Q: If you don’t accept game submissions, why do you have a game submission form online? Do I have to fill this out just to suggest a Fluxx version?

The form you have seems completely unfair towards designers, as if you’re trying to discourage submissions at all.

A: Technically, we do not accept outside submissions, so we DO intend to discourage them. For whole games, that’s totally true. For just suggestions for some idea of a Fluxx version you’d like to see us make, frankly, we get people all the time that just write us a two-line email hoping we’ll make a Fluxx themed on something they’re into:

“Hey! OMG, you should make Princes Bride Fluxx!” or “My Little Pony Fluxx” or “Dumb and Dumber Fluxx” (yes, these are all suggestions we have gotten, in many cases more than once). We don’t make all of those people who send us a two line email go sign that form, especially after they’ve already sent their idea. The casual nature of the suggestion indicates they don’t expect it to be anything other than that: a suggestion or even a request.

But if someone says “Hey, I designed a full deck of Big Bang Theory Fluxx” and I want to show it to you… well, we really don’t want to see their ideas unless they are giving them to us with no expectations. Essentially, we aim to keep actual game design in-house, and having someone show us their idea taints that and opens up a can of worms. For example, we might have similar ideas ourselves already, and if we did end up making a deck with this theme, the submitter might feel we stole their ideas. Another issue is that, much as we might want to give credit where credit is due, it’s very hard to keep track of random suggestions: sometimes emails get lost, and we don’t want to make promises we might not be able to keep, or set unrealistic expectations.

So why do we have the form at all? It’s for fans who are just dying to show us their full version of something, out of sheer enthusiasm, not because they’re trying to make money by selling us their idea.

If you just want to say: hey, you should do “Blah Blah” Fluxx, then I wouldn’t worry about the legalese – but if you have a bunch of specific game dynamic suggestions, then we want you to understand that we don’t compensate you for those, and it’s not really practical for us to even guarantee credit.