Our guest speaker this week will be Howard Donaldson, the president of DigiBC. DigiBC’s mission is to promote, support and accelerate the growth, sustainability and competitiveness of BC’s digital media and wireless industry. Prior to joining DigiBC, Howard held senior management positions with Disney Interactive Studios and Electronic Arts Canada.
Howard’s discussion will focus on the business of videogames including the growth of mobile and online gaming, the relative profitability of games produced on different platforms and how taxes influence where games are developed.
The article discusses various reasons why the Swedes may be doing so well: a highly connected society, a strong heritage in design and engineering, and even long and dark winters that may boost productivity ( I don’t think Vancouver’s dark and wet winters do anything good for my productivity, but I digress). Intellectual property is not mentioned one way or the other.
Hot on the heals of yesterdays discussions (both Jas & I) regarding contractual prohibitions on the legalities/cases dealing with the re-sale of digital property (as well as Michela’s musings on digital property – scroll down under “What is Your Take”), check this out:
German Consumer Advocacy Group Files Complaint Against Valve for Steam’s Used Games Resale Policy:
I don’t see a categorical difference between the interactivity of video games and the interactivity of more traditional mediums like television/radio. On a long continuum of interactivity we could certainly place video games on a side of “direct-highly-interactive” and something like radio on the polar opposite; but we <i>do</i> interact with these apparent one directional outputs. It’s just less direct.
With a video game, we expect to have near complete control (within the confines of the system) where our inputs are immediately correlated to some reaction on the screen. With TV, our interaction is a little less direct. Instead of an immediate reaction to pressing a button, there’s a lag time between, but reaction nonetheless. Those television programs that induce observers to change the channel (or simply turn the TV/radio off) are subsequently pushed off the air. Or, modified in some way to cater to a more appropriate target audience. In other words, if stupid people watch the show, the jokes/dialogue will get more stupid. If a show has an extremely large audience, they often feel the pressure to take on more social/political/topical issues; consider themes of “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, “South Park”, in their later seasons compared to the earlier seasons. The size and type of audience has a direct (or more indirect) impact of what the show’s themes will be. And, has anyone ever called into a radio show? Whether you get through or not, you’ve essentially pressed the ‘A’ button. I don’t see why we should discriminate on “interactivity” being instantaneous and predictable vs variable and subtle.
Perhaps somewhere closer to the middle of the continuum would be a DVD menu; or better yet the “spectate” function of many competitive video games. The spectate function within League of Legends or Starcraft 2 give the spectator the ability to see the game played from a different perspective, and to modify the perspective in real time. The spectator may not impact the result of a match, but their unique exercise of skill and judgment in deciding what is important to consider (graphs of army strength, economic factors, which character to follow and when etc..) if expressed (recorded…?) would certainly be the subject of intellectual property. There are professional spectators, well paid for their expertise in this role!
Check out theVideos of Interest to Law 423 on YouTube 
Communications Law
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