A game hands copyright law a paradox: the element players prize most—the rules, the mechanics, the method of play—is exactly what copyright refuses to protect, while the art, text, music, code, and on-screen display wrapped around those rules are guarded with real force. This UpLaw research guide traces the uncopyrightability of game systems from Baker v. Selden through 17 U.S.C. § 102(b), explains the merger and scènes à faire doctrines that finish the filtering, and inventories every protectable layer of a board game or video game. It walks through registering each component with the U.S. Copyright Office—choosing between a literary-work and a visual-arts claim, registering a video game's audiovisual display and its code, and clearing the identifying-material deposit rules that snag tabletop publishers under 37 C.F.R. §§ 202.20–202.21. Anchored by the leading cloning decisions in Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips, and sharpened by counterexamples such as the Golden Tee dispute in Incredible Technologies v. Virtual Technologies, it shows how the actual-copying and substantial-similarity framework decides which clones a studio can stop. It closes with the trademark, patent, trade-dress, and trade-secret tools that fill the gaps copyright leaves open, plus registration playbooks and FAQs for designers, studios, founders, and the lawyers who advise them.