Reality Panic

A few times over the past couple of days, I’ve been asked to comment on piracy as it relates to games. In large part, this has been due to the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) recent press release stating “Recording Industry To Begin Collecting Evidence And Preparing Lawsuits Against File ‘Sharers’ Who Illegally Offer Music Online”. Be sure to check out the full press release and all of the comments from artists (I particularly like the comments from fellow Montrealer Sam Roberts).

Admittedly, the IGDA has not done much to address the issue of piracy.

Beyond the fact that effective anti-piracy work requires massive resources, it seems that piracy is not of huge concern to many developers (in part due to ignorance, in part due to economic reality).

Certainly, most creative types are less concerned about economic realities of piracy and are “rewarded” by knowing that x many more gamers are enjoying their creation, etc. Further, most developers do not necessarily see the negative repercussions of piracy. That is, it is a long standing truism that developers get paid their advance and never see a penny more. So, as long as they get their advance why do they need to be concerned about what happens after that (ie, it is the publisher’s problem). However, it is important to realize that this just means that publishers will generate less revenue and in turn will have limited funds to advance on new projects, etc…

Anyway, not saying that the IGDA or I agree with these views, and certainly I am oversimplifying/generalizing. But, the IGDA is more than happy to let the various publisher orgs (eg, ELSPA, IDSA, etc) continue to do the work they are doing.

From a developer’s point of view, I’d like to see more creative efforts going into thwarting piracy. A past article at Gamasutra is a good example at this: Keeping the Pirates at Bay: Implementing Crack Protection for Spyro: Year of the Dragon

If developers really saw piracy as an important problem and put their minds to task (the same way that they conquer challenges of poly throughput or memory optimization), I’d wager that we could put a real jam in piracy efforts (more so than scads of lawyers).

Further, I think the industry on the whole needs to look at new models of distribution and payment based on mechanisms that would encourage file-sharing and copying (ie, viral distribution). For an MMO-style game (or one that needs to connect to a server, or pay-per-play style games, etc) you want as many copies of the game out there as possible since you are not making your money on the actual game client…

But, again, it all comes down to where developers see things. And, current reality of the game industry is that it makes more sense for developers to worry about their polycount than their anti-cracking scheme.

The concept of a blog post on fantasy versus reality has been brewing in my head for the past several weeks. And, each new bit of news regarding violent video games adds more fuel to the fire.

Is it just me, or do statements such as the following just not make sense?

“…our state law is narrowly focused on the compelling state interest of protecting the safety of law enforcement officers and firefighters.”
- Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (in a Reuters news story)

Protecting their safety? How? Goodness, buying them better gas masks or stronger bulletproof vests, and paying for more/better training will do loads more than restricting access to games. Bottom line, there is zero proof that any game has caused real world violence. Zero. Sure, there’s some research that shows under certain conditions that a child may hit a bobo clown slightly more often (and other such silly research). But, projecting that onto truly violent and/or deliquent actions is highly questionable.

There’s a whole section on this notion of fantasy vs reality in Gerard Jones’ great book, Killing Monsters. It has been a while since I read the book, but the relevant part here is that as children grow/mature they are quite adept at determining what is real and what is not. However, adults’ uneasiness around make-believe violence (eg, play sword fights or cops&robbers), works against a child’s natural filters. Say your son is pretending to be a knight and is jumping around with a stick as a sword (he knows it is really a stick and he is not trying to hurt anyone, he’s just make-believe playing, etc). But, then walks in the parent and scolds the kid, gets mad at him for being dangerous and so on. The kid’s confused because he knows it was just a stick and he was just pretending - why would dad be so upset… Anyway, long story short, these natural grown-up tendencies mess with kids more so than any form of media consumption.

Jones goes on to discuss symbolic vs literal interpretation. It seems that most of gaming’s opponents simply cannot “read” beyond literal interpretations of games (or other media for that matter). When a politician _looks_ at GTA, they only see violence. They have no sense of what is really going on, the mechanics of the game, the moral choices being made, what that means to the player, how the player explores the possiblity space, what the themes mean, how they might be interepreted in different ways, etc, etc, etc.

When someone like Daphne White states:

“The cult of the Matrix pretends that there is deep spiritual meaning to the story. Yet the driving theme of the trilogy involves the Mother of All Battles (to save the Earth, of course), and “Matrix Reloaded” just treads water with vacuous dialogue and highly choreographed martial arts scenes. I shudder to think what kind of understanding of life kids will take into adulthood if we allow Tinseltown to market the ultra-violent “Matrix” to them as a spiritual epic.”
(from a Washington Post article)

I am dumbfounded. How ignorant can you be? There have been several books written on the very subject of interpreting the symbolic meanings and messages of the Matrix.

I’ve gotten a bit side-tracked, but I see this ability of symbolic interpretation as a key element of understanding games (and other media), let alone living a normal life. Further, I see this as part of the same kernel that relates to interpretations of what is “real”, or not.

Among other sources, the recent book on games and learning talks about this to some extent (and in general, puts games in a very positive light).

It would be interesting if our opponents ever read any of the books - let alone played any games…

I went to see the Hulk movie on Friday. It was quite enjoyable, despite an incomprehensible final battle… I was eager to see how Ang Lee (of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Sense & Sensibility fame) would approach a comic-based movie. As many reviews have pointed out, the Hulk is the “deepest” movie of the comic-movie genre. I find this quite ironic, given that the Hulk is the most “brainless” character in comics… Anyway. What I also found interesting was that the Hulk was the most comic-like of all the comic-based movies. That is, it used multiple panels, and various other camera/effect work to given the viewer some sensation of comic-book-ness.

Sadly, my guess is that the Hulk game does not provide any of the “deepness” from the movie - despite looking like a pretty cool game. Would be nice if game designers were able to better mix action with “deepness”. Perhaps the upcoming “Creating Emotion in Games” book will help in this regard…

On a related note, as I was waiting for the previews to roll, I thumbed through the freebie movie mag Tribute. There was an interview with Angelina Jolie about the next Tomb Raider movie. I thought that her language about “playing” the character was interesting. I am sure there’s a bunch of fancy academic ways to look at player/viewer/actor agency, empathy and fun stuff like that…

Lots of talk about the importance of intellectual property (IP). From a developer’s point of view, they want to own as much IP of their game (ie, code, story, characters, tools, engine, music, etc, etc). This implies a greater potential for revenue (like when the Max Payne rights were sold to Take-2 for ~$45Million!). But, there’s a lot to understanding the various forms of IP (ie, patents, copyrights, trademarks) and what makes sense to use, to avoid, to be exploited by, etc. Anyway.

A few recent stories in the news related to IP have caught my eye…

For starters Nintendo has applied for a patent covering a “portable handheld game machine which includes a capability to download and execute code from a source such as another game machine”. The patent can be read online, but it sounds like stuff that any Java or BREW enabled phone can already do. It could be a situation where companies have to pay over mucho fees to Nintendo or face litigation… Interesting.

Next up, we have Marvel Comics cracking down on modders creating/distributing skins in the likeness of their IP (ie, their various comic book heros). Seems heavy handed, but shouldn’t Marvel have the exclusive right to use its IP? Still, sad when you read the site’s farewell note… Modders beware, this is not the first time companies have come looking for a fight (I believe there were similar actions from the Star Wars and Star Trek folks).

Finally, we have GameSpy discussing the recent “24 frames-per-second DVD patent“. This one just seems crazy, luckily games may only be a secondary target. Reminds me of the time some guy had a patent on “an animated character moving across a screen” and wanted to sue 3D Realms over Duke Nukem…

Many developers do not take the time to understand the pros and cons of IP and the potential impact on their bottom line and the industry as a whole… This would be a good time to plug the fact that the IGDA has an IP Rights Committee that has been working on an IP rights white paper the past several months. I believe it will be finalized later in the summer. Watch for it.

Also, I encourage anyone interested in the topic to look up Lawrence Lessig, his books (The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World / Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace), and the Creative Commons.

We recently posted an article on game accessibility. It was written by Thomas Westin, a developer behind Terraformers - the IGF winning game designed to be played by blind, and un-blind, gamers. It is a very fascinating article and covers an area that many developers probably don’t consider…

The IGDA’s board of directors is likely to approve a committee proposal to explore game accessibility issues, best practices, standards and so on. While I cannot claim any expertise in this area, I am very excited about the prospects. The forums are already humming with activity and examples of accessible games and resources (eg, reading some of the reviews at Deaf Gamers is humbling, like the review from Munch’s Oddysee: “Unsubtitled cutscenes, conversations and no mission objectives in text mean that only the keenest of Oddworld fans will find any enjoyment here.”)…

Selfishly, as a non-disabled gamer, I am looking forward to the overall improvement in the usability of games that is likely to result from these efforts. Oh, and of course, I’m jazzed about the idea that an ever broader range of the population will be able to access and enjoy games!

The ever caring and concerned mother, Daphne White (who also happens to be the queen bee of the Lion & Lamb Project) will debate the oh-so charismatic Gerard Jones (who also happens to be a father, book author and ex-comic writer). The fireworks will fly on June 24th on NPR show Justice Talking as they discuss video game violence. (There seems to be a “listen online” option.)

I am sure many can remember the thrashing Henry Jenkins (also a father, and of MIT media studies fame) took during his visit to the now-cancelled Donahue show on MSNBC. While it can be debated whether Daphne really did him in with her jabbing, or if it was really Donahue’s abrasiveness that won the match, Henry really was not prepared. Given a more civil forum, Henry could run circles around most, but lucky for Donahue, Henry was too lamb for Daphne’s lion…

As a side anecdote, I still remember one of our past GDC roundtables discussing violence and game design. As we did intros around the room of ~30, Daphne declared herself as a curious mother at the GDC to learn more about games. At the time, I was not aware of her or the Lion & Lamb, and just thought it odd that a mother would attend GDC. Sadly, I can’t really remember (given the stimulation overdose that is GDC) what she contributed to the discussion, but she did get dagger-like stares from the developers when she “revealed” herself…

In other TV-land news, there’s going to be a more upbeat behind-the-scenes style documentary of Xbox game dev and other such fun on June 20th on the Discover Channel. Nice to see the air-time.