Royalty Model
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EdUGames® Royalty Model

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Copyright © 2005 by Pete Antoniak
1 June 2005

1. Background

1.1 EdUGames® is an Educational Computer Game that can be broken down into two parts: The game driver and the educational content material. The educational content material can be further broken down into Rounds (text questions) and Resources Files (Pictures, Maps, Film Clips, Sound Bytes etc.). Under a contract agreement, third party Authors may provide content material that can be used in EdUGames® in return for recognition and/or royalties. This Royalty Model describes how royalties may be fairly assigned.

1.2 It is noted that this is not the only means of obtaining content material for EdUGames. Two other means of obtaining content material are to create it in-house and to purchase it outright from Contract Researchers. In the initial phases of start up, these latter two means are preferred because the exact format of material is still being adjusted to fit the idiosyncrasies of the distribution means and platforms.

1.3 It is highly recommended that a person first play EdUGames and then read this Royalty Model and all associated documents in order to fully understand the concepts detailed herein. This Model is meant to covers all presently anticipated distribution means and network configurations.

1.4 If you are reading this without having first played EdUGames, then read the next several paragraph, otherwise, you may skip to The Distribution Of EdUGames Content Material section.

2. A Short Explanation of EdUGames

EdUGames® is a series of independent screens in which players are interactively challenged to correctly move or click on screen objects such as buttons, text fields, or icons. Many of the screens consist of text blocks. An example would be a 3 column by 7 row matrix of text boxes in which popular sayings are broken into parts. The player reconstructs the sayings by clicking on the boxes in the proper order.  If a correct set of linked boxes are selected, points are awarded and the boxes disappear, leaving only the remaining boxes.  In competitive play this would be timed.  If a player makes a mistake or runs out of time, the next player in sequence picks up with the remaining material.  In some cases, new material is constantly being added to the matrix.

Some of he screens involve Resources consisting of Maps, Diagrams, Pictures, Film Clips, Music, Sound Bytes, etc. In these cases the players might be challenged to identify the Resource, or an attribute of the Resource.  In other cases, the resource is used as a hint, or as background information.  An example might be the showing of a Video Clip of the Dirigible Hindenburg crashing and burning, followed by presenting the users with a map of the Eastern part of the US.  The players are challenged to place their differently colored tokens as close as possible to the location of the event that was just shown in the Video Clip. After all the players place their tokens, the program evaluates the placements and the player with the token closest to the correct location wins. The winning score is a function of how much closer the winner is to the correct location than the average of the other players.

In the above example, the Video Clip and Map are resources. It should be noted that all resources are available to all questions. For example the same Video Clip might be used in a different question that asks when the event happened, how many* of the 96 passengers were killed, or what country owned the air ship. The same Map might also be used in any question involving locations on the East Cost.  Or a different Map might have been use in the above question, such as a Map of the US, the World or New Jersey. 

*Only 35.

3. Distribution of EdUGames Content Material

3.1 Content material is distributed, one Round at a time, as part of network game play. The Rounds are stored in the Master Database on the web server and are usually played as part of a Set. Payments to EdUGames would either be on a per use, per time period or monthly basics at its discretion.

3.2 EdUGames may licenses a Network Database and Resource Library to a company or organization to be used in a manor that would be outlined in the terms of the license.

3.3  The method and means of distribution and revenue collection are at the sole discretion of EdUGames.  EdUGames will attempt to be fair in how Royalties are proportioned, but can not guarantee that all parties will be happy.  Therefore All Content Authors must agree, that unless the distribution and proportioning means are blatantly unfair and one sided, they will not sue.

4. Assignment and Tracking of Ownership

4.1 A key aspect of this Royalty Model and the fact that the Rounds and Sets are maintained on the Internet, is its ability to accurately assign royalties to the Authors as a function of their actual use. This Model also allows content from many different Authors and Resource Owners to be easily assembled into Sets and other packages.

4.2 See the Dictionary of Terms for a detailed explanation of the terms and abbreviations used.

4.3 Each Round has a field that lists the Royalty Weighting Units (RWU) for the Round broken down by contributor. The formula for determining RWU is different for each type of game screen and is outlined in the document Royalties Formulas.

4.3.1 Example: A Round for GameL "Guess the Location" might show a Video Clip of a famous event, present the users with a Map and challenge them to place their tokens on the Map as close as possible to the location of the event. The RWUs might be broken down as follows: 45 RWU for the Question, 40 RWUs for the Video Clip (40 frames long) and ten RWU for the Map. The field on the Round that documents this might look as follows: ,aPRA01_ 45; pRMM01_10; vABC01_40, Which indicates that the Author of the Round (PRA01) contributed 45 RWU, Rand McNally Maps (RMM01) contributed 10 RWU and ABC News (ABC01) contributed 40 RWUs. The lowercase a, v, and p before the iCode indicate author, video and picture owner respectively.

4.4 A Set consists of one or more Rounds, Sets and Web Links usually along a common subject.

4.5 With the minimum unit of distribution being a Round and each Round having a field that lists authorship of both the Round and Resources required to support it, it is possible to accurately assign and sum the ownership of the content material used in any means of distribution.

5. Other Contracts and Documents

5.1 The EdUGames Author Contract is available at the EdUGames web site.

5.2 The following related documents are hereby included in this model.



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