Friday, July 4, 2014

Video Games Licensing vs. Ownership: When is your game not really your game? - Part 1: E3 Primer

This is Part 1 of a 3 part article. Part 1 deals with some background on gaming as an industry and it's main conference, E3

If you're not already in the know, E3, a huge conference that covers most anything that is video game related just passed. If you're just finding out from this post, you missed it. You probably don't love video games, but that's ok, I'm not judging. What you missed was a huge expo of the games to come this year, with each of the major players in the console arena (Sony - Playstation 4, Microsoft - Xbox One Nintendo - Wii...er Wii U) putting on the best show they could to excite consumers for the next 12 months or so. This is important for a few reasons. These companies show tech demos and game demos to entice both consumers and game and software developers alike to their respective camps to endorse and invest in their respective hardware. Gaming is now a multi-billion dollar industry, so this is an important decision.

This is never more important than during years like last year, just prior to the launch of a new console generation, when these companies are then on the hook to show the world why they should invest in their specific console ecosystem, because though the same games may come out for multiple platforms, they are generally not compatible with one another, in case you aren't familiar. A new console generation means new technology, new gaming IPs, new software languages to learn, new bugs to deal with, and increased development time, to name a few things. It means, for many developers, often, buying in on a particular console to focus on so they can put out the highest quality game with as few compromises as possible.

For consumers, many of which cannot afford one, let alone three consoles to invest in at launch (at least at first) it means deciding which console to save their pennies and begin investing in both hardware and software. Peripherals, such as controllers, headsets and cameras (I could write another article on this one alone) will likely not be included beyond the basic amount, and are added costs. Buying in to a new console can easily cost the better part of a thousand dollars if one buys games and peripherals, as is the case with dedicated gamers, which I normally count myself amongst.

This means that each company must reflect long and hard about how they approach these launches. This may mean changes in policy for how the games will be distributed. I don't need to tell you that we are living increasingly in a digital age, one where the physical world is becoming... well, redundant. This is evidenced by the evolution of gaming console's media. Where one was once restricted to the amount of cartridges or physical media such as discs one could afford (and possibly carry), gaming consoles of today do not rely strictly on physical media to play the software (media and/or games) they need to be useful. Increasingly, the software can either be saved onto the console itself from the physical media, and currently it is even all available for download online, so there is no actual need for physical media whatsoever.

So what?

What does that actually change? Games are games, right? Films are films, and music is music. If you buy it, you buy it and should be able to sell it again, n'est-ce pas? Not necessarily. At the 2013 E3 conference, Microsoft stirred up quite a controversy by changing their policy on physical copies of  used games. They even went as far as to add new sharing features that they claimed were to benefit the users in ways that were only made possible by the new changes. Were they being disingenuous? Licensing games instead of selling them outright? It sounds like a step backwards, doesn't it?

Check back soon for Part 2 and Part 3 to get a better picture of  the relevance of these changes and how they may or may not change the way we view ownership of media, specifically digital content.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Why mobile matters - An incomplete mobile history

This was an eventful week in mobile tech. I spent Wednesday and Thursday watching as much of Google's IO 2014 conference, hoping to catch a glimpse of where the future of mobile may be headed. I even live tweeted the keynote. It was pretty interesting to see how one of the mobile giants is attempting, as so many of them have before, to capture our attention on pretty much every screen they can. The Google team put on a good presentation, showing how they plan to evolve Android as a platform as well as Google services to be useful, present and automatic almost everywhere we go in our everyday life. That is a crazy concept. Then I got to thinking of how far the technology has evolved before my eyes (and in my pockets and bags).
Family members present: PS Vita, PSP Slim, Gameboy Color, HP Windows Mobile PDA, Asus EEEpad Transformer, Nexus 7 2012, Sony-Ericsson Smartwatch, Metawatch, Nokia 8310, HTC Windows Mobile slider, Sony-Ericsson Xperia X1, Nexus One, HTC Evo 3d, Nexus 4, Nexus 5

I also happen to be unpacking from a recent move, and had to put away many of my older gadgets. So, I decided to do a family picture. These are the surviving members of the group, as many of their siblings have since been given away. (The worst damaged one is my current phone, the nexus 5 in the bottom right. Gravity, you are a harsh mistress!) I've kept the rest, mostly as a reminder of how far the tech has evolved.

It's pretty staggering.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Hello world!

Howdy!

My name is Delano, and let me start by thanking you for surfing on by.

Welcome to Techno-Law-gy, a blog I created to discuss some of my musings on where technology and the law intersect. Here you will find an assortment of posts and links to other interesting articles that deal with how technology is changing the legal landscape, particularly in my home country of Canada.

I wholeheartedly believe that here in Canada and all over the world, that technology is evolving at such an alarming pace that it is changing the way we view and interact with the world. The law, however, is changing much more slowly and struggling to keep up with technology's pace. That's where I come in, attempting to make sense of it all and add a bit of context to the uninitiated.

My goal here is to think out loud, and provide a bit of opinion and clarification of issues that may not even seem related but may soon affect our day to day lives all over the world. We are living in an increasingly small world, that is growing more and more connected so that issues that once only affected a few may soon be unavoidable for the masses. I'll elaborate more on that in subsequent posts.

For now, thanks for dropping by, and stay tuned. If there's one thing I can guarantee, it's that things will get more interesting as time goes on.

Cheers

Del