After our last class today I thought I’d reflect a little on what has really struck me during this class and where it might go in the next iteration.
I had no idea video games had so many legal issues.
I didn’t realise how much money is in the business and how many creating/controlling aspects it throws up. When I picked the course I just thought it would be fun because I like games – I had no idea how much of a serious industry it is. The expansion of the industry from arcades to mobile (to telepathic if Jon’s to be believed!) shows that games and reality are becoming more intertwined than ever before. No wonder privacy law is where we’re all going to get jobs!
Poststructualist classrooms
I was struck during the class about how much the physical location of UBC matters. I’m convinced this course could not exist back home in the UK. Allard Hall’s proximity to Vancouver’s vibrant indie and corporate gaming scene has led to a wealth of fantastic speakers who have enriched the course immensely. But does Video Game Law need to be based in a classroom? More and more I hope this class will lean towards an open internet-based community. The book as a wiki, uploading videos of the classes, guest speakers via Skype, commenting online for participation marks (and virtual Oculus classrooms!) all leads to an open source course. This online information sharing means the class should not be bound by its Vancouver location, which as an exchange student I normally couldn’t access. I know Jon said he was skeptical about distance learning but I believe it could really have merit for this fascinating and unique course.
In one ear and out the other?
This is how studying the law can feel sometimes. You read a case, memorise it, think of a controversial opinion and scribble it all down for your finals and forget it the next day. This class encouraged “teaching and learning” rather than “lecturing and listening” by facilitating active student participation. I really like the badges – they’re great ways to mark your progress and I feel like I’ve done good learning (unlike doing 10 pages of highlighting). Through the website, the class encourages reading, extra research, discussion with fellow students, engaging with the materials and forming your own opinion. This is what law school is meant to do! I was very skeptical of pedagogy before this class (it sounds far too much like a buzz word) but it actually seems to have worked: I actually feel like I’m going to remember what I’ve learnt in this class rather than more traditional methods of study.
Jesse Joudrey passed along this very well done piece about our Rift experiment two weeks ago. Thanks to everyone in the two “real” classrooms and the one “virtual” classroom who participated. Confusing, isn’t it? 😉
If I remember from my time in Video Game Law several years ago, this is the time of year when there is lots of time to spare. Law students, having done all their studying and completed their papers weeks in advance, long for something to occupy their time.
There is hope! Here is a five part YouTube documentary on the evolution of graphics technologies since the dawn of video games. The first four episodes each focus on specific graphics technologies, while the final episode looks at today’s state of the art before asking where games are headed in the future.
While the documentary does not discuss the many legal issues surrounding graphics, the technologies and games featured are industry milestones that are discussed throughout the course. If nothing else, the documentary provides a historical context to inform discussion of game graphics and games more generally.
Professor William K. Ford of The John Marshall Law School just sent me a link to the latest episode in his excellent video series on games. It is an interview with a past guest in our course, Patrick Sweeney, on the very interesting and somewhat fraught subject of “The Video Game Industry and Hollywood”.
The addition of badges to the Video Game Law website has no doubt been one of the more pleasant surprises of this academic season. It was only in late August 2014 that the possibility of the course being included in the Open Badges UBC Project even emerged. In that context it is perhaps a bit surprising and gratifying that Video Game Law became the first UBC course to implement a badging system on the website. Even better, given that badges and badging are not part of grading in the course it is wonderful how reinforcing the early results have been. They can be found in this post: http://videogame.law.ubc.ca/2014/11/16/ubc-open-badges-initial-pilot-project-results/
The Open Badges UBC Project now would like your help in providing additional feedback which may be useful to the UBC community and to the badges project moving forward. There are only 10 questions so it won’t take very much of your time.
Finally Erin Fields and David Vogt must be thanked for inviting our participation, as well as Associate Dean Benjamin Goold for supporting the idea. Will Engle, Novak Rogic and Richard Tape of the UBC Centre for Teaching Learning & Technology must be mentioned as the technological braintrust behind the project. Richard Tape in particular deserves to be called out for his passion and diligence in getting badges on-line for our course so incredibly quickly. Everyone has been wonderful to work with.
Anoop Desai will be our final guest speaker for this video game law cohort. Anoop is Director, Business Affairs/Development at Electronic Arts (Canada) Inc. and has been with EA since 2007. Previously he was with Next Level Games and practiced law with Alexander, Holburn, Beaudin & Lang from 2001 to 2005.
At EA Anoop is responsible for distribution and publishing partnerships for digital platforms in established and emerging territories. He has also been pivotal in defining EA’s business strategy and negotiating deals for new and emerging platforms including cloud computing. Anoop’s professional strengths include identifying and evaluating partners, exploring and analyzing various business models, establishing corporate standards and negotiating deals.
Anoop is a lawyer who traverses territories that encompass both business principles and legal issues. As such he has a real perspective on the diversity of ways legal training can be relevant in a creative business environment. He will be talking to us about negotiating video game deals and the industry landscape. As well, Anoop will address the always looming question of how those who want to be part of the video game industry can most effectively pursue their goal.
South Park has covered and brought light to a large number of topics over 18 seasons. While always hilarious, and sometimes offensive, they can also be surprisingly informative. Few weeks ago South Park tackled the topic of freemium games. Since it relates closely to the course, I took upon myself to watch the episode, for research.
In the episode, Prince of Canada and Minister of Mobile Gaming explain the basic concept of “freemium games”.
Specifically, the Minister lists the five principles of a successful freemium game:
entice the player with a simple game loop
use flashing ‘chachings’ and compliments to make the players feel good about themselves
train the player to spend the fake currency (you may have noticed donuts and clams on the whiteboard – the fake currency used in Simpsons Tapped Out and Family Guy Quest for Stuff)
offer the player a way to spend real currency for your fake currency (so they forget they are spending actual money)
and make the game about waiting – and allow players to pay not to wait
And another, important principle: make the game just barely fun, because if the game was too fun, there would be no reason to micropay.
South Park also make the connection between freemium games and drug/alcohol addiction.
Drug addiction: Jimmy pushes the game to Kyle and others like a drug dealer because he needed the money to pay for another freemium game he is addicted to.
Jimmy: How do you get people addicted to crack? You give it away for free. You give away a little taste and then..and then some people…can’t stop themselves.
Alcohol addiction: Minister of Mobile Gaming admits to targeting the heaviest users of game and extracting the most amount of cash from them.
Minister: Here is a fact – 80% of alcohol sales are paid for by alcoholics… You think the alcohol industry cares?! They don’t care that 10% are gonna get addicted, they’re counting on it
There are other great nuggets from the episode and I highly recommend everyone to watch the episode!
There are many thank you’s due after this past weeks class which involved an unprecedented amount of technology.
First thanks to Jas Purewal for joining us from London England to talk about international video game law issues. Jas’ perspectives on video game law are regularly at his popular site at http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk
Huge thanks also to Jesse Joudrey and Graham Gaylor of vrchat.net, a VR platform people can build their own social VR experiences onto, for all the work they did to set up the Oculus experience and for obtaining seven Rift headsets for the use of the class. Thanks also to Associate Dean Benjamin Goold and Maria Erhardt of the Faculty Law for their help in making this happen.
That this technical tour-de-force all ran as smoothly as it did is thanks to Dan Silverman of the Faculty of Law. Dan has provided incredible support for the course and all its experimentation from the inception of the 2.0 version three academic seasons ago. Am so very thankful for all Dan does on a regular basis for the course. He has truly become integral to its design and execution.
Video and slides below (including a YouTube video of the class as you might have seen it with a Rift, minus 3D immersion of course).
Check out theVideos of Interest to Law 423 on YouTube 
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