Unit 13: Understanding the Games Industry
Ethical
"We as an industry do have a moral responsibility," says Peter Molyneux, CEO of Lionhead Studios and creator of hits from Black and White to Fable. "Anyone who does something for a mass market has a responsibility. You tread carefully on the lessons that you teach. That line that 'if a game is fun, it is okay'-that sounds trivial. If it is obvious this is an artificial world and you can't do these things in real life, then that is more acceptable. But if it parades itself as a real world, you have to be careful about that." Ethics for media like games is interpretive, for some a game is a chance at external fun or experiences whereas others view it as a extension of reality leaving a lasting impact behind.
(https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130594/ethics_of_game_design.php)
It has been found that only 22% of games developers are female, which clearly outlines the gender separation of the games industry, it has been said that reasons for this include the entry requirements being technology or mathematically related which are often male dominated or, biased fears that the games industry isn't 'safe' for females. In recent years effects to improve this lead to a gain of 15% in the past 5 years.
One large scale ethical issue is loot-boxes which killed the player base for Star Wars Battlefront II, as EA had pay-to-win loot-boxes which was then announce to be the worst issue of the year. Despite this, games such as Overwatch and Rocket League have continued to use loot-box without significant repercussion.
Contractual
A contract is an agreement that binds responsibilities, whether it's between developers and publishers or a non-disclosure agreement between developers or early access users. It covers obligations and responsibilities such as royalties, contracted times as well as plans and licenses. A non-disclosure agreement binds confidentiality to trade secrets until at least a go ahead is given by the contract, a recent scenario of this would be Blizzard, who set an NDA for beta testers on the most recent event, in which a breach ended up going to court.
Many games, often online ones, have end user license agreement these are often used so that the developer can close the online servers, as in prevents the binding that the user would have paid for online capabilities as well, the terms of service also does this however, also binds behaviour when in the game. Other EULA's contain disclosure limitations or a standard of rules such as no illegal distribution. However, Tales of Berseria's EULA specifically stated that there is no binding and the user gains all rights to their specific copy of the game.
When outsourcing resources or working with publishers, contracts will often inform the licensee of the rights they gain, what can be done with the license such as territory or non-competitive binding. The term or length of contract, in which deadlines or, for publishers, end of distributional rights. A contract would end with expenses the amount a publisher will pay or the amount outsourced developers would be paid.
Legal
The copyright law protects tangible work developed by an individual or group and therefore, a contract must be agreed upon for publishers to develop products derivative of the product. It cannot, however, protect ideas such as jumping and breaking blocks or turn based gameplay for example.
Intellectual Property allows you to protect ideas created by you such as characters and their designs another way to legally protect your work is trademarking which can be used to protect incomparable or distinct work such as, titles or story-lines.
For the creation of games, there are a few regulations are imposed by the government these apply to both the product and the business so, health and safety would also come under this. Compliance to this is a must as it would result in legal punishment otherwise.
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