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 a range of loot. The entire game is just pressing a variety of keys on an elaborate slot machine where the reward is loot instead of monetary credits.
One of Blizzard’s other hit franchises, “Diablo” has gambling functions within the game. The in-game gold is used to purchase unknown item classes with variable stats. This may or may not have been the reason so many users spent countless hours farming the in-game currency. I see little difference in using real Canadian dollars to purchase the in-game currency, and then use these “credits” to purchase items with randomly assigned values; and then potentially “cashing out” by selling these items back in exchange for real world currencies.
Are we training our children to keep pushing the neuro-gratification button? When the games become boring will they make their way to the slot machines? The exploitative American gambling laws we heard about today in Nevada – will the people ever need to leave their computer chairs? When the system is set up such that the “house” slowly dwindles your money while distracting you with flashy lights; or perhaps worse, makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something by destroying a game sprite demon of some kind — do these people even have a …chance?
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”.
Some really cool cloud features, including gamers remotely being able to take over their friends’ controllers if they get stuck. I’m very curious about the new Xbox and hope that this new piece of news today will provide the impetus for Microsoft to leak some details soon!
As we’ve talked about, now is the time to focus on papers topics & getting started (or better) on them. Attached is a link to a very useful paper by Stephen M. McJohn, which for your purposes is a nice overview of interesting 2012 U.S. IP cases. By going through the paper you might well end up thinking about a few topics you have not thought of, or considering issues you have looked at but through an additional lens.
Prof. William Fisher is making his Harvard Law School on Copyright available gratis through edX. Below you will find an excellant two hour discussion of copyright from the perspective of creators. Among the four speakers is John Drake of Harmonix, the company that created the “Guitar Hero”, “Rockband” and “Dance Central” series. Those games are particularly interesting because the genre is itself a form of re-mix of the creative works of others.
All of the speakers are very worthwhile. Most of the legal perspective comes from Dale Cendali of Kirkland & Ellis. FYI John Drake is introduced @ 7:20 & speaks @ 30:57. Dale Cendali is introduced @ 8:20 & speaks @ 36:44
Nice piece in the Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law about the Tetris case – Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., 863 F. Supp. 2d 394, 397 (D.N.J. 2012). We will be looking at this case and it’s implications in Class 9 on March 6.
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