Introducing: The Game Jam License

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Game Jam License (GJL), a new licensing framework designed specifically for game jam artifacts to promote sharing and knowledge transfer while preserving creators' rights.

Contribution

The paper presents the GJL, a novel license tailored for game jam creations, addressing limitations of existing licenses like Creative Commons and GPL.

Findings

GJL facilitates sharing during game jams.

GJL allows creators to retain all rights.

GJL overcomes limitations of CC and GPL licenses.

Abstract

Since their inception at the Indie Game Jam in 2002, a significant part of game jams has been knowledge sharing and showcasing ideas and work to peers. While various licensing mechanisms have been used for game jams throughout the years, there has never been a licence uniquely designed for artifacts created during a game jam. In this paper, we present to the community the Game Jam License (GJL) which is designed to facilitate that sharing and knowledge transfer, while making sure the original creators retain commercial rights. The Global Game Jam, since 2009, strives to formalise sharing in a similar manner, by having jammers upload and license their creations under Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 free license. However, the CC family of licenses is not well suited for software. CC is not compatible with most other licenses, and introduces a legal grey area with the division between commercial and non-commercial use. Moreover, open source licences like GPL are well suited for source code, but not for art and design content. Instead the GJL presented in this paper, aims to uphold the original ideas of game jams (sharing and knowledge transfer), while still allowing the original team to hold on to all rights to their creation, without any of the deficiencies of the CC family of licenses.