Slashdot Mirror
A Game Developer's Bill of Rights
Gamasutra has another piece from the always interesting Eric Zimmerman, where he offers up A Game Developer's Bill of Rights. From the article: "A Game Developers' Bill of Rights is part of this ongoing discussion, a provocation that draws attention to a set of important issues and challenges facing our industry. It highlights some of the problems that developers face as they try to create games and grow our industry, both creatively and commercially ... A Game Developers' Bill of Rights is not meant to be a strictly practical document. I did not write it as a guide for contract negotiation, nor as a set of legal standards for developer/publisher agreements. But I do believe that the positions represented by the articles in the Bill of Rights are absolutely the correct and proper ethical positions to take."
13. The right to final say in creative disputes regarding the game.
Now, indie developers have this one nailed
My UID is prime... is yours?
Does this "Bill of Rights" compels developers to do new and exciting games? Or will we get more exciting rehash of last year's games?
I noticed that all of these have to do with money. What about not being liable for 'video-game-induced' violence. What about the right to do things correctly, rather than quickly?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
#14. The right to overtime pay #15. the right to take days off to get married/attend funurals. #16. the right to sleep.
Behold, another webcomic!
That aside I fully agree with putting more control in the hands of content creators. It just doesn't seem right that the middle-man -- the publisher -- has almost all the control (in games, music, etc.). The creators are far more important than the distributors, and should be respected as such.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Is that publishers are chiefly successful as they are because developer studios are equally bad at business. The great majority of developer studios exist as a team of developers, rather than a game development company, and the skills nessecary for a development team to write new code from scratch appear to be seperate from the skills nessecary to keep such a team in the black. Assembly code does not negotiate, and royalty payments are notoriously difficult to "profile."
Notably absent from the Bill of Rights: the ability to prevent the sony rootkit disaster from happening. It's hardly a "creative dispute," and might fall under means of distribution, but the author appears to mean the medium such as internet, CDs in a box at retail, or a cell phone, rather than any copy protections. Of course, the rootkit disaster has already happened; gamers have just gotten used to the notion that it's okay to let a networked game operate in full Administator mode, for better or for worse. For products specifically designed for games and games alone, such as the Nintendo DS, this is largely irrelevant.
The question is, how do developers negotiate these "rights"? At the moment there's scant few with the money and know-how to successfully enter the business of publishing. With so few publishers (growing smaller every day) and so many development studios aiming for their attention, it's difficult to get even something as trivial as the right to buy your property back after five years when any given publisher knows that their rivals don't routinely offer such a provision. Internet distribution is okay for PC, but every day it seems as though PC is becoming less and less relevant (thanks, X-Box!), and advertising such a product is nebulus at best.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
9. The right to a publishing arrangement that reflects the iterative nature of game development; one that recognizes that changing a game as it is developed is part of creating a game.
Wait a minute, does this guy work for 3D Realms? Iterative development is one thing, infinite development is another...
I disagree with the statement that "Game Designers should be considered the foremost authority on their craft."
I think the foremost authority on good game design lies in the hands of the people who play it. Like it or not, game designers aren't being paid to make art, they're being paid to make entertainment. If they make art in the process, sobeit, and that's great (people, including myself, appreciate these things), but I'm not paying them to make some elegant design, or the best graphics engine ever, or performance-hog special effects, or voice acting from Alec Baldwin. I'm paying them to make a game that is fun. I'd like Civilization 4 just as much without Leonard Nimoy (or someone who sounds just like him) reading the Civopedia entries in-game.
Moo
Their first thing about ownership of what they create - no suit will get past that one! Their lawyers would have nightmares about sorting out who owns what on the screen at any given time - and how much profit each one is making. (Think "I created the gun Bob uses in that scene!".)
They say it's based on the bill of rights for comic creators - how much have Marvel and DC bend for that? What did Todd, Keith and the the rest of them at Marvel do? They left. They formed Image.
That's the only way the game developers are going to get what is in that bill of rights.
I thought they wanted sane hours and pay for the hours worked? Why not make a bill of rights a little more basic?
remember when it was {of|for|by} the people?
Aww, somebody's jealous.
"This is considered plagiarism."
It's funny how most engineers seem to lean to the right when it comes to corporations and free market.
I think this comes from a complete lack of ability to empathize with or understand situations that are removed from their own.
Currently you find significant resistance to words like "Union" because it clashes with their free-market faith, but as the market shifts and starts crushing engineers, you'll see them clamoring for restrictions on business and union-style solutions.
This is already starting to become evident--in these days of Indian labor and off-site contracts I'm starting to hear less from the free-marketeers and more from people seeing the problems that always come when you get close to a true free-market (Such as this article).
keep your eyes open, you'll see more soon.
Well of all the countries in the world we're only at war in two. My god, you surely do have plenty to be jealous of!
Shut up.
"This is considered plagiarism."
From the article: "To quote Greg Costikyan from an argument he was having with a game publisher at a conference reception a few years ago, a developer should retain the rights to a game "because they fucking should, that's why." This kind of laziness in a debate risks completely discrediting the entire concept. The default position from which this debate begins is: Developers are competing with each other to attract millions of dollars in advances from a publisher. If one developer wants to retain rights and another is willing to surrender them, the publisher may well prefer the latter bid. You may not like that argument, but speaking in short sentences containing F-words does not cause it to magically vanish. (And I speak as a supporter of Greg Costikyan's ideas about the industry.)
I work for a studio wholly owned by a large developer. We seem to have more creative control than we did at a large independent studio. This does depend on the publisher of course.
Hey, this is the games section - what do you want here, Anime?
What about an instance when the game is based on a property originating from the publisher? They have ideas, too. In such circumstances, it would seem that rights 1, 4, and 11 (maybe also 13 and others) would be invalidated.
Dude. You have no rights to anything. It's what you WANT, not what you have a RIGHT to. And feel free to negotiate those terms when you sign your contract. Else, shut up and code, you little monkey.
Great. Good for you. If you can't, then you won't get it. Just ranting on the internet that "I deserve this" and "I should get that" is only effective at generating conversation. Your best shot is at forming a union, but that will only work if you can restrict the supply of labor until the companies cave. Good luck, we're all behind you.
For anyone whose interested... Some good starting points for more information include: IWW Electronic Communication Workers and Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTec). I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone might have.
James - Computer Science student and union member