Civilization V: Aplha Centauri?

[Psyringe]

so if im correct that means they dont own anything about SMAC anymore?

No - EA still owns the intellectual property. They also still own the trademark "Alpha Centauri". They just canceled the registration of that trademark, which makes it harder (though not impossible) to stop people from using the trademark themselves. Nevertheless, they could still sue anyone who infringes on their intellectual property, and will certainly do so if someone does that on a commercial basis.

I recommend browsing the wikipedia pages on trademarks, copyright, and their differences, perhaps add in "intellectual property" as well. Unfortunately the situation is pretty complex and it's easy to misunderstand things one hasn't understood the terminology. (It gets even more complex when patents are added to the mix, but they shouldn't be relevant for this discussion.)

So, in short, EA hasn't released SMAC into freedom - but it loosened its grip on the franchise a little bit. The amount of loosening is too insignifant to have any practical impact, but it's nevertheless interesting that they canceled the registration of one of their trademarks. This either means that they couldn't swear that the trademark is still in commercial use (they would have been required to do that during the past 6 months since the registration had met its expiration date), or that they deemed the trademark too insignificant for paying the fees to extend the registration. (Note: As far as i can tell - I'm no expert - the term "canceled" is a bit misleading here, I don't see an EA document that actually cancels the registration. It simply met its 10-year expiration date and EA didn't apply for an extension - they had 6 months time for such an application, and the time was up by the end of September.)

 

[Mark Havel]

so if im correct that means they dont own anything about SMAC anymore?
Awesome, let's get that Civ V - SMAC expansion rolling!

That doesn't necessarily mean they don't own the game anymore. I might be mistaken, I'm not that literate in law and especially not in American intellectual property law...
However, seeing some kind of port of the SMAC mod from Civ IV to Civ V would be awesome by itself.

 

[Iberian]

There were a lot of cool features in SMAC but most of them all led to the same path.

You always got PSI units because they owned everything. This could be fixed easily though.
You always terraformed your land the same way each game. Very tedious.

What was cool?
-Everything could be colonized. The oceans too.
-Very specialized factions. Each had a unique play style. Minus the UN loser. He wasn't fun for me.
-Planet Busters. The name says it all. It really destroyed a continent.


Personally though I didn't like the Space theme. But would love to have the workshop and the specialized seperation of leaders in CiV. And more interesting terraforming options. Tiles should be more important to deciding your strategy as well as the improvements. As it is there really aren't any options. Trading posts FTW. Plains if you got them.

 

[eidahl]

Some of the AC's features would really flesh out the future-aspect of Civ 5 like terrain customization. It's incredible how much 'STUFF' Alpha Centauri still has compared to any of the later Civ games, TEN+ YEARS later. o_O

I am not sure an AC remake would be so great since it would likely be brutally disappointing. Perhaps it should just remain in our fantasies where it belongs.

 

[Boojumhunter]

Yeah, no. Unfortunately intellectual property law is not so easily defeated. Stuff like mindworms, prokhor zakharov, unity rovers, fungus, the red terrain, the ascent to transcendence, the cyborg factory and the planetary council couldn't be left out without it not feeling like SMAC. And rights to all that stuff belong to the publisher.

Hmmm perhaps. A lot of those items have existed for a long time in the SF genre.

Red terrain? H G Wells - War of The Worlds

 

[duxup]

No - EA still owns the intellectual property. They also still own the trademark "Alpha Centauri". They just canceled the registration of that trademark, which makes it harder (though not impossible) to stop people from using the trademark themselves. Nevertheless, they could still sue anyone who infringes on their intellectual property, and will certainly do so if someone does that on a commercial basis.

I recommend browsing the wikipedia pages on trademarks, copyright, and their differences, perhaps add in "intellectual property" as well. Unfortunately the situation is pretty complex and it's easy to misunderstand things one hasn't understood the terminology. (It gets even more complex when patents are added to the mix, but they shouldn't be relevant for this discussion.)

So, in short, EA hasn't released SMAC into freedom - but it loosened its grip on the franchise a little bit. The amount of loosening is too insignifant to have any practical impact, but it's nevertheless interesting that they canceled the registration of one of their trademarks. This either means that they couldn't swear that the trademark is still in commercial use (they would have been required to do that during the past 6 months since the registration had met its expiration date), or that they deemed the trademark too insignificant for paying the fees to extend the registration. (Note: As far as i can tell - I'm no expert - the term "canceled" is a bit misleading here, I don't see an EA document that actually cancels the registration. It simply met its 10-year expiration date and EA didn't apply for an extension - they had 6 months time for such an application, and the time was up by the end of September.)

Yup, they still own the SMAC IP as much as they did before. The trademark registration is just about the name "Alpha Centauri".

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

SMAC was my favorite in the series too. What I liked about it was the immense freedom to pursue so many powerful strategies and tactics. Unfortunately that was way too much for the AI, but it was a hell of a lot of fun nonetheless against humans or in the sandbox. It had a great social / political / economic system. The unit workshop alone (as in MOO2) was worth the price of the game. Also the atmosphere and story were way better than any game in the Civ universe.

I don't pine for a remake unless it is mainly an upgrade of the graphics, balance and AI. The rest I'd prefer to leave the same.

 

[sesaMe]

In fact I just bought it a few weeks before CiV launched. Sadly it has UI deficiencies (and not as nice graphics) that make it less fun to play (I'm used to Civ4 after all, that's a huge difference in age). I'd certainly pay for SMAC2 right away.

hah! i did the exact same thing. althou i only played a few games i enjoyed it even with the slightly tedious UI

 

[Archwizard]

I loved SMAC as well. I wish I could still play my old copy. Sadly, I can't play anything older than Civ3 anymore (without installing stuff to do it on my computer designed to run old stuff). Doesn't help that my SMAC was the Mac version, and I haven't owned a Mac in over a decade.

 

[Viperace]

Might as well hope for a cool modder to do a Civ5:SMAC mod.

Is there one in Civ4 ?

 

[Psyringe]

Is there one in Civ4 ?

Yes, Planetfall, though it is a somewhat controversial. Personally I didn't like it that much, I couldn't see the logic in the reasoning behind many design decisions (like "the game will have no roads because roads aren't realistic for colonies on such a foreign planet anyway"), but I think it's just that the author's "vision" of what SMAC should be is very different from mine. I had the same feeling with the SMAC mod he wrote (a mod for SMAC that tries to improve the gameplay), and I actually prefer to play the original over playing either the SMAC mod or Planetfall. It's undeniable that a lot of work went into both projects though, so they're probably worth a shot, and trying it out doesn't hurt.

 

[apotheoser]

ITT: armchair lawyers posting nonsense

 

[Viperace]

Thanks for the info, Psyringe !

 

[Psyringe]

ITT: armchair lawyers posting nonsense

Would you care to elaborate whom you're referring to, what constitutes the "nonsense", and what would be correct?

 

[apotheoser]

Would you care to elaborate whom you're referring to, what constitutes the "nonsense", and what would be correct?

You already handled the last part adequately. I am an attorney and it just annoys me to no end when I see things like this:

While EA might have the rights to SMAC, it still bears Sid's name.
Second of all the term "Alpha Centauri" is not under EA's license.
That's like trademarking the name "Planet Earth", yeah you cant do that...

Same goes for most of the factions in that game, or the techs.

They could easily use the CiV engine and make a complete carbon copy of SMAC, as long as they would name the game itself diffrently.

Hell slapp a "The Space Race Ending" on the expansion as the name and i'll be happy to spend 50$ to get a new SMAC. (yes i still play it lol)

Although I should mention that you can't copyright or trademark the rules of a game. So you could make a near-clone of SMAC with all the same rules, as long as it had new art, new names, new characters, et cetera.

So instead of a "Secret Project" called "Cyborg Factory", you could have "Global Achievement" called "Robo-human Assembly Center" and it could do have the same effects in the game, and you'd be fine.

However, I agree you would have some difficulty adapting the flavor of SMAC, as you'd start entering the "story" or "narrative" that's involved, which goes beyond the "rules of the game". The mindworms and the ultimate story of Planet would be difficult to translate into a new, original story that didn't infringe on the original, even if the game rules itself were identical.

 

[Psyringe]

You already handled the last part adequately. I am an attorney and it just annoys me to no end when I see things like this:

Thanks for the clarification. I'm not a lawyer myself and I was wondering whether you were referring for me, in which case I would have welcomed someone to point out any mistakes I made.

However, being a layman also makes it easy for me to understand other people's misconceptions. The laws regarding copyright, IP, trademarks etc. are pretty complicated imho. The fact that there are different local regulations for the same globally traded commodity doesn't help either, nor does the fact that most people regularly overstep these regulations from school age onwards. If I hadn't needed to collect some information about these issues due to being involved on projects based on other people's IP for years, I'd probably still maintain many of these misconceptions myself.