[game_edu] Readings, Libraries & Copyright

[Dan Carreker]

I whole-heartedly agree with Andrew's solutions. Ultimately though, if your 
unable to create a lending library with ALL the titles you want, here's a 
couple of alternatives that you might want to consider:

Here in the US there is a service called Gamefly, from which you can rent 
games through the mail; don't know about availability outside the US but 
might be worth a look to see if its a resource your students can use.

Also, while playing through a game has much merit, there are certain things 
you can demonstrate fairly well with a recorded playthrough (examples of art 
assets, design concepts, storytelling,etc.) Youtube is an excellent resource 
for this, and there are often versions of playthroughs with just the 
cutscenes or with just the gameplay, which can be helpful when focusing on 
just one element at a time. Alternatively, you can record your own section 
of gameplay in order to get exactly what you want...or have a student do it 
for you.

Also, don't forget about demos. Some games don't need to be played in their 
entirety in order to understand what made them good or bad.  And playable 
demos, assuming you can find them, are free. Used games can also be 
purchased fairly cheaply, once their platforms a genration old.

If you do geta lending library set up, you might wanr to keep in mind how 
long it takes to play through some of these games; that can be a lot of 
homework, particularly if the student is new to the genre. I'd suggest 
having some saved games on file so that students can move to the relevent 
sections quickly when appropriate.

Just some thoughts,

Dan Carreker
www.NarrativeDesigns.com
"If I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood.
 I'd type a little faster."  - Asimov

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Armstrong" <andrew at aarmstrong.org>
To: "IGDA Game Education Listserv" <game_edu at igda.org>
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 2:48 AM
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Readings, Libraries & Copyright



> The educators I talked to at DiGRA all just have game libraries they loan 

> games out of, and/or have consoles and PC's to play them on in labs. I 

> presume either it's legal, or the restrictions that people might think of 

> (EULA, etc.) are unenforceable or too overarching to apply to lending. As 

> far as I recall, interestingly places like Blockbuster (and other game 

> lending services) don't pay anything special for their copies in the UK, 

> but that might have changed at some point.

>

> Just as with books, if they are not in this library (or are loaned out, or 

> whatever), then the students need to buy them I'd guess (or might want to 

> buy them anyway). Problem is backcatalogues of games are hard to find 

> (especially platform specific ones not re-released on an emulator), so 

> something worth doing is investigating where the games can be brought from 

> (if anyone can tell me where to find Planescape Torment, DRM-unencumbered, 

> that's something I'm looking for ;) the second hand version all go for 

> high amounts on Amazon it seems).

>

> Andrew

>

> Malcolm Ryan wrote:

>> As a lecturer in game design, I want to set a 'reading list' of games for 

>> my students to play. In other disciplines the University has standard 

>> copyright arrangements which allow them to make sets of readings 

>> available to students at little or no cost, but there doesn't seem to be 

>> any appropriate arrangement for software.

>>

>> Have you encountered this problem? How have you addressed it?

>>

>> I know that a lot of good cutting-edge independent work is available 

>> cheaply or for free online, but I don't want to be forced to exclude AAA 

>> titles from examination. Ideally I would like to set up a library of 

>> games but I am worried about the copyright and licensing issues. Does 

>> anyone know more about this?

>>

>> Malcolm

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