IP Mothball

Skrylar · 07/18/08 12:07

I don't mean to get anybody's hopes up right away but after lurking a bit I thought I'd go ahead and say hello. There's been some talk about the reason there being no plans for a sequel (or any continuation at all) is because TakeTwo has the IPs mothballed. Out of curiosity I've been digging around a little bit trying to get a little bit of information on the matter.

At the moment, I'm just trying to get ahold of a rep to see hypothetically what the IP rights would cost to unlock Oni. These normally go for a metric ton of dollar bills; but the game is old, they've made their money back on it, Bungie is happily cranking out Halos so there is a little bit of optimism to be had that they would let it go for something reasonable to an indie studio or community. At the very, very least, it might be possible to talk them in to sanctioning the mods so they can't come back and stomp on anything (like how EA tries to death grip games they don't even publish anymore).

As I said, I'm just a curious fish at the moment. I know there aren't many of us here anymore but it's still worth asking for opinions (or if anybody knows how to go about doing this ) I've poked a few people I know but I'm waiting for some of them to get back to me at the moment. I don't normally deal with licenses.

And again, helloes. o/

Iritscen · 07/18/08 13:07

Hi Skrylar, and welcome. Feel free to investigate, but I have to tell you, some of the community's core members already have written Take2 and various other companies and gotten nowhere. The basic issue is that Take2 is completely unresponsive, and the age of the game and its middling success make it a forgotten property. If you even got a human at Take2 to respond to you, you would have accomplished more than we have (as far as I know). That being said, I still fantasize that one day they will let this property see the light of day again.

Skrylar · 07/18/08 14:07

Did a little bit of wikipedia diving and it looks like Take2 doesn't actually own it. According to the Wikipedia, Gathering of Developers has the PC license. Gathering was bought out by Take2 and changed in to 2K Games, so it may be owned by 2K at this point. It's hard to tell if the other platforms were sublicensed from one source or if each one is a separate license.

Too bad we can't ask anybody that worked at Bungie West what they did with it

EdT · 07/18/08 14:07

Skrylar: Welcome to the forums.

The rights for Oni is complicated. As far as I understand, Take2 has the IP rights to Oni, but others have the distribution right such as 2K Games and Feral has the worldwide distribution rights for the Mac version of Oni. In my discussions with Feral, they are fans of Oni, but since they are a business, they have to make decisions that make financial sense.

That said, don't give up, use your contacts, who knows, you may succeed in getting some definite answers.

P.S. Welcome back Iritscen! I hope that soon you'll be settled in and ready to work on Oni again.

Last edited by EdT (07/18/08 15:07)

Skrylar · 07/18/08 15:07

EdT wrote:

In my discussions with Feral, they are fans of Oni, but since they are a business, they have to make decisions that make financial sense.

Well, it's good that Feral at least is responsive on the matter. It's starting to look ever increasingly bleak though, looking at that it's spread across 4 different corporations it means four or so different purchases would have to be done in order to pull it back as one entity. I have to ask though, how did you manage to get Feral to respond? I'm digging around at everything I can find in hopes of getting to someone inside T2, though it may end up requiring hunting somebody down at E3.

Depending on how Take2 dolled it out, lifting it from them may pull the distribution rights with it. I poked a game designer who goes to those events so lets pray he still remembers me

EdT · 07/18/08 16:07

I just sent a nice email to Feral asking about the future of Oni and the possiblity of them buying it or letting the game go open source.

Iritscen · 07/18/08 17:07

I actually think just the IP owner needs to give us permission, the others would all cooperate. It's TakeTwo that's the sticky wicket here. And thanks, EdT, I just need to get a real computer desk put together and I can work again.

Skrylar · 07/18/08 21:07

Good news gentlemen, my support ticket with 2K was escalated. The support tech is forwarding it over to another department (I'm guessing legal, instead of tech support heh) so perhaps after the weekend I'll have some more news!

Loser · 07/18/08 23:07

Hi Skrylar,
looks like that could be nice chance. There was one back in time (Take2 wanted to free away some old projects) but ONI was not included. Now....we will see. But BIG thanks for your effort, without doubt.
Loser

ItemfinderDeluxe · 07/21/08 03:07

Hi there,

It will be interesting to see who actually owns what with Oni. But that said, the most important thing would be to try and get a response from 2K with some sort of answer. But, if the following companies own dertain rights, ie:

Take 2 = IP Rights
2K = PC Distribution
Feral = Mac Distribution

What else, if anything, is missing from the ownership picture?

Iritscen · 07/21/08 07:07

Here's my best understanding at the moment:

IP Rights
Take-Two - IP Rights, PS2 distribution (and technically any other distribution if they want it, I would assume)

Publishing/Distribution Rights
Feral Interactive - Mac distribution in Europe
Gathering of Developers - PC distribution worldwide

Developers
Bungie West - PC/Mac versions
Rockstar, part of 2K Games, part of Take-Two - PS2 version
OmniGroup - Mac OS X port

Edit: Removed MacSoft from list. Stupid Wikipedia.

Last edited by Iritscen (07/21/08 15:07)

Skrylar · 07/21/08 10:07

It's now Monday which means 2K should be coming back from the weekend in to their offices, so I'll be checking my mail religiously to see if there's any news for later. It's 9am now so it will probably be a few hours. Take2 should have the source and normal media with them since it got sold. I don't know if they have the OS X port of the code, but the OmniGroup guys are pretty nice fellows who probably still have it. I think distribution rights are one-shot deals, so those shouldn't pose any real problem.

More news as it comes through the tubes,
-Skrylar

Last edited by Skrylar (07/21/08 10:07)

EdT · 07/21/08 14:07

MacSoft - Mac distribution in US

I went to their website and there is no mention of Oni.

Skrylar: Hopefully, you'll get some kind of response.

Iritscen · 07/21/08 15:07

I think you're right after all, Ed, I checked around some more and MacSoft doesn't seem to have been involved with Oni. I regurgitated that info from Wikipedia (and Bungiepedia, but I think one entry was just copied from the other). I hadn't heard of MacSoft being involved before, so I should have checked my facts.

Also... how is MacSoft even in business? They have like 10 titles for sale.

ItemfinderDeluxe · 07/21/08 21:07

Woah ... that is one messed up pie of ownership there.

I'm thinking that if one could obtain the IP rights to Oni, the other companies would be more then willing to sell the distribution rights. The usual -fan-pleading approach hasn't worked so far though. But for an indie company to step up and say "We'll help you out" is a tad more difficult. Can anyone think of such a company that could/would help us fans out?

Skrylar · 07/21/08 22:07

ItemfinderDeluxe wrote:

But for an indie company to step up and say "We'll help you out" is a tad more difficult. Can anyone think of such a company that could/would help us fans out?

I asked them like an indie studio wanting to pick up the rights to it.

Hopefully that will have it marked as worth replying to at least. 9pm and they haven't said anything so far, I'm going to give them a day or three before checking back up with them just in case the guy who would be responding is busy with something being Monday and all. Hard to say though, I got the notice from tech support originally at 3am when they should've been asleep (then again Rockstar is Scottish, and they're branched out of T2).

EdT · 07/22/08 00:07

A nice little historical piece about Oni:
http://www.bungie.net/inside/history.aspx?link=oni

Skrylar: Do you think any of your contacts can put you in touch with Bungie?

Gumby · 07/22/08 05:07

I read that a few days ago.

ItemfinderDeluxe · 07/22/08 06:07

19.9% of Bungie owned by Take 2? Well, you learn something new every day. I take it they still own that share, or did Microsoft buy out Bungie in it's entirety?

@ Skrylar - So you approached Take 2 from the standpoint of an Indie company trying to buy Oni. But, do you actually work for or own one? I believe the problem Take 2 (like most companies) has with fans is that a fan is just 'singular'; one fan, or even a small group such as the Oni community, is hardly important in the face of trying to earn thousands of dollars. What I'm getting to is that we need to convince the companies who own Oni rights that buying (or releasing) Oni is in their best interests. Shift their priorities regarding Oni from low to high.

Iritscen · 07/22/08 09:07

IfD, the catch is, if we convince a company to buy Oni, they're going to be the ones making a sequel, not us. We don't know how that will turn out. Whereas, given a few more years (several?) this community could produce its own sequel. That would be a far-fetched statement for most communities, perhaps, but we have demonstrated that we already have the tools and some of the talent. It's just a matter of time. So, the question is, would we rather see a professionally-made Oni 2 that may lack what made Oni great, or see a fan-made Oni 2 that is *much* more likely to have the spirit of the first Oni?

The legalities of making our own sequel are somewhat nebulous, of course. It goes without saying that it would have to be free. At that point we just would trust that no corporation would sue a bunch of fans for making a sequel to a game that it had abandoned for a decade and releasing it for free download. Gaming journalists and the gaming community would eat them alive if they had a problem with it. Besides, it's hard to actually serve a subpoena to people over the Internet :-)

So, as far as the actual rights go, the only definitely good scenario is if TakeTwo agreed to sell Oni for a pittance (by corporate standards) and we pooled our money and actually bought it as a community. But it's unlikely that we would raise more than a few thousand among us, and even that may be generous, and even if our shallow pockets could afford their price tag for Oni, we'd have to figure out who of us owned how much of the property and what that meant as far as who would guide the sequel. That would also be a challenge.

Sorry if this is considered as raining on anyone's parade. It's only my opinion, anyway.

And thanks for the link, Ed, I never saw that before.

Gumby · 07/22/08 11:07

Well...I think this community has the talent to make a sequel. We have a wide variety of talent around. Given the source code (I thought someone had already decompiled the engine...but there is something about keeping it private) we would have to decide weather it would be more work to update the engine to "modern" standards, or make a new one. Either way would require a lot of work, and most people can't afford to sit around working on a game full time.

Given the rights to it we would have to decide on if we were going to do this for free or actually sell the sequel. Undoubtedly, the prospect of making money would be an incentive to work more on it, but it is still a tough decision to make.

Skrylar · 07/22/08 12:07

Gargantuan Post Head
So I'll outline the important part up at the top: Take2 still snoozin. I'll give them a few hours before giving a gentle poke. I know for some things you have to harass them a little bit or else they forget they were supposed to talk to you.

ItemfinderDeluxe wrote:

So you approached Take 2 from the standpoint of an Indie company trying to buy Oni. But, do you actually work for or own one? I believe the problem Take 2 (like most companies) has with fans is that a fan is just 'singular'; one fan, or even a small group such as the Oni community, is hardly important in the face of trying to earn thousands of dollars.

Sort of, I have the website registered for it and have been using it to poke ideas around to people but it hasn't released anything commercially (or non-commercially) yet. It really is the embodiment of "independent" heh.

ItemfinderDeluxe wrote:

What I'm getting to is that we need to convince the companies who own Oni rights that buying (or releasing) Oni is in their best interests. Shift their priorities regarding Oni from low to high.

The only way that would happen is if we started some huge marketing campaign or had a significant amount of people boycott Take2 if they didn't do either of those things. Unfortunately trying to get people to abandon an entire publisher (of which there are maybe 4 major ones) is impossible to a scale large enough to do anything. The other approach probably wouldn't work since the name is more or less burned in as a failed title. If you read any instance of people talking about Bungie Oni does crop up, but a large amount of people's comments are simply "Oni sucked!" There's the good ones, too, but they aren't as plentiful.

Iritscen wrote:

IfD, the catch is, if we convince a company to buy Oni, they're going to be the ones making a sequel, not us. We don't know how that will turn out.

Usually badly. Take2 actually did try to commission a sequel back in the day with some small studio but then they decided to cancel it pre-production since they didn't think it was going to be worth it. This is why I'm optimistic about the royalties idea if I can get them to respond, since they even decided it was a lost cause to use it themselves.

45 games cancelled pre-production; Oni 2 listed as PS2 project by Angel Studios

Iritscen wrote:

The legalities of making our own sequel are somewhat nebulous, of course.

Technically fan fiction falls under copyright infringement, and using any media from the game itself would be as well. Because the ending of Oni pretty much leads in to a game like Fallout's beginning, you could probably get away with ditching the name. I'm not a lawyer though, but I don't think replicating the character's name can get you in to trouble. "Mai Hasegawa" is an anecdote, the character's name is probably trademarked as Konoko (like Halo's Master Chief) and she would probably use her normal name now anyway so you *might* be able to slip that through.

Iritscen wrote:

It goes without saying that it would have to be free. At that point we just would trust that no corporation would sue a bunch of fans for making a sequel to a game that it had abandoned for a decade and releasing it for free download.

That didn't save the FreeCraft team from Blizzard's legal team coming in and saying they had copyright over it because it had "craft" in the title and it had the ability to load Warcraft 2 resource files if you had them or else you had to use GPL'd ones the team made.

FreeCraft shut down by Blizzard

Iritscen wrote:

Besides, it's hard to actually serve a subpoena to people over the Internet :-)

MPAA and RIAA do it all the time.

Gumby wrote:

Given the source code (I thought someone had already decompiled the engine...but there is something about keeping it private) we would have to decide weather it would be more work to update the engine to "modern" standards, or make a new one.

New one, unless you want to dance around 7 year old C++ code most likely bound to MSVC++ 4 or 5 and Metrowerks Codewarrior. Having the source to the old one means you wouldn't have to do as much work though, because anything the engine already does well (or is only slightly off) you can drop in to the new one with any fixes needed. There's also a host of open source tools that would make engine development go by quicker. Lightfeather (3D, GUI), ClanLib (Sound, Networking, Resource Management), Io or GameMonkey (Scripting) and it's just glue code from there on out. Also gives the chance to support mods, since it would be able to take on custom levels and script overrides like Morrowind can by design. Also note modern standards doesn't necessarily have to be SM3, Telltale is making money with Sam & Max with stylized graphics and very little modern technology behind it.

Gumby wrote:

Given the rights to it we would have to decide on if we were going to do this for free or actually sell the sequel. Undoubtedly, the prospect of making money would be an incentive to work more on it, but it is still a tough decision to make.

Selling it would be the best way, and there are ways to do it so you get development funds while developing the game. I'll open a new thread for ideas on that when I'm done editing this post

Iritscen · 07/22/08 12:07

I think you guys are overlooking Pierre's work on Konoko Payne. It's a state-of-the-art engine being tested mainly with a recreation of Oni, after all. Now, I certainly don't speak for him; it's his baby and his alone. But I imagine he would be open to his engine being used for our efforts. So don't worry about disassembling or getting the original source code. The IP rights are all Take Two has that's of value to us.

Re Freecraft, I am not familiar with that whole deal, but that project must have been a threat to a currently-popular game. An Oni sequel isn't impinging on anything current or income-producing. And yes, subpoenas can be served to people that are tracked down in cyberspace, but it's unlikely anyone would be sued. They'd be sent a cease-and-desist letter first. That's if the community announced ahead of time that the sequel was being worked on. If it was just released one day after being worked on in secret, then it might become a bigger legal issue. But giving someone like TakeTwo time to respond to an announcement would actually help cover us in the long run, and save us the trouble of working on something that would eventually get nixed anyway.

None of this is to say that I don't think Skrylar should be pursuing a legitimate, legal angle. I'm all for it, but I'm also trying to put the matter in perspective and to illustrate the other path, the "not quite as legal but not unethical either" path.

EdT · 07/22/08 15:07

Well look at Marathon Aleph: http://source.bungie.org/community/ and Project Magma: http://projectmagma.net/ (Site is having problems at the moment). Both were able to get the source code for the games and now have a great community.

Even without the source code, there has been some great improvements to Oni. The Anniversary Edtion Preview has attracted a number of gamers back to Oni. The problem I see is that we still don't have the tools/programs that will make modding Oni more accessible to the general gamer, though level plugins is a great start.

IMO, we can have a 2 prong approach to Oni: 1) Continue the work on the current Oni, build a larger community of active users, 2) Pursue the course of getting some answers regarding the IP rights for the game.

Iritscen · 07/22/08 15:07

EdT wrote:

we still don't have the tools/programs that will make modding Oni more accessible to the general gamer, though level plugins is a great start.

What we need is a modernized, updated port of OniTools, for both platforms. Or a GUI for OniSplit (which is coming, right?). Once we can do a GUI-based swap of resources (clicking on a resource, saying "replace this TXMP with that one"), etc. we will be about as user-friendly as possible.

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