An original game created before its time, Platypus was the work of one Anthony Flack of Squashy Software who wanted to produce a shooter with a stylized Claymation "look and feel". After years of hard work and struggle on the title, he will never be entitled to any of the profits earned by the smash game that was originally released in 2002. A victim of intellectual property theft that should serve as a warning to us all, and horror story come to life.

It started as all games do, with an idea.

According to his own words, during the time of its inception, Anthony was struggling to find work as an animator. In an act of careful planning (or desperate measure), he decided to create a game that would hopefully help him reach more economic stability and showcase his talents. Because he had the necessary clay animating equipment in his home office, he envisioned a game that combined his love of animation with a shooter video game.

After a few screenshots of his work began to surface, he was contacted by Idigicon with a publishing contract that would see Anthony net USD $2000.00.  Not a large sum of money for the ridiculous amount of work it takes for game creation (especially using clay models), but at the time he was definitely "in need". He signed the contract which would commit him to 18 months of grueling work to finish the game, that Idigicon would then put in boxes in stores.

Was the fire an omen?

Roughly at the midpoint of this 18 month grind, the Squashy Software's office was destroyed in a fire that saw the entire apartment building complex in which it was situated, burn to the ground. Luckily nobody was hurt, but Anthony and the rest of the residents lost everything. At the time there was no such thing as a "cloud backup". Anthony would have lost everything from the Platypus project if it weren't for the mere chance that a few days prior he had brought a CD containing things over to a friend's house. Since he didn't seem to have adequate insurance, Anthony not only had to rebuild a home, but an office and equipment to finish the game. What started as a dream for making a bit of money to help out in a slow time, quickly turned into a desperate bid for survival. Making it through the last Idigicon checkpoint, Anthony provided the final game after an 18 month marathon. One can only imagine his disappointment when the game was finally released, only to see it quickly disappear off the sales charts and into the discount bin. Being forced to label this period of life as a "learning experience", he picked himself up and moved on to his next project as he foresaw the demise of Platypus.

But he would find out that it was not The End; only The Beginning.

Enter Retro64

While knowing about the development history of Platypus, it wasn't until a few years later that Mike Boeh of Retro64 wanted to build his online games business by releasing an online version of Platypus on his portal. After contacting Idigicon to acquire the rights, Mike set to work to make some improvements to the game to hopefully increase its attractiveness with players. The gambit worked, and upon its release Platypus rocketed to the top of the portal's sales charts dominating them for a relatively long period of time. With this newfound success, Anthony contacted Idigicon to make some inquiries about royalty revenue. He was shocked to discover that there wouldn't be any coming his way;this publishing deal was between Idigicon and Retro64. Anthony was further crushed to find out that in his original agreement with Idigicon, he inadvertently lost the rights to his own work. I'll rephrase it, because it's extremely important. In order to publish the game, Anthony had given up his intellectual property of Platypus.

It's all legit when it's on a piece of paper...

In the world of business, some of the more reprehensible acts have always been justified by the identification of line items and/or terms in a contract. While the spirit of a contract is to protect the signers, all too often the case it often is used as a sword by one side or a shield by the other.

In this story, there are no real "good" or "bad" characters. Anthony was responsible for signing away his own intellectual property that he had in Platypus, as he probably made some assumptions combined with under-estimating its importance. All Idigicon can be "at fault" for in this case is effectively managing this acquired I.P. On paper, it is the sole owner of Platypus, having already paid Anthony what was agreed upon in the original contact: USD $2,000.00.

Platypus still lives on today, being recently released for the mobile phone market and Playstation Portable enjoying probably 6 figure revenues; now nearly 8 years since its' original release.

What the heck does this have to do with anything Erik?

I have faith that you, dear Reader, will connect the dots in this single publicized case in the annals of Indie Game Development to today's marketplace. Whether you are writing a small blog, publishing your own online story, chatting with friends via Facebook, Twitter and other social media, you are in fact creating your own IP. In some circles of the internet, it is even regarded as the new currency. While the traditional businesses and corporations are still slowly trying to understand what this means to their own branding, you cannot afford that luxury. Be vigilant and a guard dog to your own IP.

This does NOT mean you close yourself off from the internet and/or social media, but it DOES mean to never underestimate what your own IP is worth.

For Further Reading

http://www.squashysoftware.com/makingplatypus.php

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=9220

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/84285,intellectual-property-is-the-currency-of-tomorrow.aspx