You need the explicit consent of the famicase artist to use their design as inspiration for your game.

I picked a famicase what now?

Congrats! You managed to scroll through the famicase website or used another way to see some famicases and found a design you liked or that inspired you. That’s great! But before you start making anything, there is one important step still ahead of you.

Why should I contact the famicase artist?

Unless you're only using a cart as vague inspiration (that is: changing it up to make it your own, with its own name and style), you're going to end up using elements and ideas that someone else came up with. So the right thing to do is asking them for permission to do so.

Asking for consent from the artist

You have to contact the artist. The earlier, the better.

When you want to submit the game to the jam, we require you to contact the designer of the original famicase. The designer must consent to you using their design as inspiration. We can and will remove entries from this jam if any problems with the original artist are brought to our attention.

Most of the artist are really happy you picked their case and may even help you (more on that later). If they refuse to give you the right to use their case as inspiration, then you have to choose a different case. You can pick one with a similar theme where the artist allows you to use it or just come up with a different idea to a complete different famicase. That decision is up to you. 

 

How to find the artist?

That’s the part where you can feel like a detective 🔎. There are a couple of ways you can get in touch with the original creators:

• Google the information under the famicase (there is name of the artist, their occupation and their country of origin) + you can use the title of the famicase. You will probably find their socials or their website this way.
• Meteor has also tweeted all famicases on their Twitter account and linked the original artist if they given Meteor their twitter handle. Here is the advanced search to find them, you may want to add the number of your wanted famicase:” famicase.com  [the number of your cartridge] (from:meteor_club)”
• Meteor also has a dedicated Instagram account where they post the cases and link the artist profiles that you can find here. This is also only possible if the artist gives them their Instagram account

 

But how to get in touch with the creators?

Most of them have one of the following:

• On a social platform the artist may have their direct messages open,
• If that’s not possible send them a tweet starting with their Twitter handle their way
• It’s also possible to retweet and write your message to them that way, while also showing your followers their cool case
• If that’s not possible (Instagram) just comment under their famicase post or their latest post
• If they have an email, send them an email.

Just don’t spam them on every channel. If they don’t immediately respond remember that sometimes people aren’t always online.

What should I ask them

Tell them what you want to do:

• You want to make something (a game?) based off their famicase for A Game by Its Cover and ask if you are allowed to do that.
• If they agree, you may also ask the following if you want:
  • If and how you can credit them on your itch page/in the game
  • If you can use the famciase name as the name for your game,
  • If you can use their design as your cover
  • If your game can have a similar style
  • If you may use some design elements like fonts and logos

Remember: be nice and treat people the way you want to get treated.

Good luck detective!