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Discussion Outline: October 24, 2018
Hello everyone, This week’s discussion hour topic is video game classification systems and censorship. We will be discussing the following: 1. Why Classify and Censor Games – Violence in Video Games 2. Video Game Classification in North America (the ESRB) 3. International Classification of Online Games 4. Video Game Classification in Australia 5. Censorship Around […]
Discussion Outline for 17 October 2018
Hello class! Helen, Will, Jeff and I are presenting on Wednesday. Here are the broad strokes of our presentation: Discussion Outline for 17 October 2018 Group: Helen Leung, William Goh, Aakash Taneja, Jeffrey Wong Discussion Topic: The implications of copyright law on video-game streamers: the DMCA and how it applies to YouTube and Twitch […]
Quick Summary of the SCC Pentalogy
Jon has mentioned the SCC Pentalogy on copyright a few times in class. If anyone would like a quick summary of the five cases, Osgoode has put together a really useful summary of all of them. Cheers, Ryan Vogt
The first video-game? Spacewar! No it wasn’t.
During my first talk last week I mentioned the game “Spacewar!” as the first video-game, said it was invented in the late 1950’s at Stanford. I also said it was multiplayer. Of those facts, I got two right. The game itself was called “Spacewar!” and it was multiplayer (two person). But it wasn’t invented in […]
Welcome Cohort 11
Welcome to all who will be joining the Video Game Law @ Allard community today. Thrilled and privileged to be your guide. In terms of substantive legal issues arising in real time over the semester, the real word of gamers, developers, industry and governments usually ensure a roller-coaster ride of things to talk about over […]
Remember that people buy GPUs for mining Bitcoins?
If you don’t, let me remind you something that was said during my presentation: Prices of Graphic Processing Units (the devices which allow gamers to process video games on their PCs and consoles) jumped sharply last year due to their great processing power for mining bitcoins (=the process by which transactions are verified and added […]
Making a Purpose-Built Esports Game
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PascalLuban/20171117/309833/Will_current_games_turn_eSport_into_a_massmarket_affair.php This article caught my eye because of the discussions we’ve had in recent weeks about developers making concerted efforts to break into the esports scene with their games. It has some interesting points on what a game developer should aim for if it is making a game with the primary purpose of creating a […]
Esports Presentation Follow-up: News Stories of Interest
During my presentation, I spoke about some incidents and events that happened in the recent years. Although details of these incidents were not necessary for the overall message of my presentation, I thought some of you may still be interested nonetheless. Therefore, I have included some links to further reading on some of the more […]
Reminiscent of Anoop Desai’s Presentation
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/for-console-games-downloads-are-approaching-a-tipping-point/ This piece on the News of the Week got me thinking about the presentation that Anoop Desai from EA gave back at the beginning of the term. While we aren’t quite yet at the point where games are offered as a streaming service via a cloud system (similar to what Netflix did for television), […]
EA Battlefront 2 Comment Most Downvoted in the History of Reddit
Good afternoon everyone, I hope you have been enjoying your holiday weekend. On Friday we talked about about gamers-as-consumers backlash, specifically mentioning the original iteration of Steam, and we noted that social media has intensified this process. I wanted to give you a heads up on what is happening today: EA has just received the […]