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."

Comments

Creative Crisis...

[__aaclcg7560]

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?

you forgot...

[Rs_Conqueror]

#14. The right to overtime pay #15. the right to take days off to get married/attend funurals. #16. the right to sleep.

Re:you forgot...

[MagicDude]

#14. The right to overtime pay

You're already paid over time. See, I give you a paychek for 1/26 of your annual salary every 2 weeks, instead of giving it to you all at once. Thus, you are paid over time.


#15-A. the right to take days off to get married

If you have time to find a mate, you're obviously not working hard enough for the company.


#15-B. the right to take days off to attend funurals

Very well, you may have a day off to attend your own funeral.


#16. the right to sleep.

See point 15-B.

Bill of Player's Rights

[Digital Vomit]

While this bill is a nice idea, it probably stands about as much chance of being honored as the Bill of Player's Rights (pdf link).

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.

A long held theory of mine

[xenocide2]

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.

Unions

[bill_kress]

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.