Video games and marriage

So, is your husband, wife, significant other “cool” with your gaming? How about the ex-wife? Thought so.
Yeah, it happens a lot. One has to decide between your clan and your marriage. This post is to alert you to some stories, anecdotes, and resources to help you save your true love (or [...]

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Danger in Online Worlds

FTC’s report on adult content in online worlds
A full story from PC Mag says report claims adult content still viewable by children, despite precautions. Notably, “It is far too easy for children and young teens to access explicit content in some of these virtual worlds,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. ”
One [...]

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AtoZVirtualWorlds

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 [...]

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Banned in Videogames – a Brief History

Today’s article is MAINLY about lifetime, universal, or at last long-term banning.
Let’s break down the component parts first of all. No discussion of legal terms is complete without a glossary, so I’m going to give you the abridged version. There will also be a referral for outside reading to understand the history [...]

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Visually-impaired gamer sues Sony

Sony is being sued again, this time it is a visually-impaired gamer who does not feel he is getting proper support from the gaming company. You can also read a report at Gamepolitics.Here are a couple of articles with different viewpoints of the case.
From the Website Ablegamers (for challenged gamers of all types)
This comment [...]

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Developers Corner (Facebook Social games and fraud)

Facebook is facing up to the veiled and sometimes direct accusations of fraud and deception in some of their games.
Here is the response from the Facebook developer’s blog. The main notable quote for me is that “In addition to steps we’ve taken to build teams and technologies devoted to this issue and continual [...]

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EULApalooza

That’s right, I said it.
Mysteriously, most of the sites that list EULAs that I use as reference have dropped away over the past year or so.
All of these EULAs that I am sending your way are off the publisher’s front page, no deep-linking, and no commentary at all. Enjoy and use this as a resource [...]

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Updates, important Updates

Here are some important legal updates on stories I’ve talked about the last 90 days.
World of Warcraft is shut down in China once again by government authority. Here’s the full story at gamasutra. The most telling information is that even in a government as centralized as China there is sometimes a lack of [...]

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Death of an Avatar

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 [...]

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Virtual worlds for Education

A good starting point for understanding Virtual Worlds in Education is this NPR interview that is found at Gamepolitics.
The funding money is beginning to be there. It was recently announced that the University of Texas will be using 16 disciplines in Second Life. The details are that “A new, one-year project will [...]

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