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News of the Week; July 31, 2013
1. Court of Appeals Rejects EA’s First Amendment Claim in NCAA Lawsuit 2. Why gaming’s latest take on war is so offensive to Russians 3. Activision Blizzard goes independent as Kotick leads $8.2 billion buyout + Activision’s Deal Analyzed 4. Zynga loses half of its active users, drops plans for real money gambling 5. Xbox One will allow independent developers to […]
News of the Week; July 24, 2013
1. Tropico 4 Developer Targeted by Treehouse Avatar Technologies 2. Delaware Supreme Court backs Harmonix in Viacom dispute 3. Robin Antonick wins Madden lawsuit 4. Diversity in Video Games – The Rise of Female Gamers (Learnist page) 5. Wargaming, Stardock, and Rebellion Score Big IP from Atari Auction 6. Vivendi in talks to raise $3b dividend from Activision-Blizzard – repor 7. Xbox […]
Coming Soon
The current digital form of the Video Game Law course began with the notion of producing an iTunes U course this summer for fall launch. Here is the opening animation produced by Alana Thorburn-Watt of the Centre for Digital Media, our editor: jon
Replacing Fixation: A blog post from Jeremy Costin
Below is a link to a thoughtful blog post by Jeremy Costin (LL.B 2007, UBC) on the challenges the legal concept of fixation poses in the digital age. Jeremy is (needless to say) being a bit too kind in terms of my contribution to his thinking: Replacing Fixation: How the information age is forcing us […]
Greg Lastowka’s Video Game Developers UGC Survey
Prof. Greg Lastowka of the Rutgers University School of Law is doing some important research on User Generated Content and needs the help of video game developers. So if you are a game developer please help. If you know game developers ,please pass on to them Greg’s personal message below: “Hello! My name is Greg […]
News of the Week; July 17, 2013
1. Three More MMO Developers Receive Letters from Treehouse Attorneys 2. NCAA Will Not Renew Contract with EA in 2014 3. THQ liquidation plan approved by court, ending bankruptcy case 4. Strong-female protagonist game jam kicks off in Vancouver to fight industry sexism 5. Every Misogynistic Argument You’ve Ever Heard About Video Games 6. Report: CDC Closer to Beginning Research […]
News of the Week; July 10, 2013
1. Sega claiming $941,000 from THQ over Company of Heroes 2 preorders 2. Is Hacking Videogame Characters Legal? 3. Research: Violent Games Do Not Adversely Affect Prosocial Behavior 4. Microsoft patent filing attempts to lock down games with multiple engines running concurrently 5. Microsoft: Xbox One advertising will integrate with Kinect 6. Mattrick prepped Zynga buyout while at Microsoft – […]
“i am a gamer” game-jam July 12-14 @ the CDM
This coming weekend my friend and colleague Dr. Kimberly Voll is unleashing the (first annual) “i am a gamer” Game-Jam on our world. The event is committed to creating games with strong female characters and was prompted by a number of industry comments doubting the viability of woman as lead characters in games. If any […]
Reductio ad absurdem (clown edition)
Not too long ago I was engaging with my academic colleague and professional clown (some of the more witless from my former business lives might ask “is there a difference?”) Patrick Pennefather (http://thecdm.ca/people/faculty/patrick-pennefather). Our topic of choice, as it frequently is, was the inadequacies of intellectual property as a concept, and how those inadequacies are […]
digrastudents.org
Received a mass mailing note from Ashley O’Toole-Brown and Rachel Kowert announcing the launch of the new DiGRA students website (http://digrastudents.org)and asking this be brought to the attention of all students who might be interested in the area. DIGRA is the Digital Games Research Association and is a point of convergence for all of the academic work […]