For such a juicy situation, the online debate about Infinity Ward has been pretty dull. A summary, for those who haven’t been following along: 99.99% of people believe that Activision committed a grievous error and is clueless about the value of talent — the other 0.01% of people work for Activision. Either the wisdom of the crowds has revealed itself, or anyone who sympathizes with Activision has been unwilling to speak up for fear of being mocked.

It won’t surprise regular readers of this blog that I’m on the “pro talent” side of the debate. Making great games on a strict schedule is exceedingly hard, and anyone who can reliably manage a team to that end is probably worth their weight in gold. That said, there’s an interesting question to be asked here: if we take for granted that Jason & Vince were worth their weight in gold, is it possible that they were simply demanding “too much” compensation in their ongoing negotiations with Activision (i.e. all the gold, and more on top — leaving too little for Activision’s shareholders?) Or was Activision simply greedy and unappreciative?

I doubt that we’ll ever know the definitive answer to that question; the relevant facts seem unlikely to become public knowledge. And since Activision has bungled the removal of Jason and Vince so badly that most of Infinity Ward’s senior leadership has already decided to jump ship, this situation will almost certainly end poorly for the company. Activision’s shareholders can’t possibly be well-served by the crippling of the company’s marquee studio. But hypothetically speaking, if Activision had managed to retain most of IW’s lieutenants and other employees, would it still have been a terrible mistake to drive away Jason and Vince?

I’m inclined to believe that, yes, it was a terrible mistake. That said, research on this topic is all over the map. On one hand, there’s plenty of data to support the value of star performers like Jason and Vince. Some very famous companies, like Pixar, have very publicly attributed their great performance to the leadership of one or two key stars at the helm of each production. And Pixar has obviously served its shareholders very well.

On the other hand, multiple academic studies have indicated that in Hollywood, top-tier stars tend to consume all of the value they generate (in economic lingo, “stars capture their economic rent.”) A recent study by Anita Elberse of Harvard Business School went further, claiming that when film studios employ top-tier stars, their financial valuation does not significantly increase (financial valuation being the only metric that shareholders ultimately care about.)

Film production and game development are obviously very different beasts, so it’s unclear to what extent the experiences of Pixar or other film studios are relevant to the game industry. It’s also unclear that we can compare “stars” like Jason and Vince to “stars” like Tom Hanks, as they play very different roles (if you’ll pardon the pun.) Nevertheless, it’s unquestionably true that game development, like film production, is a complex team effort – Tom Hanks couldn’t make Castaway by himself or with a weak supporting team.

So, to rephrase my earlier question: as more individual game developers become celebrities (which seems to be the direction in which our industry is slowly tracking), will video game publishers begin to look like Hollywood studios and find themselves at the financial mercy of their stars? Or will video game publishers find a way to become like Pixar and thrive hand-in-hand with their star creative talent?

Time will tell. But I’ll say this: I’m glad that I don’t work for the average game publisher. ;-)

It’s been a while since any given news story caused five different people to spontaneously email me. The latest story to do so is the Techcrunch exposé of scam artists who are working through the popular lead generation services (such as Offerpal) that are used by most major social gaming companies.

The story has already inspired quite a few responses, such as these thoughtful articles by Andrew Chen and Justin Smith, and this entirely predictable response by Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga.

My quick two cents: have the lead generation services (and therefore the social gaming companies, and therefore Facebook itself) benefited from the behavior of scam artists? Yes, absolutely. Should the lead generation services immediately do something to address the problem (and if not them, then the social gaming companies or Facebook itself?) Yes, absolutely. Does Facebook “deserve to be sued”, as one of my good friends suggested to me? No, it does not. Does this whole thing prove that social games are a house of cards? I highly doubt it.

Facebook is a popular open ecosystem, and like any other popular open ecosystem, it will be exploited from time to time by unethical people. There is always the argument that Facebook “could be doing more” to police the ecosystem (and in fact, it had already announced a plan to do precisely that as part of larger changes to the platform) but at the end of the day you simply cannot compare Facebook to the Playstation, to Wal-mart, or to any other closed ecosystem. Facebook has an essentially unlimited number of “content partners,” and while it should keep a close eye on the biggest of those partners, it is inevitable that some shadiness will eventually slip past the Facebook Police.

Sony and Wal-mart, on the other hand, have the advantage (and the great burden!) of controlling everything that enters their virtual and/or physical shelves… and they have much smaller shelves. So while I hope that Facebook will indeed do a better job of catching scams in the future, I don’t blame it, and in fact I hope it chooses to emphasize crowdsourcing techniques (i.e. better enabling users to flag and stifle abusive 3rd parties) as much as expanded police squads.

The social gaming companies turned a blind eye to their part in this problem, and now they are catching flack as they deserve. But this will blow over, and lead generation will likely continue to represent a significant percentage of their ongoing revenue. Why? Because at the end of the day, there are legitimate advertisers, content providers, and 3rd party networks with a vested interest in the success of this model. These aren’t all late-night, 1-800-type con-men; these are advertisers like Netflix, FTD, and GAP and product/service providers like Apple, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. The only “house of cards” here is the house that Tattoo Media built.

By now, most of you have read about the serious flare-up ignited by Mike Capps at the IGDA Leadership Forum. (For those that haven’t — Mike is CEO of Epic and formerly a board member of the IGDA, and he made some comments which sounded like he was endorsing crunch time and, some would argue, putting down people who reject crunch time.) This has already been covered extensively by the press and debated by prominent IGDA members, so I’m not going to discuss it in depth. I’ll simply say that it’s fair to accuse Mike of being careless with his words, especially given his position in the industry and in the IGDA, but it’s also probably not fair to brand Mike a “management dickhead” or to equate Epic with EA during the “EA Spouse controversy” days. Epic is not EA, and Mike is not someone who views employees as expendable resources. (Epic’s employees don’t seem to feel horribly unappreciated, either; according to Mike, Epic’s voluntary turnover rate averaged around 1.1% from 2006 to 2008. For reference, average tech industry turnover rates, pre-recession, were approximately 20%. Anything below 5% was considered shockingly good for a company with more than 50 employees.)

So anyway, I’m going to sidestep the question of whether or not the IGDA should be taking a hard stand on quality of life issues (which, to be clear, are a big deal to me — I’ve never appreciated our industry’s dismissive attitude towards work-life balance.) That is, frankly, a much less important question than this: what exactly is the IGDA supposed to stand for, and who does it represent?

All for one, or one for all?

Greg Costikyan, one of the smarter and more outspoken figures in our industry, has clearly expressed his opinion: the IGDA exists to serve individual developers — aka individual employees and independents — not managers or corporations as a whole. But it’s currently unclear whether that is actually true. The very phrase “game developers” is ambiguous (does it refer to people or entities dedicated to game development, or both?) More importantly, a significant percentage of IGDA memberships and revenue come from “studio affiliates” — companies that pay a fee to support the IGDA and, in doing so, acquire automatic membership for all their employees in the process. Take a look at the affiliate list and try to guess how the IGDA rolls might shrink if most affiliates decided that the IGDA existed only to support individuals, not entities. For that matter, ask yourself how you, as IGDA executive director or as board member, might react to any given controversy knowing that the IGDA currently depends on affiliates for a significant percentage of its funding and, perhaps to some limited extent, for legitimacy.

How do other professional associations operate?

As far as I can tell (having admittedly just performed a quick search of their websites), neither the American Medical Association nor the American Bar Association encourage membership via for-profit affiliates. The ABA affiliate list contains not a list of dues-paying law firms, but a list of organizations such as the “ABA Museum of Law” and “American Bar Foundation”. These associations, which I’m sure have endured worse controversies than the one currently afflicting the IGDA, seem likely to be less conflicted as a result. Of course, it’s totally unfair to compare the IGDA to the AMA or ABA; the latter have existed for ages, are much larger, and represent powerful and pervasive professions that exert tremendous influence on society.

Where does the IGDA go from here?

If one takes for granted that the IGDA should derive its funding and authority from individual professionals as opposed to entities (not a given, but certainly the direction in which I personally lean), then the obvious and most important question becomes: how can the IGDA attract enough individual members and funding to legitimately pursue its agenda in the eyes of our industry and the world at large? I suspect that the answer primarily involves two things: 1) more attractive member benefits, and 2) more proactive engagement with the public, the press, and government bodies.

Today, someone might be forgiven for thinking she has little reason to join the IGDA. Our industry’s most prestigious publications and conferences are operated by other organizations. Government lobbying is coordinated primarily by the ESA. And the IGDA’s membership benefits (such as discounts on notable products and services) are relatively limited in scope. These are the things that typically define most professional organizations. These are the issues that the IGDA really needs to address in the near future if it hopes to grow, in size and importance, independent of studio affiliates.

Of course, all this is much easier said than done, and I believe that the IGDA Board of Directors has already been thinking about these issues for a long time. I also think that criticism of the Board has been unreasonably harsh (but rather than defend the Board, I’ll refer you to posts by Bob Bates and Tom Buscaglia, two guys for whom I have tremendous respect. Bob, in particular, is one of the nicest persons I have ever met — the kind of guy who will patiently sit down and chat helpfully with anyone… even young, opinionated, wanna-be-game-devs like I once used to be. *grin*) Long story short, I don’t pretend that I have all the answers, and I certainly wouldn’t accuse the IGDA of failing to recognize the obvious. I just thought it would be useful to point out that this whole quality of life debate is merely a symptom of a much larger and more significant issue.

I’m not as passionate as some people are about video game reviews (and how flawed they may or may not be.) I think there’s clearly room for improvement in the way the average review is conducted, but I also think that the answer to the problem will come in the form of review sites that cater to specific audiences; i.e. the 30+ crowd, or the socially-conservative crowd, etc. That said, I would like to express the opinion that all review sites, in general, should be careful how they incorporate “lasting appeal” into their scoring system.

The inspiration for this post comes from the IGN review of Braid. I’m absolutely not complaining about it — the review was positive and enthusiastic, and the reviewer did exactly what they were supposed to do within the particular constraints of the IGN review system. But IGN’s final score is one of the lowest given to Braid, apparently because Braid lacks “lasting appeal” — one of IGN’s five primary review criteria. IGN appears to define “lasting appeal” as a combination of sufficient game length and replayability. So how about it… does Braid really lack “lasting appeal?”

Does The Godfather Have “Lasting Appeal?”

Before you answer that question, ask yourself this: do films like The Godfather and The Empire Strikes Back have “lasting appeal?” It doesn’t take long to watch them, and once you’ve done so, you’ve seen everything there is to see. Nevertheless, I’ve watched both of those movies more times than I can count. And I’m fairly certain that despite having solved its puzzles, I’ll come back to Braid at some point, even if many years down the line (when I’ve forgotten most of the solutions!) I’ll also be loading Braid every time a friend who hasn’t played it drops by (much the same way I’ve chosen to re-watch great movies that I’m already “finished with” when friends who haven’t seen them drop by.)

Is “Lasting Appeal” Even Relevant?

Perhaps that argument doesn’t sway you. If not, ask yourself another question: how much money are you willing to spend for an hour of uninterrupted, high-quality entertainment? I know that’s not an entirely fair question; after all, everything is relative when it comes to price and consumption. (Just because you’re willing to spend $10 for a two-hour movie doesn’t mean you will be willing to spend $10 for a two-hour game.) Nevertheless, if Braid gives you three to six hours of great entertainment for $15, isn’t that a reasonably good deal in and of itself? Does it even matter if you never touch the game again?

For a young person with lots of free time and very little cash to spend, perhaps the answer is “yes.” But for someone with little free time, many obligations, and other interests besides gaming (i.e., most of my friends) replayability is a minor concern at best. Such people want to have fun, experience new gameplay and new narratives, and then move on to other things. They — that is we — don’t care about IGN’s definition of “lasting appeal.”

Full Circle

Which leads me back to my original point: the answer to the problem with reviews is more focused review sites that cater to specific target audiences. Many such sites already exist, but don’t necessarily have the legitimacy of an IGN or 1UP. We in the industry need to make an effort to identify the best of these sites and embrace them, so that they are not at a disadvantage relative to the old traditional standbys, and so that they can eventually attract a large enough audience to help change the way we all think about games — for the better.

I just finished reading Ernest Adams’ latest Gamasutra article, “Damn All Gameplay Patents!” It’s a well-intentioned piece that argues passionately against gameplay (as opposed to technology) patents, and contends that developers should not pursue them under any circumstances. I genuinely appreciate the sentiment that drove Ernest to write this article and agree with much of it, but I feel that some nuance is in order. Consider the following:

Patents are Somewhat Like Nuclear Weapons

In many ways, gameplay patents are like nuclear weapons. They’re expensive to develop, and they engender feelings of fear and mistrust. Put plainly, most of us would prefer to live in a world without them.

Unfortunately, like nuclear weapons, many gameplay patents already exist and are in the hands of many different owners. No matter how passionately we write, those owners will not simultaneously and universally revoke their patents tomorrow. Which means that some companies have nuclear weapons (I mean, patents)… and some don’t.

And just like in the real world, asking the countries without nuclear weapons to avoid developing them rarely works — even with economic perks or threats as incentive. More often than not, the countries that couldn’t afford to develop nukes anyway, or that don’t feel threatened, play along, while those that can/do proceed with development. Witness India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Playing Chicken

Of course, Ernest anticipates this reaction. He quotes others who have argued: “patents are here to stay, and anyone who is serious about business had better make use of them before his competitors do” and retorts “this aggressive view is founded upon an assumption that patent legislation and US Patent and Trademark Office policy will not change. They may very well be wrong about that. Pressure is building on Congress for major patent reform.”

1) I’ve never heard of a good business strategy that was based on action Congress “might” take, especially when the timeline for that action was unknown, and especially when waiting meant putting yourself at risk.

2) Who says you need to “use” your patents?

Returning to my nuclear analogy, the “nice” thing about nukes (if one can say such a thing) is that, when everybody has them, nobody uses them. (Well, at least to date. We could still end up roasting in a global inferno.)

Companies with the financial resources necessary to secure gameplay patents can take the high ground, and do the right thing for their shareholders and employees, by getting patents but refusing to aggressively use them against other companies. (Nobody is forcing you to police your gameplay patents — but at least other companies will be less likely to come after you for violating their gameplay patents, given the possibility that you might retaliate.) But again, small developers really can’t afford to develop a large patent library, so this advice isn’t terribly useful to them.

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Ernest cites an article on patents by my friend David Sirlin, calling it “by far the best Gamasutra article on the subject.” But I think Ernest may have misinterpreted a key portion of the article. David wrote “There’s no hope of reform coming from companies adopting different behavior. Companies are merely playing the game with the broken rules presented to them. Reform must come from lawmakers who restructure the rules of the patent office.” This is a resounding echo of the point I’m trying to make — companies cannot be expected to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with the (broken) rules of the business environment in which they operate. It just doesn’t make sense for them.

This is a prisoner’s dilemma. And in a prisoner’s dilemma, it’s pretty clear what happens to the nice guy who acts “on principle” when he can’t necessarily trust everyone else in the group. You guessed it — he finishes last. I certainly won’t pretend the more likely outcome is satisfying. In a prisoner’s dilemma, everyone suffers somewhat — the ideal outcome can only be achieved by everyone playing nice, which rarely happens. There are too many companies in the game industry, and too many of those already have nukes.

Productive steps forward

Ernest wraps up with the following: “The only way a gameplay patent can make someone rich is by patent trolling — waiting for some party to innocently infringe on the patent and then suing them. And that’s not a way that I want to see this industry going. Our creativity is already under threat from enough directions without us terrorizing each other into mediocrity with the threat of lawsuits.”

I don’t want to see the industry go down this route, either. Gameplay patents almost certainly do hinder innovation (I won’t get into debate over whether or not they technically should exist. They do exist today, and that’s all there is to it.) So here’s what I’d suggest — and to be clear, this is just my personal opinion, aka I do not speak for Microsoft:

1) The game industry, led by organizations such as the ESA and IGDA, should band together and lobby for changes to patent law. That is something individual companies can do, as part of a whole, without undue risk to themselves.

2) The largest game companies should join together and announce they they will only litigate gameplay patents in a defensive manner; i.e. if someone sues them for gameplay patent infringement, they are free to fully retaliate, now or in the future. Otherwise, they will refrain from legal action. This would hopefully help reduce some of the dampening effects that current patents have on creativity.

Obviously, this plan isn’t perfect, but it’s a start, and it feels less hopelessly idealistic to me than a passionate cry for companies to refrain from getting patents altogether. Thoughts?

As I mentioned several months back, my friend Ethan Mollick and I are writing a book tentatively titled For Fun and Profit: How Games are Transforming the Business World. As our publisher’s deadline approaches, I’d like to occasionally bounce early draft excerpts off of you all in hopes of getting useful feedback. And, to be honest, I find it difficult to maintain this blog and write my book simultaneously, so I’m cheating a little bit. :-)

My first draft excerpt has nothing to do with business, per se. It tackles the thorny issue of games and violence. Ethan and I feel that we cannot ignore this issue if we want our book to be taken seriously by a broad range of readers. But we also don’t want to get mired in the issue — after all, there are so many other things we need to cover! So we’ve tried to be brief, clear, and to the point. Tell me: did we succeed in getting the point across?

Games and Violence

Games have been criticized as “excessively violent” for decades. Such criticism first reached fever pitch in 1992, when a popular game called Mortal Kombat enabled players to gruesomely slay an opponent by, for example, ripping off his head and holding it in the air while the spine dangled below. At the time of its release, Mortal Kombat was considered visually stunning, but its graphics pale in comparison to those of modern games. As the graphical fidelity of video games has improved, various social, professional, and governmental organizations, as well as high-profile politicians like Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, have expressed increasing concern over the potential impact of “realistic” interactive violence on children. These fears have been intensified by reports from organizations such as the American Psychological Association, which have claimed to link violent games to increased aggression inside and outside the laboratory¹.

These criticisms have been rebutted by a variety of prominent independent academics and organizations. Most notably, the American Sociological Association (ASA) and British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) recently issued reports that seem highly supportive of the video game industry. The ASA noted that in the 10 years following the release of games such as Doom and Mortal Kombat, homicide arrest rates among juveniles fell by 77%², an especially notable figure given that videogame usage skyrocketed during the same timeframe. More notably, the ASA found that much of the research employed against video games had decontextualized violence. In the words of the report, “Poverty, neighborhood instability, unemployment, and even family violence fall by the wayside in most of these studies. Ironically, even mental illness tends to be overlooked in this psychologically oriented research. Young people are seen as passive media consumers, uniquely and uniformly vulnerable to media messages.” Likewise, after performing its own extensive research study, the BBFC found that, “far from having a potentially negative impact on the reaction of the player, the very fact that they have to interact with the game seems to keep them more firmly rooted in reality. People who do not play games raise concerns about their engrossing nature, assuming that players are also emotionally engrossed. This research suggests the opposite; a range of factors seems to make them less emotionally involving than film or television.” This conclusion – that video games might actually exert less influence on aggression than film or television – is especially remarkable in light of the importance and charter of the organization that produced it.

But perhaps the most important argument against critics of violence in games is simply that games have a prominent rating system, much like movies do. That rating system can be used by parents to filter the games they are comfortable exposing their children to, an acceptable solution given that 90% of games are purchased by adults over the age of 18.³

¹ http://www.apa.org/releases/videogames.html
² http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Winter07ContextsFeature.pdf
³ http://www.theesa.ca/facts-gameviolence.html

A hot topic among game designers today is: should designers aspire to celebrity (of the kind possessed by famous movie directors and producers) and if so, how? Raph Koster frequently talks about this, and I believe his rationale is fairly solid. But Raph, who does a good job of reaching out to the community (via his book, press interviews, conferences, and blog), is still completely unknown to the vast majority of human beings who regularly play video games (much less humanity in general.) For that matter, even our most beloved industry icons (like Miyamoto) are basically unknown outside the enthusiast market.

Since I singled out Raph, I should note that he doesn’t always talk about individual celebrity. His use of the term seems to extend to corporate brands (i.e. what Rockstar aspires to in every regard, from their name to their products.) But it’s hard to turn a corporate brand into anything even remotely resembling a mega-celebrity brand (i.e. Steven Spielberg). Across all entertainment industries, there are few examples to aspire to.

So if a celebrity-level corporate brand is generally out of reach, and some of our most outspoken and engaged/engaging game designers are still unknown outside hardcore circles, what can be done to harness the celebrity power that designers and companies crave?

Is celebrity even attainable?

The first question we need to honestly ask ourselves is: is it even possible to be a “celebrity” (in the grand sense of the word) when non-casual games are still played by a relatively small percentage of the total population? Until we as an industry fully broaden the market, is the pursuit of celebrity a fool’s errand? I’d like to think that the answer is: “there’s still value in trying, if for no other reason than 20,000 die-hard fans might convince 100,000 other people to buy your game.” That said, it seems pretty clear that any attempts to attain celebrity will be severely handicapped until the state of the market changes. Fortunately, we (in the collective sense) appear to be moving in the right direction as of late!

It’s also worth recognizing that there are far more famous actors and actresses than directors/producers for a good reason. Actors are more visible, and our designers (like TV/film directors) will probably never be so visible. But that doesn’t mean they should remain nearly invisible.

Should we find our celebrities elsewhere?

The second question is: should we outsource? Bring in Steven Spielberg (done by EA.) Bring in Peter Jackson (done by Microsoft.) It’s a potentially good solution, but we don’t know how well it will work out for the game industry. More importantly, it isn’t scalable. Only a few companies can afford to harness this kind of talent, and we can’t grow as an industry if we depend on other industries for our stars (I’m assuming that TV and film create their own stars at least as often as they borrow stars from one another; I haven’t bothered to crunch the numbers.)

What can we learn from TV and film?

The third question is: how do we replicate the root causes of TV/film celebrity? Actors become famous because they are the most prominent aspect of their medium. Directors become famous because they appear in televised interviews, in bonus DVD footage, on the stage at the Oscars, etc.

We’ve started putting energy into our own award shows, so that’s a good start. But we’re doing a lousy job of getting our designers on mainstream TV and in mainstream magazines. No doubt that it’s harder to pitch CliffyB to Jay Leno than, say, Martin Scorsese. But with few exceptions, I suspect that we’re not even trying… and we should be.

We should also be bundling more live video bonus footage with our games, so fans have more opportunity to “meet” our designers. (Skeptics will say “nobody wants to see the pasty-skinned, sleep-deprived guys making games”, but come on… is Peter Jackson really that good looking? Is Kevin Smith?)

Can we find creative solutions to the problem?

The fourth question is: are there creative ways to generate celebrity? Random example: a few years ago, I saw a SimCity poster that included the cartoon likeness of Will Wright. It struck me as very cute — not overbearing in any way. So what if EA started embedding a Wright character in all his games? (Not necessarily front and center; it could be prominent, on the margins, or even just an easter egg in some cases.)

Our visibility is only limited by our imagination.

Do we even want to go down this road?

The final question is: do we even want more celebrities in our industry? Celebrity-status is great for the individual (unless they care at all about their privacy.) But celebrities tend to demand enormous compensation; they often draw a large percentage of the total profit from projects they work on (at least in TV and film). That’s a significant issue that shouldn’t be taken lightly. That said, celebrities can be an incredibly powerful tool for defending a medium when it is under attack, for spreading a medium to the farthest reaches of the globe, and for legitimizing a medium in general. So while I can’t say with certainty that the positives ultimately outweigh the negatives, I’m willing to assume that they probably do.

And that’s my take on the subject, which can be summarized as “worth trying, knowing that greater market forces will determine in large part how successful our efforts are.” What do you think?

Terra Nova just posted an article about a recent change in Second Life that has effectively devalued the property of many SL denizens. The article quotes a lawyer who cites established legal precedent to explain why Linden Lab (developer of SL) may be at legal risk in this (and related) matters. The basic argument: LL gave users good reason to think that some virtual land plots are worth more than others, so LL can be held liable for actions that devalue the land, no matter how many waivers users agree to when playing SL.

This is just one of the many unresolved legal issues popping up for MMOGs, and especially MMORPGs. I couldn’t find a good, succinct list online, so I’ve compiled one:

1. What happens when one player steals another player’s property?
2. What happens when players generate content that infringes upon the copyrights or trademarks of real-world companies? (Here’s an example other than City of Heroes). For that matter, what happens when one player copies another player’s work? Can they sue each other, and/or the developer?
3. What happens when players (especially underage players) engage in “legally indecent” acts? Can EA (developer of Sims Online) be sued for letting a ten-year old operate a virtual brothel? Can it be sued by players who suffer real financial damages at the hands of a virtual mafia?
4. Can developers be sued for impeding free market forces that generate real monetary value for players? (An especially interesting question, given that those forces are the key to many other potential liabilities on this list).
5. What forms of gambling are permissable in an MMOG? Is it really legal for me to play slots in Second Life, given that SL currency has real world value?
6. Do players have a right to free speech and expression? Can game EULAs contain (and developers enforce) a morals clause, like those in some employment contracts?
7. At what point (if any) does a developer become liable for failing to prevent players from harrassing other players? What constitutes sexual harrassment?
8. If virtual property has tangible value, how badly does a player need to violate a game’s EULA before a developer may evict them… without compensation for their virtual property?
9. Can players use legal means to prevent the deactivation of an MMOG, or to force developers to open source a game prior to deactivation? (i.e. to protect the value of their property?)

I wonder how long it will be before the first in-game court system pops up in an MMOG….

PS. If I’ve missed any notable legal demons, don’t hesitate to comment.

Eric Zimmerman has published a “Game Developers’ Bill of Rights” on Gamasutra.com. The bill is based on the Creator’s Bill of Rights, which was written for comic developers in 1988.

It begins with article #1: “The right to full ownership of what we fully create.” The other rights derive from this one, including final say over creative, distribution, licensing, and marketing matters. In other words, ultimate control.

Zimmerman quotes Greg Costikyan, who once argued that developers should retain the rights to their games “because they fucking should.” Points for succinctness, but not much else. In any industry, when you take money from an investor to fund an embryonic venture, the investor usually ends up owning the venture. There are two ways around this:

1. Fund the venture on your own to start, then negotiate for more control based on your initial, demonstrable success.
2. Become respected enough that you can negotiate for control rights from the very beginning of the venture process.

As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I wish things weren’t this way, but they are. Why not focus on practical solutions to developers’ problems? Working towards greater solidarity would be a good start. Support of digital distribution initiatives would be another.

Ultimately, a developer is free to negotiate their own deal — or to walk away from an “unacceptable” offer. A publisher that does business with an inexperienced developer is taking a big risk… which explains (however unsatisfyingly) their ownership demands. Do I think publishers abuse their control? In many cases, yes. Are they wrong to negotiate for ownership in the first place? Probably not.

• Full story
• Blast from the past: a response to the comic creator’s bill of rights