Kongregate Collabs: CC-Licensed Online Gaming Development

Cameron Parkins, June 3rd, 2009

Kongregate Collabs is a new service that allows game developers to connect with artists and musicians to create online games. A project of Kongregate, one of the leading indie game sites on the web, Kongregate Collabs is attempting to tap into the creative energy of Kongregate’s community of game enthusiasts.

Users are encouraged to upload both art and sounds, which can then be commented on and discussed by the community. Creators can ability to license these assets under the CC license of their choosing, making them available for the public to use in their own creations.

Kongregate Collabs just launched, so now is an opportune time to jump in, upload works, and see where the collaborative platform takes you.

UPDATE: Apologies to Kongregate and our community for the broken links – they now feed directly to the Kongregate Collabs live site.

Scratch.mit.edu now at 400,000+ projects

Jane Park, May 7th, 2009

A couple years ago, the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab developed a Web 2.0 programming platform for kids called Scratch. Scratch allows kids, and virtually anyone else, to create and remix rich media of all kinds—video, video games, even simple photo animations. The programming behind Scratch focuses on building blocks, like Legos, to get kids not only friendly, but adept at the technology that dominates our world. Each user can create a project, whether it be a video or a video game, and upload it to share on the Scratch website. Scratch currently exceeds more than 400,000 projects, all licensed CC BY-SA, allowing any youth to flex her creative muscles and enhance a peer’s project by remixing it with her own.

The School Library Journal wrote up an excellent article about them last week, emphasizing that “Literacy in the 21st century encompasses the full range of skills needed to engage in our global society—computer, information technology, media, and information literacy skills.” The SLJ reports that Scratch is now being tested in libraries in the Minneapolis area, “to determine if the workshops and classes for young people are replicable and sustainable for a range of libraries.” Unsurprisingly, library staff are finding that kids quickly learn the program on their own, and are guided more by their own intuitions than an “expert’s” instruction.

I decided to try out Scratch myself, and found some cool projects along the way. One project by “cougars” is a photo animation of a human skateboard. Another is a video game simulation of the Buggers war from Ender’s Game by PetertheGeek. (How cool is that?)

What’s more, the Scratch program is global, available in more than 40 languages, and the code itself is free for anyone to copy, publish, or distribute.

Runes of Gallidon, CC-Licensed Online Fantasy World, Launches Public Beta

Cameron Parkins, January 26th, 2009

The Hunt, Andy Underwood/Runes of Gallidon | CC BY-NC-SA

Runes of Gallidon is a “user-generated online fantasy world of swords, magic, adventure and mystery” that just launched in public beta. Distinguishing Runes of Gallidon from other virtual worlds is the decision to license all the content in the ROG universe under a CC BY-NC-SA license. Any work that the community creates is kept free and open for the rest of the community to use and build upon, a choice that allows the plot lines and characters of Runes of Gallidon to evolve naturally and legally.

While the ROG universe evolves through user-submitted content, Brain Candy, LLC (the group behind Runes of Gallidon) will be doing legwork to turn Rules of Gallidon into a source of potential revenue, namely in film/TV and merchandise will be marketing the website to help audiences find the creative community’s Gallidon works (content creators have the ability to shop their ideas to interested parties as well). The monetary gains from these endeavors will be split between community and Brain Candy in two distinct ways:

If Brain Candy, LLC, prints your story in a book, prints a poster, a T-shirt, etc. and makes any money directly from your Work, you receive 50% of the money. If you sell your Work set in Runes of Gallidon (a published book, album cover art, posters, etc.), we ask that you contribute to Brain Candy, LLC 10% of the money you receive.

That is the basic formula: each Artisan owns the Work they create, but the world of Runes of Gallidon and everything in it is shared by the entire Gallidon creative community.

This is a unique implementation to our CC+ protocol and a fresh approach to crafting an online fantasy world. By using CC licenses, the group behind Runes of Gallidon have created a hybrid-economy where the sharing of content (enabled by CC licenses) is monetized based on an additional set of legal guidelines, in turn encouraging growth through legal protection and an opportunity for monetary gain.

Games for the Brain

Cameron Parkins, November 14th, 2008

Games for the Brain is a fun site that features a number of memory, quiz, and brain games all released under a CC BY-NC-SA license. A number of the games are embeddable, making them easily available for sharing while others reuse previously CC-licensed material. Whether it is an online destination to pass time, procrastinate, or hone your mental skills, Games for the Brain is a nice and simple addition to the growing landscape of CC-licensed content.

The Free Culture Game

Cameron Parkins, September 26th, 2008

The Free Culture Game, created by Molleindustria, is a flashed based abstract art piece that attempts to articulate the interplay between the commons and culture at large. Released under a CC BY-NC-SA license, we heard about it first on our community lists, but it has since been getting some nice traction elsewhere on the blogosphere. From Rhizome:

Italian artists Molleindustria promise “radical games against the dictatorship of entertainment,” and their latest effort may be their most direct statement against the pleasure industry to date. Touted as “playable theory,” the Free Culture Game offers a ludic metaphor for the battle between copyright encroachments and the free exchange of knowledge, ideas and art.

A circular field represents The Common, where knowledge can be freely shared and created; your job is to maintain a healthy ecology of yellow idea-bubbles bouncing from person to person before they can be sucked into the dark outer ring representing the forces of The Market. Your cursor, shaped like the Creative Commons logo, pushes the ideas around with a sort of reverse-magnetic repulsion field (a clever alternative to the typical shooting, eating or jumping-on-top-of-and-smooshing actions of many other 2-D games). People who absorb free, round ideas stay green and happy, while those who only consume square market-produced ones become grey and inverted.

The game never really ends: you can only do better or worse, suggesting by analogy that the fight for free culture will be an ongoing struggle without end.

Castle Crashers Soundtrack Released Under CC License

Cameron Parkins, September 22nd, 2008

Castle Crashers, an action/RPG video game, was released a few weeks ago on the XBox Live Arcade service and has been receiving rave reviews for its gameplay, graphics, and sound design. Of note to the CC-community is that the soundtrack has been released online for free under a CC BY-NC-SA license, meaning that fans of the game can now freely enjoy the excellent soundtrack outside of their consoles.