Want to welcome all of you who are coming to the class starting tomorrow. There are few areas that seem to perpetually inhabit the cutting edge of culture and society the way video-games have over the last forty years or so. Every year it seems the course has yielded some substantive surprises in legal understanding. For example in the first few years we barely talked about End User Agreements and Terms of Service. It wasn’t yet clear that contract law would eclipse copyright law in so many ways that seem so very obvious today. It seems only a few short years ago that a unit on privacy was added, and I was shocked by the amount of material that came over the transom in preparing that class. Today my privacy folder for the class is thicker than the one on social issues/violence.
So what will be this years emergent themes? Impossible to know sitting here the night before class starts. All we can know is that in a year where the new generation of consoles find their feet, where the demographics of gamers has changed forever thanks to mobile devices, and where Facebook pays $2 Billion U.S. to purchase Oculus Rift, somethings gotta give…
Looking forward to whatever “it” turns out to be.
See you tomorrow.
Jon
Check out theVideos of Interest to Law 423 on YouTube 
Communications Law
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Hello to all the incoming video game law students, and welcome to one area of the law where the issues are happening not in the headlines or in a law reporter. They’re happening in the game studios, on Twitter, and on games journalism sites. The industry is largely too young to have learned to keep its legal woes under wraps, and so you can easily follow a story as it develops through social media. The downside is that the issues, by and large, never make the headlines or a law reporter.
As such, the one major piece of advice I’d give you as you begin the course is to get on Twitter, and do it now. Follow @gamebizlaw (run by Professor Festinger) — the accounts he retweets are a deep well of video game law/politics/news (also read his weekly news — be selective, you’ll lose hours reading every article!) You can also follow me if you’d like @gourmetcetera. I try to talk about video games and video game law most of the time.
What I’ve been trying, perhaps unsuccessfully, to get across in this comment is that this course is just a gateway — a Portal, perhaps? — into a quickly evolving field of law. It may be the most quickly evolving one. A few years ago, the topic of misogyny in games was rarely broached in games media. Now it’s the major issue of debate among developers, gamers, and journalists. I’d be surprised if a case doesn’t end up before a human rights tribunal.
So dive into the primordial sea of video game law. Ask questions in class. Ask me questions, either here or on Twitter (preferably). I’m always keen to talk about video games, and hopefully you are too. Isn’t that why you’re here?
All the best,
Adam Chan
@gourmetcetera
Hi everyone!
Graduate of UBC Law — and Jon’s video game law course — here. In both cases, class of 2013.
Just popping in to say that you’re going to have fun in the course. But you’re also going to learn a lot. It’s a great combination, and Jon certainly keeps it interesting.
Will you get to watch, talk about, and — if you’re smart enough to bring in a gaming system and hook it up to the A/V in B101 before class — play video games in class? Sure. (Pro tip: Jon loves racing games.)
Will you also get to tap into the massive volume of video game law knowledge that is Jon Festinger’s mind? Of course. Just flip through a few of the archived “News of the Week” entries on this blog to see what I mean. Nearly every one of those posts provide worthy fodder for a final paper in the course (hint, hint), and Jon’s ability to marshal the material is unparalleled.
But you’ll also get the best head start in the country to an emerging area of law, in a market estimated to be worth nearly $100 billion dollars. Since I graduated a mere 16 months ago, a video game tournament has offered a prize pool — a cool $10 million — which is larger than the prize pools of any of the Super Bowl, the Tour de France, or the Masters. Big business has recognized that gamification is a leading way to engage customers. And — sadly — even Kim Kardashian is expected to walk away with a cool $200 million in revenues from her mobile gaming app.
If the nearly $12 billion market cap of Burnaby-based gaming company Electronic Arts didn’t already clue you in, know this: the world is paying attention to video games.
And you’re about to learn from one of the best legal minds in the business. Those big-shot esteemed lawyers you’re going to go work for someday soon? They won’t know anything about video game law. That’s going to leave you a great opportunity — if you do the homework — to show your stuff in a market that is estimated at $3 billion in Vancouver alone. And it will be much easier for you, young tech-savvy person, to approach video game company leaders as potential clients than it will be for you to approach, say, big mining company CEOs.
So pay attention, learn your stuff, and get engaged with Jon and the class — and the greater video game law community that pays increased attention to this course. It’s going to be a fun ride.
Or, hey, go out and start your own mobile game and make upwards of $1 million per day in revenues. If you do, I know a good lawyer …
Look forward to chatting with many of you soon. In the meanwhile, find me on the Twitter at @andrewdilts.
Hello video game law students – and congrats on selecting the coolest class ever! I am a 2014 grad and taking this course totally transformed my law school experience because I finally felt engaged in my education and thereafter learned to select courses and paper topics that were important to me. So, I ask: what is important to you? The best thing about this course is that pretty much anything you are interested in can be related to video game law! Like sports or class actions? Write about the licensing of NCAA athletes for use in games. Got tattoos? Write about the potential copyright infringement when a UFC fighter’s tattoo is depicted in a video game. Cars, music, human rights, feminism, privacy, virtual theft, Bitcoins, anything you can think of – you can write about in the context of video game law. So sit back, let your imagination run wild and engage yourself in topics that are of interest to you!
And if you are a female gamer taking this course, please share your experiences playing online as more often than not, your experience is completely different and totally fascinating to both male gamers and non-gamers.
Also, get twitter – @MichelaFiorido