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Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition
Following up on this week’s class, here is an example of an inspired dad. He modded Donkey Kong in response to a question from his 3 year old daughter. Now the Princess saves Mario…. jon
Natural Violence
To supplement my point that video games CAN teach violent tactics, here’s an example of a practice among FPS “camping”. Yes this is also taught in movies, but with games, you reiterate the same thing over and over – sniping people in a bottle neck from an angle they weren’t prepared for. “It certainly works […]
Copyright hilarity
I didn’t realize Tetris was so strongly protected. I now see why the peer-to-peer bit torrent client ‘µTorrent’ does this: Within µTorrent: 1. Select About in Help menu. 2. Press ‘T’ on the Keyboard.
Gambling in Games
I think back to my childhood of some of my favorite games and realize the concept of “chance” played an important role. In many games, the system is made to utilize random chance to extend playability. A game like World of Warcraft utilizes this in item/loot drops. Each enemy has a specified probability of dropping […]
The Use and Legal Status of Virtual Goods and Currency
Background points regarding virtual goods and currency: http://www.slideshare.net/jaspurewal/the-use-and-legal-status-of-virtual-goods-and-currencies
Virtual property protection in China
Virtual property has been protected in China: http://www.guangzhou.gov.cn/node_420/node_428/2006-04/1144636826100185.shtml China Government Bans Online Virtual-Currency Dealing Platforms for Minors: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-22/tencent-shares-fall-after-china-announces-virtual-currency-ban-for-minors.html Virtual Currency In China Is A $2 Billion Economy: http://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-currency-in-china-is-a-2-billion-economy-2009-7
X-Plane & Uniloc
A few weeks ago I alluded in class to the lawsuit facing my favourite (ok, pretty well the only) commercial flight sim X-Plane which appears to be in quite a fight against a “patent assertion entity”. Here is a link as promised to the relevant page from the X-Plane website: http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/ Also via Claudio Satorelli a […]
Could it Pay to Read that EULA? – Incentivising to Increase Consumer Readership by Michela Fiorido
After reading Roch’s posts and thinking more about EULAs, I got to brainstorming some ideas that might increase consumer readership. Some might ask why it matters that consumers read EULAs in the first place and some might ask why companies should care to get consumers to read their agreements. Consumers should read EULAs so that […]
A Post IP World
Two thoughts re: whether we really are in a post IP world when it comes to video games. 1) Many minors play video games. I don’t think a plaintiff would have much luck enforcing a EULA against one. Particularly relevant in the technology context since I’m sure there are many teenage programmers out there who […]
Thoughts on Today’s Class
A few thoughts on today’s class. 1. All our discussions on EULAs reminded me of this story I had read some time ago, and was able to miraculously find without much difficulty using Google: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/dell.html 2. It also reminded me of this: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20002689-71.html 3. When I draft a contract, my primary goal is to clearly state the […]