Case Studies/Runes of Gallidon
"Choosing Creative Commons for our license did more than make it easy for the creative community to remix/reuse each other's ideas when generating new works for Runes of Gallidon. It demonstrated how much we want to encourage and endorse what fans already do: re-interpret content on their own terms, in their own way." — Scott Walker
Overview
Runes of Gallidon is a living fantasy world designed for creative collaboration originating in an online community. Brain Candy, LLC's renewable entertainment franchise model was used as the design for Runes of Gallidon. The renewable model explores new ways to increase fan interaction with franchise content by encouraging remixing of content as well as giving fans a method for contributing new content to the official world narrative.
There are several buzzwords currently being tossed around about entertainment these days: transmedia, digital media, audience experience, world building/making, etc. At the end of the day, all of these terms point to the fact that consumers no longer just consume. The consumer/audience/fan wants more from content, and they want to do more with it. Ideally, content creators need to give their audience multiple ways to enter, explore, experience, and affect the world being presented.
Putting fans first was a core tenant when we built Runes of Gallidon. We believe that fans aren't given enough credit for their creativity or ability to positively contribute to a franchise in a collaborative way.
Brain Candy developed the world and history for Gallidon and built an online platform for the world, but anyone has the opportunity to explore the world and help tell the next chapter in the world narrative.
Stories, art, comics, games, music, audiobooks - any medium that can be digitized is available for use, provided that the work is clearly set in the Runes of Gallidon world.
Anyone who has a work published on Runes of Gallidon earns the title, "Artisan."
Runes of Gallidon officially launched in July of 2009.
License Usage
Runes of Gallidon is based on a CC+ licensing structure.
Brain Candy, LLC publishes all content on the website under a BY-NC-SA Unported 3.0 license. However, before a work can be published on the site, the creator of the work and Brain Candy, LLC enter into a second licensing agreement (the Artisan Agreement) that grants each party a non-exclusive right to commercially use the work.
The BY-NC-SA Unported 3.0 license gives the creative community extreme latitude in working with the content on Runes of Gallidon, but the submission review and use of the Artisan Agreement helps to maintain a level of quality, brand recognition, and revenue rights for Artisans.
Motivations
We wanted to build a fantasy world that was designed, from the ground up, to be a place for the creative community to play together, feel free to share ideas, and recombine each other's ideas in new ways. It was critical that all parts of the fantasy world be open and available for use, and we needed a clear and simple licensing mechanism to foster that sharing.
We first learned of Creative Commons around mid 2007, but it wasn't until the end of the year (when we learned about the CC+ licensing structure) that we realized how perfect a fit Creative Commons was for our project.
Our goal was to make the world content as open as possible without stripping Artisans of ownership or commercial rights over their works. We chose the BY-NC-SA license to help support a profitable model of revenue sharing for both the Artisans and Brain Candy, LLC without requiring the Artisan to give up ownership over their work.
Media
Building a Renewable Entertainment Franchise (.pdf presentation)
