No. Ideas on their own are worthless and you only hurt yourself by delaying meaningful feedback.
This is one of the most common questions I’ve seen on various blogs from new designers. Or I see it manifest as anonymous posts asking vague questions about a game they aren’t fully describing. I get it, I had similar reservations at the onset of my journey. But let’s talk about why you should move past those concerns.
First of all, your idea is worthless. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, it’s honestly probably really great. But when it’s just an idea, it is not worth anything. Especially in the board game industry it takes so so much to make a game – developing, playtesting, pitching/publishing, marketing. And on top of that, every board game designer already has their own project they are immensely passionate about. No one is going to steal your game, because there’s really nothing to steal.
Still not convinced? Let’s talk about what “protecting” your idea actually looks like.
The three main methods would be: trademarking, copyrighting, and patenting. Here’s why none of them are right for you if your concern is someone stealing your design:
Trademark: A trademark protects a name or logo – your game’s name, publisher name, company logo. This does nothing to protect your game. Additionally, if you are using names and logos in commerce, those are automatically protected (TM) without registering them (R). This is called a Common Law Trademark. So slap a TM where you’d like, but save yourself the $300+ dollars of registering anything.
Copyright: Similar to trademarks, you own the copyright to any text or art you produce as soon as your produce it. You can get extra rigor by filing for about $50, but this is also not going to protect your game design. From the USPTO, “Copyright protects only the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.” This mean someone can’t reproduce your exact rulebook, cards, etc., but it doesn’t mean they can’t copy your mechanics. If you file, you also only have protection for the specific version you’re filing for. So filing for a prototype is useless. Save it for when you have your final product that you don’t want people printing off and selling – if you do it at all.
Patent: A patent is what can actually protect your game mechanics. Yay! Wait, why didn’t I lead with this? Because filing a patent takes months and $20,000+. Even if you are in the place where you can drop $20k+ on a fledgling idea, put that towards original art or marketing.
Still think protection is a good option before sharing? Let me put one more nail in that coffin. These protections don’t prevent someone from stealing your game, they just give you strong legal footing to sue them. Which is then more time and legal fees that you could be putting into making your game better.
So protection isn’t feasible, should I just hide in my designer hole until I launch my product? Absolutely not.
Game design is a process of continuous feedback and iteration. You can’t figure out what’s working or not without putting your creation in the hands of others. And the board game community is a truly amazing space for sharing and getting feedback.
I can go on and on about the importance of getting feedback on iterations early and often (in fact I plan on doing a post about it), but I’ll let Jamey take this point home about how sharing your design should be something to be excited about, not protective over.
As I hope you eventually do too, I got over my initial hesitation about sharing my game. I started started running playtests, sharing my card design, and even putting up full print-and-play files of my game. As a result I’ve gotten incredible feedback that has made my game so much better.
And no one has stolen it.
Do you have any concerns I didn’t address? Or do you have an example of how sharing your game early helped rather than hurt? I’d love to get more voices to chime in and help break any concerned designers out of their shell so they can start working on their game!
Obligatory disclaimer that I’m not a lawyer and this is not official legal advise.