. Same with the title cards in the intro. If I hardcode credit text into the game, will that make it more-or-less set in stone? [Edited by - Rokkuman on April 6, 2009 3:56:16 PM]

I don't really know what the norm is, if there even is one, but I find that the something like the following gives each person the proper credit without "bragging" too much about your own contribution.

Created by RokkumanMusic composed by <Person 1>Sprite design by <Person 2>

A "special thanks to <Person 1>" might also work but I feel that it's more satisfying to have your actual contribution to the game listed.

Quote:

Original post by Rokkuman I've done the majority of my game myself, while a role or two has been filled by a person or two. I'm not exactly sure what to go about putting in the "credits", because although I've been involved in every facet of my game, I really don't know how many facets there are. I don't want to put my friends in their roles and then have "Everything Else: Me", because that would look dumb, and I don't want to have a thousand different categories + ": Me" because that would look dumb also. Is there a good blanket-word that most independent game developers use? EDIT: And here's a mini-question, what's the best way to ensure that my game remains my game? If I have the credits in an image, the image can be edited and redistributed. Same with the title cards in the intro. If I hardcode credit text into the game, will that make it more-or-less set in stone?

It is a very serious form of copyright infringement to change the credits and redistribute someone elses game as your own (The absolute worst kind imo), There is no way you can really protect yourself against it outside of court.

Personally i usually just hardcode the credits text though since its easy enough to update that section of the code.

One thing you could do is registering the gamename as a trademark of your company (if you have one). But that's going to cost you :s

Credits serve two purposes. It's a reward for you and your friends for the hard work and it is a communication of whom the fan should ask for more from if she likes a certain part of the game.

The reward part is just for you and your friends and it is rather unimportant who did what. It is also unimportant who did most, or rather, it is difficult to measure who did most for the game. A part that might have required only a little work might be so important for the game that it wouldn't be very good at all without this persons contribution. For this purpose, list everyone involved in the creation, list them equally if possible. Use alphabetic order if you can't think of anything else. (I have nothing against using gut feeling here of course, but if you had a good gut feeling, you wouldn't be consulting me to begin with.)

For the other part you are stuck between trying to portray an accurate picture and a useful picture. For it to be useful it has to be just a few posts, connecting large partitions of the game with certain persons. What posts you will use depends on how your game was created. If no easy partitioning exists, then don't try to show one, there is a high risk that it will be incorrect. I would not worry about missing out large parts of the development in this part of the credits. The purpose is not to document to process, it is to help fans find more.

Specifically for your situation you could put yourself under a lot of posts, try to figure out which parts fans should go to You for if asking for more. You might find that your contribution is not of this characted and then it will be fine just sitting in the long list of contributors. It is more likely that your very important contribution to the project was in organization, then credit yourself as that.

I do not advice you to use the same titles as everyone else, I am not aware of any non-trivial titles that are especially effective in communicating contribution. If you just think about the purpose of your credits you will probably find better titles (or whatever) that fits your project better and requires less game culture experience by the player.

I wouldn't bother so much about protecting your credits screen. If someone really really wants to steal your game then you will not stop her by complicating the code behind the credits screen. Instead, try to spread the word early that this was created by you and not anyone else. If there are multiple sources crediting you for the game before the thief's attempt at falsifying the credits, more persons will believe you and not her. This sort of thing has happend, I recall some flash games being stolen like this, and if the thief is a big company there's very little you can do. The best course of action is probably just to spread the word and hurt the company that way instead of through the legal system. Still, these things are very uncommon and I wouldn't worry so much about it if I were you.