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Vancouver Island-made game challenges players in brutal post-apocalyptic North

Vancouver Island-made game challenges players in brutal post-apocalyptic North

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/the-long-dark-video-game-can-you-survive-canada-post-disaster-1.2776501

Inspired by the previous post and by last week’s guest speaker. In addition to helping us become disciplined investors and lose weight (DDR) , video games can also help us obtain the necessary skills to survive the (perhaps) inevitable zombie apocalypse.

“You’re tracking your calories and you’re worried about body temperature, when you’re going to eat and when you need to drink water.”

Video-Blog News of the Week; September 24, 2014

What do the Noriega lawsuit and the 38 Studios debacle have in common? It’s not as bad as you think.

jon

 

Day Trader Learned Lessons From Games

“CIS, pronounced sis, means death in classical Japanese. The nickname is a holdover from his gaming days, when he used to crush foes in virtual wrestling rings and online fantasy worlds. ‘Games taught me to think fast and stay calm,’ he said over tea at Tokyo’s Hotel Grand Palace a few days after the SoftBank trade.”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-25/mystery-man-moving-japan-made-more-than-1-million-trades

I’ll be sure to tell my family in the future that I’m not just goofing around with video games; rather, I’m training to make billions 🙂

Week 5 Guest Speaker: David Spratley of Davis & Co.

David-Spratley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Spratley of Davis LLP will be speaking to us on the subject of trademarks in games on October 1 , 2014. I had the great privilege of working with David for a while and it is hard to find a lawyer who is smarter and more thoughtful in the area. David’s firm biography points out among other things that:

“David Spratley practises in the areas of intellectual property, technology, e-commerce, video game law, privacy law, and franchise and distribution.

He advises clients primarily on issues such as:

Creating, protecting, enforcing and commercializing intellectual property (IP) rights, including trade-marks, domain names and copyright

Drafting and negotiating IT outsourcing and services agreements and cloud computing agreements

Drafting web site terms of use

Developing, distributing, licensing and supporting software, video games and other technology

Complying with federal and provincial privacy legislation and drafting privacy consents and privacy policies

Complying with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)…

Born and raised in Vancouver, David graduated with an honours degree in political science from the University of British Columbiaand then temporarily forsook the west coast to obtain both a bachelor of laws and a masters of library and information studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

He returned to Vancouver to article with Davis and joined the firm’s Technology & Outsourcing and Intellectual Propertypractice groups upon his call to the bar in 2002.”

jon

Week 4 – 9/24/14: “Right to CreaTE or Rights to the Creation” & Ian Verchere

Here are the videos and my  slides from the fourth class. Unfortunately we had a tech glitch whereby Ian’s slides didn’t make it into the Mediasite lecture capture video.

jon

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News of the Week; September 24, 2014

GAMES

1. Activision moves to dismiss Manuel Noriega’s “absurd lawsuit”

Why Rudy Giuliani wants Noriega to get his bloody hands off Activision’s Call of Duty profits

2. FTC Begins Cracking Down on COPPA Violators

3. Developers Spar Over ‘Grimoire’ Name

4. Reclaiming ‘Gamer’ and Defending Our Tribe

Sexism, Lies and Video Games: The Culture War Nobody Is Winning

Addressing allegations of “collusion” among gaming journalists: An apology and an apologia for private discussions among peers.

Truth In Gaming: An Interview With The Fine Young Capitalists

EA Teams With White House for Sexual Assault Prevention Campaign

The reactionaries are just plain wrong about gaming’s future

5. Objective: Impossible?: An objective approach to games journalism is a noble goal, but black-and-white reporting still has a lot of gray area

6. Report: Terror Group Reportedly Releases Promotional Video for Upcoming Game

7. PlayStation TV launches with 700 games in US on October 14

8. Destiny sales top $325 million in five days

9. Titan cancellation cost Blizzard $50m or more, say analysts

10. Kickstarter-Funded Sword Fighting Game ‘Clang’ is Officially Cancelled

11. Beyond the microtransaction: how players spend

12. The Minecraft Parent

13. The Assassin’s Creed curriculum: can video games teach us history?: Reprogramming the past from the Oregon Trail to Columbine

14. The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics: Form without Function

15. Goat Simulator Selling Absurdly Well On iOS, Android

16. There And Back Again: A History Of The Lord Of The Rings In Video Games

17. The Fight Rages On In 38 Studios Lobbying Case

DIGITAL

18. “The Letter” Is Still The Best Story To Explain Why Copyright Monopoly Must Be Reduced

19. Could Taking A Selfie In A Museum Violate Copyright Law?

20. The Internet of Things and Canadian Copyright Law

21. MIT Students Battle State’s Demand for Their Bitcoin Miner’s Source Code

22. Illegal, Immoral, and Mood-Altering: How Facebook and OkCupid Broke the Law When They Experimented on Users (James Grimmelman)

23. A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy.

iOS 8’s One More Thing: It Prevents Apple from Complying With Search Warrants

24. The Solace of Oblivion: In Europe, the right to be forgotten trumps the Internet.

25. Litigation Alert: California Bans Non-Disparagement Clauses in Consumer Contracts

26. Kickstarter Updates Terms Of Use Section Related To Failed Projects

27.Trademark use: an important shift in Canada

28. ‘Digital Amnesia’, A Documentary About the Limited Shelf Life of Digital Data 

CONSTRAINTS

29.  Anti-Piracy is Class Privilege

30. Can Graffiti Be Copyrighted?: Some of the most public artists want to keep their work a bit more private.

31. Does the CRTC Have the Power Regulate Online Video?: Internet Companies Set to Challenge Its Authority (Michael Geist)

32. News for the Minecraft generation: Gannett experiments with virtual reality

jon

Titan Cancellation Costs Blizzard Millions

As a follow-up to today’s talk about video game production cycles, here’s some insight into just how much the cancellation of a game can cost: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-09-23-titan-cancellation-cost-blizzard-usd50m-or-more-say-analysts

Games Are Not Coffee Mugs: Episodes 1 – 4

Professor William Ford of John Marshall Law School in Chicago has done game scholarship and pedagogy a great service. Professor Ford has been producing a great webcast series called “Games Are Not Coffee Mugs” (the first episode of which has already been posted here). All four episodes are important, useful and well worth watching. You will find them below:

Episode 1:

Topic:Games As a Medium of Expression

Guests: Tom Dowd, Eugene Jarvis, and Doris Rusch

Episode 2:

Topic: Patenting Games

Guest: Benjamin Liu

Episode 3:

Topic: Video Game Copyright Litigation: The Early Years

Guest: George H. Gerstman

Episode 4:

Topic: Sports Games and the Right of Publicity

Guests: J. Gordon Hylton, Jonathan S. Jennings, and Lester Munson

jon

 

Video-Blog News of the Week; September 17, 2014

Actually talking law, not social issues. Try not to be too shocked…

jon

Paper Categories, 2nd Edition

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Last year at about this time I outlined possible paper topics after reviewing the various papers submitted over the years. What follows is a category listing of papers from last year, including some papers related to video games from other courses. As before just add the words “Legal Implications of…” before the topic and it should make sense.

Here goes (in alphabetical order):

* Brain Manipulation Through Future Video Game Technology

* Contract Unconscionability in Video Game Worlds

* Digital Media & Children

* Let’s Plays & Fair Use

* Over-long Copyright Terms”

* Player Authorship & Fair Dealing

* Price Discrimination in Video Games

* Proposed Video Game Addiction Laws of South Korea

* Protecting User Privacy

* Regulating & Monitoring Video Games

* Regulating Virtual Economies

* Rights to “Gameplay”

* Safeguarding Play Through Contract

* Supporting Mods by Balancing Copyright & User Rights

* Violent Video Games & Constitutions

* Violent Video Games & the Precautionary Principle

* Virtual Economies/Real Income”

* Virtual Property & Trusts

jon