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User Engagement through Increased Privacy?
Last week it was revealed that Facebook is testing publicly hiding ‘like’ counts in Australia. Metrics will still be available on the creator’s side but not to the view of the general public. A similar test was recently completed by Instagram this past April. Instagram is owned by Facebook. The goal of these initiatives seems […]
Does Fortnite intentionally cause addiction?
A Montréal law firm has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, the producer of Fortnite. The basis of the lawsuit: The game Fortnite allegedly was created to intentionally make their players addicted. The lawsuit claims that the brain releases the happiness hormone dopamine when a player is playing for a long time. This can be […]
Blizzard Suspends Hearthstone Player For Hong Kong Support, Pulls Prize Money
https://kotaku.com/blizzard-suspends-hearthstone-player-for-hong-kong-supp-1838864961 A Hearthstone player came out in support of the Hong Kong protests recently during a stream. Blizzard removed him from a competition, suspended him for a 12 years from competitive play, and rescinded his prize money for supposedly violating its official competition rules for the tournament. In my opinion, the rule itself reads more […]
News of the Week; October 2, 2019
GAMES Abdin v. CBS Broadcasting: Court grants motion to dismiss claims that Star Trek Discovery tv series infringes video game concept involving fictionalized space-traveling creature, finding lack of substantial similarity. Zynga advises users to change passwords following data breach: Words With Friends and Draw Something players may have had usernames, passwords, other information stolen Duke Nukem 3D’s […]
Class 5 – 10/2/19; “Connecting Ourselves: Gamer Vulnerability in Virtual Realities – Part 1″ + “Loot Boxes” + “Law & the Virtual World”
Video and slides above. A note on my slides…to make them fit the upload capacity of the servers I had to do some pruning of non-essentials including the “Last Year This Time” part of “News of the Week”. You will of course be able to see the missing pieces in the video and am happy […]
Loot Box Presentation – October 2, 2019
Hello class We are presenting on loot boxes tomorrow and wanted to give you some contextual articles that could help you prepare for our presentation. These are some optional readings. Please have a look at them, they are short. We will be touching on the history of loot boxes, the updates in the media about […]
News of the Week; September 25, 2019
GAMES Steam must allow digital games to be resold, rules French court French court rules country’s Steam users can resell their games: Ruling contradicts EU law and would be “disastrous” for consumers and industry, says ISFE CEO French Court Declares That Steam Gamers Actually Do Own What They Bought Bandai Namco is suing AtGames over Ms. […]
Cloud Gaming’s Implications for the Video Game Industry
News of Google Stadia has been met with a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism. On one hand, there’s definitely appeal in the prospect of being able to play games on any device with access to Google Chrome without having to purchase a console. In addition, Google Stadia seems to be taking a step forward in […]
What a typical Chinese game looks like?
This is a reply to the question I received during the presentation. I described the art of Chinese games as “colorful, crowded and shiny ” but I think with a picture it would make more sense. So here is a screenshot by someone else of MMORPG mobile game Fantasy Western World Journey developed by NetEase: […]