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Proposed Letter to Professor Diamond
Here's a draft. Comments welcome.
(date)
Professor Jared Diamond
c/o W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10110
Dear Professor Diamond,
I am writing on behalf of a group of people who are designing a computer game based on your book 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. Desiring a computer game both interesting and challenging, yet different from both arcade action-games and turn-based warfare games, we have decided to focus on the basic principles of ultimate causes for civilization-development expressed in your book. We wish to advise you of our intent and also to request your qualified permission to proceed with "Guns, Germs, and Steel" as our working title.
I am not a lawyer, nor am I in any business arrangement concerning the game. I am merely an interested computer gamesplayer participating in discussions with other interested parties concerning the kind of game I would personally enjoy playing. This idea is based on a reasonably complex game called "Civilization2" wherein players start with a single settler in 4000 BC on an unknown map. Players assign resources, (food, gold, and technology research) to slowly build functioning civilizations (culminating in space flight to Alpha Centuri if all goes well).
However, some of us have found that Civilization2 is too much a war game and affords less strategic freedom for more constructive and realistic efforts. Hence, our interest in your book. My own interest came from reading your book (several times so far) and only finding the game programmer group later. So, my desire in all of this is to help create a game that I myself would enjoy playing. I don't mind adding that, if it teaches people a bit more about how civilizations rise and fall, I will consider that a positive (if sly) bit of player-education.
The group specifically requests that I mention that their programming is to be "open-source", meaning that everybody interested can contribute to it, and the game will remain completely free for everybody. Considering that this appears to be one of those internet "labors of love", I have agreed to write to you on their behalf.
Will you give us your qualified permission to use "Guns, Germs, and Steel" as the working title for the game? Would you be interested in knowing more about our progress? May we (very) occasionally ask you some questions concerning the ideas in your book?
GGS game website: http://civ3.sourceforge.net/contact.html
(name and address)
(date)
Professor Jared Diamond
c/o W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10110
Dear Professor Diamond,
I am writing on behalf of a group of people who are designing a computer game based on your book 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. Desiring a computer game both interesting and challenging, yet different from both arcade action-games and turn-based warfare games, we have decided to focus on the basic principles of ultimate causes for civilization-development expressed in your book. We wish to advise you of our intent and also to request your qualified permission to proceed with "Guns, Germs, and Steel" as our working title.
I am not a lawyer, nor am I in any business arrangement concerning the game. I am merely an interested computer gamesplayer participating in discussions with other interested parties concerning the kind of game I would personally enjoy playing. This idea is based on a reasonably complex game called "Civilization2" wherein players start with a single settler in 4000 BC on an unknown map. Players assign resources, (food, gold, and technology research) to slowly build functioning civilizations (culminating in space flight to Alpha Centuri if all goes well).
However, some of us have found that Civilization2 is too much a war game and affords less strategic freedom for more constructive and realistic efforts. Hence, our interest in your book. My own interest came from reading your book (several times so far) and only finding the game programmer group later. So, my desire in all of this is to help create a game that I myself would enjoy playing. I don't mind adding that, if it teaches people a bit more about how civilizations rise and fall, I will consider that a positive (if sly) bit of player-education.
The group specifically requests that I mention that their programming is to be "open-source", meaning that everybody interested can contribute to it, and the game will remain completely free for everybody. Considering that this appears to be one of those internet "labors of love", I have agreed to write to you on their behalf.
Will you give us your qualified permission to use "Guns, Germs, and Steel" as the working title for the game? Would you be interested in knowing more about our progress? May we (very) occasionally ask you some questions concerning the ideas in your book?
GGS game website: http://civ3.sourceforge.net/contact.html
(name and address)
). If he *really* wanted to be mean, he could use your letter as grounds that any work you produce, even with a different name, is derivative of his work, and you could find yourself in a legal battle anyway (though he'd be on pretty shaky ground at that point, AIUI).
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