Is VEKN incorporated?

White wrote:

Chess and poker have member orientated dues to advance the popularity of the game. You invented rankings for the love of the game just like chess _organizations_ did. Organizations are made to advance their mandate and hire professionals to fulfill their mission. Even the Ventrue do this in works of fiction.

No one owns the intellectual property to chess or poker, though.

You have a lot of motivation, which is good, but as you've noticed, everybody on this site is shooting down your ideas. I don't claim to know all the legal or political issues surrounding the game's ownership and promotion, because frankly, that stuff is behind the scenes and the rank-and-file only know what's fed to us.

I can only assume that the people responding to your post know more about the situation than we do and have the correct conclusions.

There are things you can do to promote your vision of VTES.

1. Get the seed money that Juggernaut talked about. His comment was a bit sarcastic-sounding, but that doesn't mean he was wrong. The actual figure needed is one of those "behind-the-scenes" things I don't know about.

2. Join the VEKN Inner Circle and work to change VEKN's policy's from the inside. In truth they and an additional select handful of people (who are mostly European) are the ones making decisions about the game now. If you haven't already been playing the game for 15+ years and aren't already friends with members of the current VEKN members, that's a tough row to hoe, but maybe not impossible.

3. Associate with other players who might share your vision. Promote your ideas by developing a local playgroup and online playgroup. Once you get a critical mass of people, start your own voluntary association with promotional events and website. Unless there is some proof you are making a profit from the game's IP, I doubt that there would be any legal consequences. Who knows? Someone ought to push the envelope, and why not you?

AaronC wrote:

I can only assume that the people responding to your post know more about the situation than we do and have the correct conclusions.

Just to clarify.

For my part I can tell that I don't know
a) jack
b) $hit

But this ainät rocket science...

We just need a millionaire here and a celebrity there to assist in buying the IPs from everyone. That makes it easier, right?

Ashur wrote:

Don´t really understand you here. You think it´s EASIER to influence someone produce this game (ie, make money on it) by turning VEKN to a company? By introducing yet another party to split the profit, we make it more tempting to produce the game? I´m truly lost in this type of economics.

On a very basic level it's a fine idea. You sell tshirts or such, then use the profits from that to provide prize support for events and keep vekn.net running. Totally normal stuff.

Two main problems I see with the idea:

1) The agreement that the VEKN (and if I understand correctly, only Robert Goudie) has to use copyrighted elements owned by WW/CCP is only for promotional materials: website logos, posters, and the like. We already have confirmation that this agreement does not include making new cards for "promotional purposes". I am fairly certain that this agreement also does not include "making tshirts to sell for a profit". Well, unless we made tshirts that didn't have any copyrighted elements.

2) Supposing we did find a way to generate revenue - what would we spend it on? Walch & Nusser and Rose Tatu only have about (iirc) a two year supply of product remaining. I don't see us being so successful with selling tshirts that we could generate the funds needed to get V:TES back in print. If we were so successful, we would probably be better off staying in the tshirt business.

There is no denying it is a difficult situation. But with regard to the comment about "making a company" I'm not suggesting that, I'm suggesting a non-profit organization that serves the interests of the VTES community like how the Wikimedia Foundation was formed to support the operation of Wikipedia.

Separately I've created a non-profit business association that got the support of the upstream providers since it was clear that the activity would increase the value of the product in the long term. If the terms and agreements on the limitations of how money is made and spent these issues can be solved in a reasonable fashion and their should not be a problem for all parties.

I'm not saying I know all the answers to this but it is a question of survival of the game: either let it continue to slowly wither away or breathe more life into it. Otherwise I see no reason why VTES can't be as vibrant as Magic The Gathering.