Gamers Rights Law » articles

Communications, People! (Developers’s Corner)

jaymoffitt — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:15:23 +0000

10 things every online game should have. (From blog Imtalkingames)

Photo Credit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/; http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotologic/216182916/

Great series of articles, at “clicknothing” by a known game designer, Part 1 and Part 2 (And yes, I don’t understand it all… but thankfully it’s a series… I’m hoping there’s a happy ending at the curtain).

Gamer Entitlement, (from a game designer’s personal blog) More great articles after the jump

Executive… listens??From the always readable “gamepolitics”( Most gamers think this…. right?)

From Keen and Graev’s gaming blog; (Words to live… and design games by)

The boss battle; why? From Online magazine Resolution-Magazine (Very quirky article about game design of boss battles)

Just an opinion piece, about game developer culture in general not really a legal point, just about communication. (From Multiplaying)

Including milestones in your game developer agreement ; older article by Atty. Tom Buscaglia… (his series of articles is still the most comprehensive I’ve read about communications between developers and attorney as allies and not adversaries)

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Well, that about covers what’s out there about communication with attorneys and with your audience. Apparently it’s much more exciting to talk about design and art (I think so too). But like my “about” page says, “a necessary evil” is what an attorney is. If you need a start or a jump-start with your company; email me through the link, and I’ll provide my information (or someone in your jurisdiction) to get you some help with your game project.

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Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents

Legal stories updates

jaymoffitt — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:31:53 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmd41280/2975427277/ Creative Commons non-derivative license.

Kinect Story, keeping the name of XBox360 Motion Controller secret (from Joystiq game site, legal blog by Mark Mathenitis) More legal updates after the jump…

Lineage 2 sued for being “too addictive” Smallwood v NCSoft (Other related article from Kotaku here; and video clip from MSNBC here)

SF City Attorney threatens to sue Zynga over “Mafia Wars” (Article in SF Chronicle)

Blizzard v. Scapegaming; http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?ID=51340 (Lawsuit Summary)

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/blizzard-wins-88-million-from-scapegaming-over-illegal-wow-servers-20100817/ (Article at Geek.com)

Supreme Court review of CA videogame law; Another comprehensive, excellent article by Sheppard Mullin

Why Education is so Important in EULA negotiations; by Aber Law Firm

Your Mid-week “Meat” – Authoritative links from serious authors

jaymoffitt — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:54:46 +0000

Well, at least a “little” more serious than me. If you’re of a short attention span you might want to “move along” at this time. Otherwise read on after “the jump”

How to Make Machinima without Getting Sued Blind (Newteevee blog) talks about machinima from a developer’s perspective. Using your game for your own games. “Who does it hurt?” Is that the ultimate question to ask about whether a use is fair use? Not quite. I have nothing major on the subject besides the very well-written articles I’m linking to.

Tangled Web of User-Generated Content Cite as “Gervais, Daniel J., The Tangled Web of UGC: Making Copyright Sense of User-Generated Content (May 5, 2009). Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 841-870, 2009; Vanderbilt Public Law Research Paper No. 09-17. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1444513”

COVER SONGS AND DONKEY KONG: THE RATIONALE BEHIND COMPULSORY LICENSING OF MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS CAN INFORM A FAIRER TREATMENT OF USER-MODIFIED VIDEOGAMES John Baldrica Download at: http://jolt.unc.edu/sites/default/files/Baldrica_John_v11i1_103_144.pdf

Playing in the Virtual Arena: Avatars, Publicity and Identity Reconceptualized through Virtual Worlds and Computer Games Cite as: Garon, Jon M., Playing in the Virtual Arena: Avatars, Publicity and Identity Reconceptualized through Virtual Worlds and Computer Games (March 26, 2008). Chapman Law Review, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1334950 (Applicable to this discussion; pages 3-32 are extraordinarily tailored for this particular subject)

Also in Closing: Two of the “Casualties of War” in the IP wars; King’s Quest game snuffed out (from Gamepolitics); Nintendo shuts down fan made Pokem0n (from Joystiq)

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/axelhartmann/4310034154/sizes/m/ , Creative Commons Some rights reserved

Update on articles about virtual worlds

jaymoffitt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:35:45 +0000

I am currently “shopping around” for online and local forums that would like to hear me speak about Gamer’s Rights and how it is changing the conceptions of license agreements and forums rules.

Meanwhile, today’s post centers on the great work that other lawyer-bloggers are doing, as well as a few professional papers I recommend you MUST read.

The one you absolutely must study is The Global EULA, by the lawyers at Sheppard Mullin. I really felt like breaking down the article or doing my own synopsis, but instead, go there, read it, consider it. Beautifully done.

Other great articles I have found after the jump……

Recently I posted about the separation of work and play. Great article about hiring practices entitled “Facebook and Privacy” in the Minneapolis Tribune. It discusses pre-employment checks of Facebook pages by employers. My favorite quote: “35 percent found something that caused them to not hire the candidate.” In my mind this is a soon-to-be-exploding area of practice, based on disappointed job-seekers.

Mumbo Jumbo games won a victory over casual game-manufacturer Popcap Games in a lawsuit. Here is the link to the original complaint, (via Courthouse News), and the full story on Gamer/Law(UK). (note: I read almost a dozen summaries of the case, and this British one was the best by far). My favorite quote: “a jury… agreed that PopCap breached the contract when it went behind MumboJumbo’s back and decided to market and sell its games on its own.” (from the MumboJumbo PRNewswire Story). Popcap vehemently denies the claim, and by all indications may choose to appeal.

Yale School of Medicine receives a large grant to make a vide0-game/simulation for children 9-14. Full story here… usually I would save this for my education/grants posting, but $3.9 million is just too large a number to postpone posting this, it is reportedly a game to teach children how to avoid HIV-causing behaviors(sex/drugs/alcohol). Follow-ups posted here as the national news catches up.

As far as important scholarly papers go, I would like to mention The Fair Labor Standards Act in Cyberspace. Please cite as Cherry, Miriam A., Working for (Virtually) Minimum Wage: Applying the Fair Labor Standards Act in Cyberspace (November 4, 2009). Alabama Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 5, pp. 1077-1110, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1499823.

AtoZVirtualWorlds

jaymoffitt — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:11:56 +0000

Legal activitiy AtoZ in last several months (by its nature selective)

A-Avatar (lawsuits in Madden, Guitar Hero, and Second Life for actions of avatars)

B – Banned in Games (lawsuits by Estavillo vs Sony, SD Cal Estavillo v. Sony Computer Entm’t Am. Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86821; along with others)

C-China – China shuts down World of Warcraft… twice. (Good story on Gamasutra)

D - Developer’s Corner ( a regular feature on this blog spotlighting a developer’s role in promoting fun and reducing lawsuits)

E-Everquest (the first, the groundbreaker)

F-Facebook (lawsuits over privacy and “scamming” games cause major changes in the principles on the Facebook platform)

G-Gamer’s Rights (Here, and on my own site)

H Harassment (Sexual) Article in the Guardian.

I- In-game bank (In Eve Online, a real in-world bank is embezzled)

J – Joystiq legal - still the best read every week; blazes the trail

K-Kurt Cobain …. his use in video game causes controversy and widespread comment about use of dead celebrities in video games

L-Lineage (the largest MMO in China)

M – Madden Football (sued by retired players for using their likenesses)

N-No Doubt …. sues Activision, is sued by Activision (lawsuit here)

O – online petition (for online game, Modern Warfare 2); gamers try to launch intiative for dedicated servers outside Activision control (FAILED)

P – Playstation Network (sued for updates which crippled add-on firmware)

Q – Questing – In WOW, Shacknews has an article about 9 problems of questing [[Author's Note - seriously, unless Qbert was sued in the last six months, just scraps here]].

R - Runescape; Jagex is the parent of Runescape

S – Second Life… a slow year for litigation, but these important lawsuits worth note (Bragg v Linden Labs, No. 06-08711, for land taken by LL, citation here)

T – Turbine sues Atari ; also Turbine mentioned here

U – User Interface; usability From the always worthwhile Gamasutra, a daily read.

V-Voice Actors (voting to decline union’s recommendation for new agreement)

W-World of Warcraft (sues to close Wow Glider add-on as an illegal “bot”; Virtually Blind still your best source)

X – Xbox; 1 million Xbox users banned

Y – Youth market; youth endangered

Z- Zynga (sues former developer for trade secrets)

My apologies to “bots”, “Lords of the Rings Online”, “virtual goods”, and others for the 26-sided tyrrany and limitations of the alphabet. Additions and corrections welcome; but if you think this type of a list is easy (complete with relevant links) try just doing a list with household goods.

Gamers Rights News

jaymoffitt — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:29:17 +0000

A listing of Gamers Rights articles in the gaming media.

An article on Skewed and Reviewed with ECA president Hal Halpin. I’m not familiar with this Website but the article seemed to be balanced and informative.

Nearly a Million X-box users banned from X-box Live, according to an article on Redorbit.com

Excellent article about a Facebook group advocating the Gamer’s Voice

Is Easy Play an Entitlement? asks Game by Night.

Please feel free to contribute any other articles on this subject via comment.

October links

jaymoffitt — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:07:40 +0000

October Roundup

Part I: Important Papers

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research; don’t make me pick just one article.
If you were to FORCE me to, though, check out Piracy vs. Control: Models of Virtual World Governance and Their Impact on Player and User Experience, Melissa de Zwart, University of South Australia. It follows the extremely relevant question of what if the control of virtual worlds is too much; let the players play! Read the whole article, it makes great points and raises good questions.

Protecting Children in Virtual Worlds Without Undermining Their Economic, Educational, and Social Benefits, by Robert J Bloomfield, Benjamin Duranske; in Washington and Lee Law Review, Vol. 66, 2009. It covers the latest regulations and of course the “balancing act” between fun and societal control. My favorite quote, “As children spend more of their time in virtual worlds—for endeavors like work, education, and engagement with social, cultural and civic affairs— they are bound to find opportunities to develop romantic attachments that carry our society to the next generation.” It has many facets of the regulations protecting children, and wisely does not just focus on the more salacious aspects, as a mainstream media article often does.

And outside the States, but still important, Virtual Consumption OK, I admit I’ve just skimmed it, but it is longer than Catcher in the Rye (248 pages). It’s meticulously written, and with a detailed table of contents, so this is a good primer for why real people buy virtual goods. Citation listed as Vili Lehdonvirta (2009). Virtual Consumption. Publications of the Turku School of Economics, A-11:2009, Turku.

Part II Important posts I found this month that couldn’t fit a definite topic:

Iowa State Study finds high volume video gamers have more difficulty staying attentive. A study relating ADD and high volume video game players.

Born to Rhun is a great thought piece about mods, developers, and Tolkien’s Middle Earth. And it is also focused on one of my favorite underrated topics concerning games; FUN!

AR Wave: Layers and Channels of Social Augmented Experiences; great article and interview. My favorite quote is “Having these invisible aspects of the world made visible would create ways to improve sustainability, social equity, urban management, energy efficiency, public health, and allow communities to understand and become active participants in the ecosystems and infrastructure of their neighborhoods.” It seems a very good goal, but is Google, and the rest of the augmented reality industry, further marginalizing the contributions or opinions of those not plugged in to the internet?

5 Ways to Know You’re in a Virtual World

Sociology and Virtual Worlds, talking about digital anthropology.

Part III: Cool tools

Frenzoo is a new free avatar creator that can be customized, a little cooler than any I’ve seen.

Game Crafters (Like Cafe Press, except for Board Game ideas)

This is a tool to get copyright info for photo citations.

Death of an Avatar

jaymoffitt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:17:53 +0000

What happens to your online world when your real-life world ends? When you give it up by choice, or through circumstances such as disability, or even worse, death?

This is not a long, dry exposition on the intricacies of estate law. Heck, there’s not enough case law out there to do a seminar or a paper about this subject. Here’s just a couple of talking points to get your mind thinking about your own personal online experience and how you want to protect your interests, pass on your interests, or wind up your online life in case of the worst.

A good article at Massively about the possibility of an MMO Will and Testament.

CNN has a very good thought piece about the different options available to protect your online legacy. My favorite quote, “Assuming the site is handled with respect, virtual memorials respond to a basic human need to remember our deceased family, friends and colleagues,” said Robert M. Fells, general counsel for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association.”Based on our members’ feedback, I’d have to say that virtual memorial sites are gaining popularity with the public as a very practical alternative to being present at the grave site,” he added. “There’s nothing ‘weird’ about them as far as we have seen.”

World of Warcraft had a very interesting discussion in one of the forums about accounts after the death of the account-holder.

Digital Immortality and Death 2.0; Article on PSFK. Amazing quote, “To further complicate matters, while the space continues to evolve at an accelerated rate, the legal system struggles to keep pace, leading to a current situation where notions of who exactly owns these digital assets – individuals or sites – remains unclear. Though you may have spent the last 20 years building your character’s dominance in the dungeons and on the battlefields of World of Warcraft, if you never pass along your login information to anyone who can carry on your legacy, what then?”

An amazing article about the symmetries between a life in Second Life and the real-life story of a player. Like all good writing, the article makes you feel like a voyeur for reading, but somehow freed up with the insight of the article. A haunting quote is “Not only were people commodifying themselves, but their commodification had a long tail. Their inner personal lives would remain product for the platform owners long after they had passed on.” You can read the Second Life Terms of Support here discussing serious issues.

Other games are taking it a step farther. Mindark is working on virtual wills for its game Entropia.

Here are a last couple of links about Virtual legacy, one is a project to preserve the legacy, and another finally a Goodbye to this article.

Developer’s Corner, more than just a game

jaymoffitt — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:18:52 +0000

Today’s post is: we’ll get a lawyer when we have a dispute… why bother beforehand!

Back in the Game, Great article about when your hobby becomes your Job

Working out the legal issues is important because virtual worlds are becoming more mainstream. Sony Online Entertainment said that its Free Realms virtual world drew more than a million users in its first 17 days. World of Warcraft has 12 million users. Linden Lab’s Second Life had 732,526 unique users in the first quarter, up 25 percent from a year ago. Nexon’s MapleStory has 92 million members worldwide, including 6 million members in North America. Virtual worlds raised $594 million in venture money in 2008, and there are more than 200 virtual worlds for kids in the works.

Forbes has a recent authoritative ariticle on the worth of virtual worlds, saying ” the worldwide virtual “goods” economy, which some are calling Virtual Street, is estimated at about $5 billion right now”.

A Screen Digest article touches on the longterm growth of virtual worlds. The most provocative quote is “overall, the outlook for subscription-based MMOGs remains positive over the next five years. By 2013, we expect the subscription market to top $2bn in consumer spending and for it to maintain its role as a key business model for monetisation alongside micro-transactions.”

Virtual Worlds News predicts 400 million to be spent on virtual goods. A highlight of the article is “(Viximo founder) Balfour values the global market for virtual goods in 2009 at $5.5 billion”.

Clickz has some updated Virtual Worlds figures, saying “by 2010, the online game market is expected to reach $4.4 billion, up from $1.1 billion in revenues last year. That figure is based on interviews and estimates of different segments of the game industry including publishers, distribution services, casual Web-based services, and also derivative revenue like in-game advertising and commodity exchange.”

I want to conclude by pointing out some disparities in these figures, and to define some terms. These raw figures incorporate different types of income, and thus must be further broken down. A value in “virtual goods” is from those services and products sold in-game to enhance the game experience. A virtual good can be bought in a free-to-play game or a subscription-based game. We’ll look at “game models” in a different post, where we talk about the different risks in either subscription-based or free-to-play.

Jay Moffitt is a TN attorney. The statements here are not legal advice, and no attorney/client relationship is created. Jay Moffitt claims no certification in this specialty, and TN does not offer a certification in this area of law. Copyright, Jay Moffitt, 2009. Comments are welcomed and will be answered promptly and courteously.

Virtual world articles of Merit – Must Reads

jaymoffitt — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:13:25 +0000

Virtual Worlds are now meaning real money, here’s some of the latest articles.

Fairfield, Joshua,The Magic Circle(November 19, 2008). Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, 2009; Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2008-45. (Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1304234)

Synopsis listed as: The article concludes that although real-world law cannot reasonably be excluded from virtual worlds, game gods and players can control the interface between law and virtual worlds through their agreements, customs, and practices.

Grimmelmann, James Taylor Lewis,Virtual World Feudalism. Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, Vol. 118, p. 126, 2009 ; NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08/09 #24. (Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1331602)

Stated synopsis: The similarity between ownership of land in feudal England and in Second Life suggests that offline courts should protect user interests in virtual items, gradually, without treating them as full-blown modern “property.”

A little less scholarly:

Latest Spending figures from Virtual Worlds News indicate that In 2009, an estimated $400 million to $600 million will be spent on virtual goods in the United States, and 5.5 billion worldwide.

“Latest report from Screen Digest reveals reveals that the subscription-based MMOG market grew by 22% in 2008 and reached consumer spending levels of $1.4 billion in North America and Europe.” The report also specifically states that “With a 58% share of Western consumer spending on subscription MMOGs and over $2.2 billion in cumulative spending on subscriptions since the beginning of 2005, World of Warcraft remains dominant in the market.”

September report from Gamedaily states that “a new study conducted by the market researchers at VGMarket and PlaySpan says that freetoplay now accounts for half of all digital goods transactions.” Of course this deals with the new browser-based games termed “freemium”, where you can register and play for free, but upgrades to profiles, clothing, and virtual objects are purchases as an extra, but optional, service.

Jay Moffitt is a TN attorney. This blog does not constitute legal advice, and does not create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified in this area of law, and TN does not offer a certification in this area of law.