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 to provide the missing slides to anyone who needs them.
Jon
Class 4 – 9/25/19; “Right to Create or Rights to the Creation” + “5 FACTS to understand the Chinese video game market”
Video & slides above.
Jon
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:
In comparison, I would describe the art of US games as “cool” and Japanese ones as “cute and tidy”. Let me know if that’s a kind of misunderstanding.
I also want to include a picture of the marketplace (where you pay for in-game items in a F2P game) of Tencent’s King of Hornor. Look at all the columns on the left you will find a variety of things to buy and its super complex:
Let me know if you have further questions on today’s topic!
Class 3 – 9/18/19; “John Milton Plays Grand Prix Legends” + EA’s Brian Dartnell & Perry Bahniwal
Video & slides above. Note that in Brian and Perry’s slides the videos are disabled as they were way too large to upload.
Jon
Class 2 – 9/11/19; “If Picasso had painted a round object..”
Video and slides above…
Had to do a bit of surgery to get the slides below the upload limit. Nothing substantive was removed.
Jon
Class 1 – 9/4/19; “Introduction” + Activision’s Willy Duhen
Slides and video above. Sorry that the first minute or two of Willy’s talk is not super loud. Good news is that I realized (for the first time ever) what adjustments to make, so it does get fixed early on.
Jon
A history of the course via podcast (if you’re interested)
As I generally don’t spend more than a few minutes talking about where the course came from, and even less time talking about my background. If you find yourself at all curious about the origins of Video Game Law as both a book and course, you can find the story here (click on the image)…
Jon
Regulating digital (including video-games) or not: Law Society of B.C.’s 2019 Rule of Law Lecture
The third annual LSBC Rule of Law Lecture took place on Tuesday, June 25, 2019 at UBC Robson Square. The speakers addressed subjects that become more relevant in Video Game Law every year. Among the vexing questions are “To Regulate or Not to Regulate?” and how privacy law fits (or not) in a digital world. Given that the speakers were the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Richard Peck, QC., the perspectives shared were particularly thoughtful. Mr. Peck’s succinct history of privacy law is masterful in illustrating its importance and limitations in a digital world where contractual consents (by way of video-game End User Licence Agreements in our case) are so easily obtained.
Video of this great event and speaker’s notes follow…
Jon
“Regulation & Blockchain”: Presentation at the 3rd Annual Blockchain@UBC Summer Institute
Blockchain is not an ever-present subject in Video Game Law, but has certainly come up on a reasonably regular basis in the over the years. When it does come up it often does so with great passion. There are video-games such as CryptoKitties (https://cryptokitties.co) which use blockchain to great advantage. Ubisoft is working on a blockchain-based game called HashCraft. There has also been some speculation about whether blockchain can be of use in creating and maintaining an ongoing eco-system for multi-player games without central servers once the developer/publisher of the game has stepped way.
Personally the jury remains mostly still out for me on whether blockchain is an answer to a question few if anyone is asking. That said the possibility remains that blockchain applications might bring some helpful privacy solutions and/or decentralizing solutions. So it is that my participation as an Academic Partner in Blockchain@UBC (https://blockchain.ubc.ca) has focussed on inquiry and rigor (I hope).
Attached below are the slides for the presentation I made on “Regulation & Blockchain” at the 3rd Annual Blockchain@UBC Summer Institute (https://blockchain.ubc.ca/education/blockchainubc-summer-institute) on June 3, 2019. There are certainly more than a few video-game references. Hopefully the slides might prove somewhat helpful or instructive to those interested in the area and its development.
Jon
Vancouver Summer Mentorship Society Presentation on May 8, 2019
Was very privileged to be asked to give a talk to a group of high school students who were spending a couple of day at Allard as part of a program put on by the Vancouver Summer Mentorship Society. More information about the society and it’s good work can be found on their GoFundMe page here: https://ca.gofundme.com/vancitymentors
It was a lot fun from my perspective. Great questions from some super-smart very eager minds.
Promised that I’d get the slides from the presentation up on the website – so here they are…Sorry it took so long.
Jon
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