Links: Mensa Mind Games 2013, Game Designer Rights in Germany & The Physical Glory of Board Games

A diverse range of America's games and puzzles will be on display in the new 4,200-squarefoot wing built with taxpayer funds. "[G]uests will become pieces of a giant game board as they move through the exhibit to learn about the history of board games, card games, puzzles, and more public amusements such as electromechanical coin-operated games, pinball machines, and products for home or public game rooms such as foosball and hockey," according to the museum...

"eGameRevolution" is the museum's display of the nation's video games, from Atari's Pong to the Guitar Hero on an Xbox 360. A number of artifacts decorate the exhibit, including "rare and unique artifacts like Computer Space and a Nintendo NES gray cartridge." "Visitors will be able to view notes and drawings from legendary game inventors."

Museum officials do not want to just play with taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. They hope the exhibit will "tell the story of the evolution of play and how it has affected both children and adults."

Take my Netrunner decks. They represent my first experience getting into a collectible card game, and it didn't take long for these things to begin a kind of emotional osmosis. Technically, Netrunner is a "Living Card Game", meaning Fantasy Flight's new model of not releasing random booster packs but set, monthly expansions.

That's a fitting moniker, because my decks are alive. They're not just picking up scuffs and whatever microscopic flecks of me whenever I touch them. They're absorbing every one of my failures and victories, and all of the time I spend with them.

My game nights are powerful things now, and they're getting stronger. And stranger. Last weekend I got six people together to play the epic WW2 swear-a-thon that is Memoir '44: Overlord, but my friend also brought two backpacks of his girlfriend's military equipment. We played wearing wobbly helmets and camo trousers of impossible size. Why? Because it was funny, mostly, but also because when you augment a game's components to such a ridiculous extent, you can't help but share something, and remember that game for the rest of your lives. And as a gamer, I'm not sure there's anything quite that priceless.

The initial point was discussion papers on the subject of Minimum Standards in Contracts and a Code on matters of intellectual property rights regarding games, which the SAZ had presented to the Fachgruppe Spiel, the federation of the game companies in the Association of the German Toy Industry. The SAZ represents more than 400 game designers from Germany and other countries and is their representative organization.

The Fachgruppe Spiel principally puts the game designers' status as originators into question and thus rules out any further objective, factual discussion with the SAZ, within the meaning of § 36 UrhG (German Copyright Act). This is all the more bewildering since the member companies of the Fachgruppe Spiel continuously enter into contracts with game designers regarding the rights of use of their works, thus de facto acknowledging their authorship; and the companies also demand relevant declarations of authorship from the game designers. That shows that the reality looks different.

The legal opinion Games and the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights reduces the argumentation of the Fachgruppe Spiel to absurdity. In the open letter, the board of the SAZ calls on the Fachgruppe and its members to reconsider their position and to return to the negotiating table. It is clear that without the game designers and their works, the companies would have little basis with which to conduct business.