IDEAS FOR RYZOM

(This is the translation of an idea posted by Eloan. Original text, in French, is available there).

I think this is a great idea. I would love a Ryzom T-Shirt or Mug even, and toys of the animals of Ryzom, well not only would my daughter enjoy playing with them but so would I. :P Not only the animals but the Kami NPC too, especially that black hairy Kami welcomer in Zora - would love one stuff toy of him/her, it?. Plus gamers love collecting trinkets of their favorite games - it would be a great source of additional income for Ryzom too.

awesome idea, i want to get my next little one a full set, so i can play with my fav mob's out of game as well as ingame, not to mention the coffee mug idea, cause i'm all for drinking from a good mug, as well as promote the game everywhere i go with my coffee mug (thermos, cooler, ect.)

count me in!!

There were some merchandising items in the very beginning. As far as i remember it was T-Shirts and Mugs. It was discontinue as it didn't yield any revenue, i think it even consumed money.

But now, 8 years later, the world has changed. There are several companies now that offer free merchandising shops: You set the price, they basically get a fixed amount. The difference is yours (no, winchgate's).

You could find and compare these companies and compile a report with some favorite companies and send them to our devs.

For the soft toys... you could try to find out if there are similar companies that offer something similar for soft toys. I'm not sure about it, because we wouldn't want a bear with ryzom printed on it but custom models instead. I suggest you find out about it and roughly how much a toy would be. Then you can make a poll, who actually would spend that amount of money (i assume 50-150 € / 70-200 US$ for a toy of average quality).

+10000
BODOC SOFT TOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYy

I asked about merchandising last year but got no reply.  The situation has changed since the early days.  Ryzom is now open source so I assume the logo, images etc. are also open source (i.e. free to use).  Please correct me if I am wrong.  

I am going to get a T-Shirt made as soon as I can decide how I want it.  Maybe with the logo small on the front, above and to the right of a message such as '/AFK' in nice chunky letters, then the logo big across the back.

Soft toys would be harder to do but if they are done well they could be popular.  I can't see this option making any money because unlike T-Shirts you can't get just one made for yourself, and after all who outside the game would buy them?

Well... if ThinkGeek has germ and bacteria plushies available... why wouldn't Ryzom collectable plushie mobs sell ? After all, I recently saw some Minecraft goodies (Creeper plushie that goes kssssBOOM !) at EB Games recently... If even Minecraft can do it, why not Ryzom ?

Arfur: While the engine is open source, the art is still under license. I *would* like to see some official plushies of yubos and some of the Kami.

OK good at least that's clear.

Actually: No. Both are under a license:
https://ryzomcore.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RC/Ryzom+Core+Home

"open source" doesn't necessarily mean "I can do whatever I want" - that would be "in the public domain". Open source literally only means "everyone can look at the code". Fortunately the source code comes with a Gnu license which means we're free to work on the stuff, contribute back:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

The art is under CC-BY-SA which means you're good to go and do your (and mine please) plushies!
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I am not a lawyer, so take this layman interpretation with a grain of salt. But the license texts are pretty plain reading. I posted the direct links for your convenience.

Sorry, but to compare Minecraft to Ryzom in terms of potential commercial success of merchandise is ridiculous. Even if you take the most optimistic assumption on the Ryzom userbase you'll be nowhere near the amount of players of Minecraft, currently.

So whoever wants to create Ryzom plushies should get pre-orders from players to collect the interest, then plan and see if the numbers work out, get confirmation that players would order at the calculated/estimated price, and then get it done. _Or_ go with one of those crowd funding services (indiegogo, kickstarter, etc) but then add to the calculation that they will actually take about 10% of whatever money you get promised.

I'd be in. But my optimistic bet would be that you get orders for maybe 200 items. I have no idea how expensive that would be per item, but you have to consider pricing of worldwide shipping. It's probably best if someone in France tries to set it up because we still seem to have more French players than others, so it'd reduce overall shipping. Or go with a cheap shop somewhere in asia and let them do all the shipping to end customers. All of this may be a customs nightmare to deal with.

Don't want to discourage people here, but just get the expectations right. Hopefully I'm too pessimistic with the numbers. But I'd guess we could get maybe ~70-100 orders in with about 2-3 plushies each.

Hello,

I couldn't find this page, as i would like to know more about this.
I'm working on 3D printed Ryzom action figures and was wondering about the rightsnstuff.

Greetings,
SB

You have to be kind of careful here. The artistic assets are CC-BY-SA which provides you rights to use or modify them so long as you attribute Winch Gate and re-release your changed assets under the same license. Another player on the forums kind of suggests this with an over simplified explanation of what "open source" is.

However this does not indemnify you from violating Winch Gate's trademarks. So you can download the yubo model and textures and use it in your game but using the Ryzom logo would be a violation of trademark if not done with Winch Gate's permission or used only with regards to "fair use" which typically pertains to situations such as writing an article about the game, etc.

If you were going to be doing something that was obviously Ryzom merchandising you would be best served by getting Winch Gate's blessing first to avoid any legal quagmires associated with the differences between copyright and trademark law.

That is a fair and good point! Thank you for amending my view and adding the Ryzom Trademark aspects!

It's always a good idea to contact and ask first and set everybody's expectations straight. Saves a lot of pain, frustration and potentially money, too.