Comments on: Video Games & Innovation

By: Michael Pohoreski

Michael Pohoreski — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:33:39 +0000

I’m a PC / PS2 / Wii Game Dev:
IP has _nothing_ to do with creating a _GOOD_ game, aside from creating a “theme” that is to identify with.

Open Source games fail because lack of
a) Game Designers who know what they are doing — even many commercial designers are clueless on such basics as “Dead Time”
b) Lack of Quality Art (Textures, Models, Animation) and Audio
c) Lack of a _Good_ 3D Engine
d) Lack of _Good_ tools to build the engine

P.S.
Could you include the game name under each screenshot

By: nelziq

nelziq — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 21:35:30 +0000

Interesting question. One might argue that copyrights in the the video game industry cause and excessive amount of resources developing game and graphic engines without innovating in the gameplay dimension. Much of the cost of creating theses games goes into the copyrightable part (artwork and graphics software) that could easily be reused in a world without copyright. Meanwhile gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted and therefore receive little attention. As many modders and amatuer developers can tell you, building a game by modding an exisitng game engine (i.e. Half-Life, Civilization, etc) is low cost undertaking. I have been especially impressed with the amatuer modifications to Rome: Total War. They are often far superior in quality to the original game and have much higher production values.

By: Lewis Baumstark

Lewis Baumstark — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:14:06 +0000

I think a big part of the reason that video games aren’t brought up by DMCA critics is that video games are inherently closed system.

I would agree that they are inherently closed (especially for the reasons you state), but don’t forget that, unlike the music and movie industries which are working like gangbusters to lock their platforms up, the video game companies are more than happy to open their platforms to users. They recognized early on that allowing user-created mods was a huge win for promoting and selling their products.

By: Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:08:22 +0000

I think part of the problem is that many people don’t consider video games culture/art. There’s not a sense that something vital is at stake in locking down video games as there is with music, video or text. The forward looking debates about video games impact on the public sphere tend to focus on the games themselves as public spaces, not on the status of the content within the games/of the games themselves.

I don’t think the images are really the test, though they made for a beautiful post. They suggest a key difference between video games and other creative areas: the barriers to entry–the cost of the hardware and software necessarily to create/modify such environments–are much higher than for other media.

And don’t you have to talk about the industry’s relation to game mods at some point? Flexibility with IP rights can be useful–and financially beneficial–for game creators.

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:38:02 +0000

I think a big part of the reason that video games aren't brought up by DMCA critics is that video games are inherently closed system. It would be nonsensical to try to make, say, Halo 2 interoperable with World of Warcraft. So although I don't think the DMCA is especially helpful to innovation in the video game industry, I think my criticism of the DMCA is much weaker than in other types of products where interoperability is much more important. There are some interesting copyright issues related to video games, though. The Accolade, Connectix, and BNetD cases are all important precedents in the law of reverse engineering and fair use, and they all related to the video game industry. And the legal status of mod chips and XBox hacks are obviously a current source of controversy.