Established in order to lower the barriers for 3D video game enthusiasts who want to make and sell commercial video games, the organization allows them to use content contributed to and licensed from the Game Beavers non-profit association. The association requires a signed legal agreement and three approved contributions to the collection of game assets to qualify for membership. A person or organization joining Game Beavers becomes a licensed member and co-owner / manager of the nonprofit corporation. This gives the individual the rights to use all of the assets (artwork, code music etc...) in their own game. Anyone with qualified assets can sign up and begin to work together to develop content for their games.
"As independent developers we often lack the resources to do all the tasks we need to develop an entire game,” comments Britton LaRoche, one of the founding members of Game Beavers. “Our budgets are small so in most cases we need to collaborate to build games together. Many of us are just discovering the legal issues involved in getting our games published. Game Beavers has been put together by a team of talented individuals including a experienced game industry lawyer with the mission of solving some of these problems for the independent developer."
“GarageGames is proud to partner with this initiative to provide a legally clean way to share game assets between developers and those that join the association.” says Jay Moore, GarageGames Evangelist. “Game Beavers provides a clear solution to a number of shared problems that exist for independent game developers wanting to share resources and collaborate in the pursuit of building commercially licensable intellectual properties.”
The whole goal is to help independent developers produce some creative and fantastic games. Garage Games provides indies with the game engine and community, now Game Beavers would like to assist in providing a collaborative legal exchange of content.
About GameBeavers
In October 2003 a group of independent game developers working on Garage Games' Torque Game Engine formed a nonprofit corporation to help start the independent gaming revolution. The non profit corporation named "Game Beavers" (http://www.gamebeavers.org) has one clear goal ; to provide the masses with the content and the legal frame work to produce independent games. This association is owned and operated solely by its members.