awakened.org

Check it out. Contribute. SR 4e being made into an MMO property for free play by community people.

I'm not sure what meditation and wellness CDs and African drums have to do with a Shadowrun MMO, but I guess it's still in development. =i)

Did you mean awakenedmmo.org?

I think he may have meant:

http://awakenedmmo.org/

Does this one also have no license to use Shadowrun properties?


And that is about the ugliest depiction of a Steel Lynx I have ever seen. It looks like a metal sausage.



-karma

i'm still hoping for SHADOWRUN ONLINE by 6th World Games Studio . .

On further research, the only folks that have the rights to any actual Shadowrun game are Smith & Tinker.

It appears that 6th World got a Cease and Desist letter forcing them to scrap their Shadowrun project.

Lesson here, folks: If you're going to create a product based off someone else's property, make sure you have permission first.

No IP owner in their right mind will grant permission AFTER you've already violated their license rights.

Secure the legal permission FIRST, or you may be wasting a whole lot of time and work when you get shut down later by the lawyers.



-karma

It's always shocking to me how many people don't realize that very basic fact.

But then again, I work for Microsoft, so I guess I'm exposed to the "IP Violations result in death" attitude daily...

yes, i KNOW that they got a C&D . . i've been on the SRO Boards before i got to dumpshock actually . .
but once S&T made their appearance, there were rumors all around about some kind of deal . .

as for working for micro$hit? *boo!hisss!*

Whatever dude. That attitude is like spitting on a solider for doing his job. We all need to make money to live and we all want to work for employers that use our skills effectively.

The only fan-creations I've seen where the IP holders have turned a blind eye are the various Star Wars and Star Trek fan-films. Frankly, if I was going to put that much time, energy and money into a project I'd create my own game or film and at least make some money off the Intellectual Property rights. Nerds are weird.

Ain't that the truth. I got a full face of that yesterday, when I discovered via RPG.net the game "Bounty Head Bebop", which is a science-fiction + western game where players are expected to make characters who are bounty hunters, travelling the Solar System via gates & spacecraft, and having film noirish adventures. Oh, and very few people live on earth due to an explosion which wrecked the moon.

I just stared at the sample PDF from the game, and I'm currently wondering how long it will take for Bandai to hammer the crap out of them. It's seriously the most blatant rip I've ever seen.

Deals? No deals, not really. My understanding was that we had implied permission to develop a proof of concept. That is, we asked for permission and were told to come back with something to show them. The whole project was devoted to that goal, a working proof of concept to show to Microsoft. Then Bungee learnt that someone was making a Shadowrun game that might be in competition with theirs. They went to their higher-ups, who went to legal and they went to 6WG with a C&D.

In all honesty, I think department X said to make a PoC for the sake of sending GreyPawn away, then department Y (since Microsoft is a very big company) had no idea what department X had said and got the thing shut down. In any case, it doesn't look like MS wanted a Shadowrun MMO at the time or since...


Er... working with the SR licence would have meant working for Microsoft or even becoming part of them.

As to Adarael's comments:
It is normal in the industry to make a pitch for an IP that you do not own to the company who does. I just finished working on one for another MS IP last week. The normal method is a few screen-shots and a nice pitch document, but 6WG were making it instead. Normal companies do not do that because they haven't the money or time to make a fully-fledged PoC for each pitch.

The mistake that was made in 6WG's case was the advertising. They needed publicity for the recruiting and that caught the attention of Bungee and that was when it went wrong.