Contractual
When you get into the games business as an employee, if it be on your own or looking to join a group you will almost always HAVE to negotiate a contract for the company. This is for many reasons and these are normally things such as making the game, making certain artwork or an object. For an example you may get paid to make a concept art drawing or a trailer and you will be funded for that and it may take you a month and you will have to do it in that time, or you could have a contract that last’s around a year to be the artist or programmer of a game, when the contract runs out then they could go on to going to another game company and helping them out with what they need doing, with the contracts you can see them before you sign it so if you don’t agree with something that’s been written on there you don’t have to sign it in the end, an example of this would be if you needed to sign a contract for something within a month but you needed a little more time to think about it you would have to discuss and come to terms with what might be best for you, this could also be the same procedure for how much you earn per month or year and so on.
When you get into the games business as an employee, if it be on your own or looking to join a group you will almost always HAVE to negotiate a contract for the company. This is for many reasons and these are normally things such as making the game, making certain artwork or an object. For an example you may get paid to make a concept art drawing or a trailer and you will be funded for that and it may take you a month and you will have to do it in that time, or you could have a contract that last’s around a year to be the artist or programmer of a game, when the contract runs out then they could go on to going to another game company and helping them out with what they need doing, with the contracts you can see them before you sign it so if you don’t agree with something that’s been written on there you don’t have to sign it in the end, an example of this would be if you needed to sign a contract for something within a month but you needed a little more time to think about it you would have to discuss and come to terms with what might be best for you, this could also be the same procedure for how much you earn per month or year and so on.
Development Agreement
The Development agreement is a contract made between a publishing company and a developing company. They will state standard information from each company, as well as the company directors and most importantly the project they have decided to develop for. There will then be the terms of how much the publisher is paying the developers as well as royalty rates. Ownership agreements will also be brought up, deciding whether the publisher or the developers will have the rights to the IP. Finally the publisher and developers will make warranty agreements taking full responsibilities of their duties and what would happen if a lawsuit was to happen because of their actions.
License Agreements
When a Video Game Publisher wants to make a game using a licensed IP of a movie or a book (these are Movie Licensed Games), they have to make a contract between themselves and the owner of the exclusive rights to the IP. They first must agree on what is being licensed and then they decide what the publisher will be using the license for (so if they have only agreed to a Wii game, if the publisher also wants to make a Playstation version they may have to pay a little bit more.) It will also decide where the game will be published, how much the Publisher will pay for the license and how long the term of agreement will last (it’s usually no longer than five years.)
Collaboration Agreements
The above types of contracts cover the most frequent types of contract in the mainstream game industry. But a lot of people are building indie games or hobby games, and for those people a very important need is an agreement that cover the all-important issues of ownership and compensation in the creation of games that exist outside of the mainstream industry. Games that might or might not ever generate any money. The majority of hobby and indie projects fail, and a huge factor in those failures is who owns what, who's supposed to do what, and who's going to get what. A collaboration agreement sets forth in clear terms how the indie or hobby project is managed and controlled, who owns the IP, how the game is intended to be used, how any possible income is to be handled, and how termination of the project is to be governed.
Legal
There are many issues in the gaming industry that you have to consider whilst you are making a game, PEGI is a system that allows you to see what the company has rated the game.
3+ - Suitable for all ages . May contain mild violence in an appropriate context for younger children, but no explicit language is allowed.
7+ - Suitable for ages 7 and older. May contain mild, cartoon violence, sports, or elements that can be frightening to younger children.
12+ - Suitable for ages 12 and older. May contain violence in a fantasy setting, coarse language, mild sexual references or innuendo, or gambling.
16+ -Suitable for ages 16 and older. May contain explicit violence, strong language, sexual references or content, gambling, or drug use (encouragement).
18+ - Suitable for ages 18 and older. May contain graphic violence, including "violence towards defenseless people" and "multiple, motiveless killing", strong language, strong sexual content, gambling, drug use (glamorisation), or discrimination.
Copyright is also a big legal problem in the gaming industry, Making a game that is very similar to a game that’s already on the market can be called as copyright or heavily inspired by a previous popular game or game series, also stealing people’s ideas has also been a problem especially when gaming was first introduced there was a lot of different versions, simple things such as mods also get copyright for example there is the 'Middle Earth Role Playing Project' or MERP for short which was supposed to be released for the Elder Scrolls IV game Skyrim. It had received copyright infringement from warner brothers as they were remaking content from the Lord of the rings titles and it shows that you have to be careful with what you make or have permission before doing something especially if its intended to make money when released if it be a mod or a full game release.
Ethical
Ethical in games for example would be having a building or city that is in real life on a game and having it being destroyed in the game for example take Grand Theft Auto 4 that is Liberty City, New York and the events and characters may cause people to get the wrong idea of things. A good example would be police in the game, they may come across as very corrupt but aren't in fact like that in real life, another thing would be the destruction of buildings in the game. This may or may not be offensive to some people depending on what content is in the game. It is said that GTA 4 had intentionally taken jets out of the game because it was in New York and they did not want to try and offend or have people offend the idea of flying jets into buildings.
Ethical in games for example would be having a building or city that is in real life on a game and having it being destroyed in the game for example take Grand Theft Auto 4 that is Liberty City, New York and the events and characters may cause people to get the wrong idea of things. A good example would be police in the game, they may come across as very corrupt but aren't in fact like that in real life, another thing would be the destruction of buildings in the game. This may or may not be offensive to some people depending on what content is in the game. It is said that GTA 4 had intentionally taken jets out of the game because it was in New York and they did not want to try and offend or have people offend the idea of flying jets into buildings.
Stereotyping
This is a key example of what is In the videogames industry, especially in past times the main focus has been towards men, this has led a number of people to believe that this means videogames stereotype mainly against women. This is certainly true in some cases, like the popular (and extremely controversial) series Grand Theft Auto. In this game nearly all the woman are there to take part in either sex or violence, there is also a lot of racial sterotypes too, other games like Tomb Raider Focus around Lara Craft which is a female character yet this has been a popular franchise and has made a very good impression on women in video games. The thing that needs to be understood is that Videogames did not create these stereotypes. For one thing it is too young an industry, to have founded such a deep and real issue of society and I know this doesn’t mean it should be excused in videogames but if you look around stereotyping is everywhere. If you have ever watched an advert for a cleaning product, which gender is always showcasing it? Women. This could be interpreted as a stereotype against housewives. So even if some videogames are culprits f stereotyping they can hardly be the only one to be penalised for it.
Education
For a while now there have been many investigations into how video games can help make learning fun and stimulating for a generation born into technology. Some schools have started using the popular DS game Brain Training as a starter in maths lessons, and use Wii Fit to start after school fitness clubs. There has even been research (using technology from Xbox Kinect) to test artificial intelligence in the education system. So although videogames may deter some kids from picking up a book, or having a go at a puzzle there is still some educational benefits found in the industry. Sometimes it is said that games effect schools in a negative way because it takes them away from learning but now it has recently changed that and started it using it as way to help teach and get children to want to learn.
Addiction
being able to participate in an immense amount of time in video games has caused people to be addicted to it. As a result, they lose valuable time within their communities and miss opportunities from other activities that could be more beneficial for them this relates to the education section. It is, in my opinion one of the more major issues out of all of them. This is because addiction is part of a human nature that cannot be ridden of, so that means that there is a chance for anyone who plays a videogame to become addicted. Games such as MMO's especially MMORPGS can hook a gamer on for endless hours this makes them never come out of the game, a good example of a product that does this, is the World of Warcraft MMO.
Professional Bodies
Professional Bodies such as UKIE is one of the only trade body for the UK’s wider interactive entertainment industry. They are their to champion the interests, needs and positive image of the videogames and interactive entertainment industry who's companies make up their membership. They are present to help ensure that members from the videogames and wider interactive entertainment industry have the right economic, political and social environment needed for the expanding industry to continue. Ukie provide a range of services to meet the shared needs of their members and to further the interests of the interactive entertainment industry as a whole. They focus on building strong working relationships with parliamentarians and policymakers to ensure industry needs are met through appropriate Government support.
Another Professional Body is the IGDA which was founded in 1994 by an Ernest Adams and was initially known as the Computer Game Developers Association (CGDA). Modelled after the Association for Computing Machinery, Adams seemed to work on the organization to support the careers and interests of individual developers, as opposed to being a trade organization, or an advocacy group for companies. The need for a professional association for game developers was not so much heard of or mentioned until the congressional hearings surrounding Mortal Kombat and other video game legislation became common in the 1990's. With legislation affecting the game development industry, the IGDA developed into a more organized voice for computer game developers as it merged with the Computer Entertainment Developers Association and grew from 300 members to over 12,000 members the next fifteen years. In December 2012, Kate Edwards was set the task of being the executive director after Gordon Bellamy, the previous executive director, who had moved on from the position in July of that year to join Tencent.
Other Proffesional Bodies:
Women in Games is another corporation which ties in with the Proffesinal Bodies section it inspires women to join the video games industry. They hold conferences every year for women part of the industry as well as encouraging new female individuals to join.
BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA) announced in 2003 that they will be splitting their Video Game Awards from the Interactive Media category. The awards are given to anyone of note in the Video Games Industry.
MEF, the Managed Extensibility Framework is a component for creating light extensible applications. It allows application developers to discover and use extensions with no configuration required. It also lets extension developers easily encapsulate code and avoid fragile hard dependencies. MEF not only allows extensions to be reused within applications, but across applications as well.
Sources of this Information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Game_Developers_Association
