Guild of Writers

Absolutely, bluewyvern. I do hope though that Cyan will point out some errors or possible elaborations on our rules in a temporary sense, and then give us official ones at some point. That way we could have a semi-official set in the meantime.

Keep in mind that Cyan isn't likely going to give us those rule tips or whatever because us forming the Guild is something Cyan didn't, at first at least, expect. They just wanted us to imagine the Guild system, but I think that we've begun to form it is an added plus (and that we have, so far, made some very open guilds).

I would imagine that Cyan will not give us rules or hints at rules or guidelines before they make the Guilds. When they make the guilds, there will be rules that will be enforced and whatever we do now will have to fit that. For right now, I think we should simply make some guidelines which, as BAD put it, are obvious. I work on the five I posted earlier in the thread. Writers who want to make "discovered" ages could follow the same rules. These are obvious things. No holes in your Age, no malicious code, no Cyan IP in released ages that Cyan hasn't approved, no violations of the ToS. These, I would imagine, would be similar if not the rules Cyan would put in place. True, I don't know for sure, but from what I have seen of Cyan, those seem most important: adhering to the ToS and not being too blatantly unrealistic.

Well yeah, that's what we're working on. A list of what is obviously not acceptible. It can't hurt to spell it out a little more clearly than generalities, though. And trying to see if we can show it to Cyan can only help, as bluewyvern pointed out.

No ones a jerk in my eyes. If someone angers me, it is only in that moment. I am famous for giving many many chances before I decide to deem anyone a jerk or otherwise. In other words, you really got to push my buttons for an extended period of time before I start ignoring ya.

Another piece of advice I can offer here, is that we should be careful in who we contact at Cyan. GD is the obvious choice, but I have some personal misgivings about using him (not that that should influence anyones decision about him!). I think it would be best if we went through Cyan's legal department with the rules and such.

Reasons Cyan might adopt a different stance than in the past:

- Survival of MOUL depends on keeping players in, which depends on three factors: interesting story line, candy (relto pages, sparklies, clothing) and interesting new Ages;
- Cyan has now realized it can't provide interesting new Ages at a sufficient rate. Even with an episodic release calendar, it has barely managed to deliver Ages that were already complete or in advanced state (PotS AGes, pods, K'veer, possibly Minkata and Jalak) or very simple models (Minkata and Jalak are all about wiring);
- therefore good user-created Ages, at the rate of four or five a season, would make an enormous difference in MOUL survival with minimal cost.

- Requiring pre-approval from Cyan (a weeks-long process) before publishing an Age to CC (*) would discourage most creators before they even started work, thus preventing them from acquiring the skills needed to deliver good material;
- It would also serve no rational business purpose since CC is out of shelves, no longer supported, and Cyan has moved its focus to MOUL.

- On the contrary, allowing anyone to publish Ages to CC (*) ensures a natural peer-review process that would do most of the QA for free;
- Which means in the end only a limited number of Ages would actually get submitted to Cyan for inclusion in MOUL;
- Testing and reviewing only these would be much less work for Cyan's limited resources.

(*) or some test Live server unreachable from the official MOUL

Seeing how this thread is almost two weeks old of no new posts, I'm not sure how much help my post will be here.

OoC I read through all eight pages, and some things came to mind between the list that may be sent to Cyan, and copyright rules.

First, the copyright laws. It doesn't bother me one way or another if someone wants to recreate an Age based on their favorite book/movie whatever, but I do understand how that would interfere with Uru. Regardless, if I am not mistaken, I remember reading the copyright laws a few years back when I was writing a (WiP) story, and it said the original owner (it differed between music and writing too) owns the write to all written work for as long as he/she lives and 25 years after their death, then it's open to the public (hence why we see so many present day shakespeare movies/books etc., from other people). Music I think is 50 or 12, I forget, I need to look it up again, but it's 4:30AM. Regardless I am 99% positive there is a copyright ownership limit.


Here we go, found it here in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright.


"Copyright subsists for a variety of lengths in different jurisdictions, with different categories of works and the length it subsists for also depends on whether a work is published or unpublished. In most of the world the default length of copyright for many works is generally the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. Copyright in general always expires at the end of the year concerned, rather than on the exact date of the death of the author. (The right to reclaim a copyright--or "terminate the transfer" of a copyright--commences and ends on the anniversaries of exact dates in the United States.)

So when can one conclude that a book is in the public domain? In the United States, all books and other works published before 1923 have expired copyrights and are in the public domain. In addition, works published before 1964 that did not have their copyrights renewed 28 years after first publication year also are in the public domain, except that books originally published outside the US by non-Americans are exempt from this requirement, if they are still under copyright in their home country."


So in other words, we can write a world of Romeo and Juliet (not like someone would) and go the whole nine and not get in trouble.




As for the list, I know Cyan hasn't released their list (if they even started one yet) of rules yet for us to abide by for writing Ages, but if I am reading the thread correctly, people want a list of rules to be made asa base structure for our writing and present it to Cyan Worlds and see what they think of the rules?

Now if that is the case, that's not a bad idea, the only thing I see that may cause problems in the future is new info after (and if) they agree to the current rules that were represented.


In other words, hypothetically, let's say we represent Cyan Worlds with a list of 10 different rules, and Cyan Worlds agrees to them. Great, now we have a list, but now down the road (at different times) new rules come into play that need to be represented to Cyan, we show them the new rules too. In the end, the list gets longer while an idea or two pops up every now and then. To me that seems like the same method as if a single person just goes to Cyan Worlds, or e-mails them etc., their idea for a yes/no response.


I am all for a list, so that way we could make a webpage based on it so other writers can see what they can/can't do to their Ages. The trouble I see is that new ideas will be popping up in the future, and not close to each other either.

So here's my thought:

We can use the list we have now because it's a great base structure, but the other thing we can do is have a designated Mod update the list every time a single person asks Cyan Worlds on an idea.

So if I asked Cyan Worlds about making a world on such and such, and they say yes/no, I can PM the designated moderator the question I asked and the written proof from Cyan Worlds, and they can update the web page so all can see.


Now I know this sounds messy, but as said, new ideas spark at different times in life, and so we can't just wait for X amount to be thought of and ship them out to Cyan Worlds, that would then be unfair to those who brainstormed first (mind you I know you are compiling a list of obvious things we are able/unable to do at the moment).


If I read BAD's posts correctly (forgive me if I didn't), he's saying that we should just send in the idea we thought of to Cyan Worlds as soon as possible, and then inform the rest of the community on the answer from Cyan Worlds.


Not here to fight either, just wanted to put in my thoughts to see what you all think.

The idea of having a general list isn't to stop people from asking Cyan directly about some rather iffy parts of their Age design.. it's just to let people know about some things that are obviously not going to be allowed, and that doing things like contacting Cyan to ask for permission to put a new D'ni word in your Age is simply a waste of time.

Not to belittle things, but I know 3 rules that are preaty much common since and I try to stick by. well thats if people use any common since these days.

1.Don't use anything that cyan has made. without premission

2.Don't use anything that anyone elses has made. Without premission.

3. Use your own imagination is key.

Fact is if anything I ever create gets into Mystonline I'll be a happy camper. Even if its just a chair.

Goofy wrote:Not to belittle things, but I know 3 rules that are preaty much common since and I try to stick by. well thats if people use any common since these days.

1.Don't use anything that cyan has made. without premission

2.Don't use anything that anyone elses has made. Without premission.

3. Use your own imagination is key.

Fact is if anything I ever create gets into Mystonline I'll be a happy camper. Even if its just a chair.

I'd like to tack on a 4th to that: Stay true to the Universe (as in the Universe Cyan created for Myst and Uru).

I gotta check if the Fire Marbles and the stones/metal of the D'ni city count at Cyan IP...

If not, Ke'mara can go ahead as planned ^_^