[game_edu] Games in the Library

[Ian Schreiber]

Wow, what a great question.
 
In my "game industry survey" class, I definitely bring up the subject of emulators and their gray legal status, just so the students are aware of the realities versus the myths. (One of the questions on my final exam is to bring in an NES cartridge from the publisher Color Dreams, show it to the students as proof that I own the game, then proceed to play it on emulator and ask whether what I'm doing is technically legal, and why or why not :-)
 
I don't explicitly require students to play emulated games as part of any class - for one thing, most classic games can be found in cloned-outright form as free Flash games anyway, so why take the risk? - but if I needed to, I suspect I could probably get away with it under Fair Use since it's being used in an educational setting. Especially for games that are "abandonware".
 
- Ian
 


________________________________
From: Nick Lalone <nick.lalone at gmail.com>
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org> 
Sent: Monday, March 5, 2012 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Games in the Library

At a pop culture conference last year, I got to meet some folks in
Tokyo (i cannot remember the official affliliation but can dig it up
if anyone is interested) who had agreements with some game publishers
that included the delivery official final builds in some type of ROM
format as well as printed cartridges. They house a variety of machines
and it also has some government funding (subject to the
conservativeness of the current government). They were at the
conference presenting how their program fell into disarray and how
they are trying to create a sort of virtual library with searchable
historical data for those publishers.

Are there any programs out there that manage to do things like this?

Also, on the grey legality side of things, I wanted to inquire about
emulators in the classroom. I have had decent success (outside of the
classroom, as I am an administrator who lectures sometimes) providing
links to games for places like:

http://virtualnes.com/
http://www.virtualsupernes.com/

and various MAME sites. A lot of these sites have been a great
resource to show in class and provide links to outside of class. I
haven't wanted to breach the subject on campus itself.

Given the nature of rhetoric around pirating (even for archival
purposes) in electronic media, I am curious about the views of
educators on such tools.

Thanks!
Nick

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Jose P. Zagal <jzagal at cdm.depaul.edu> wrote:

> Hi,

>

> Here at DePaul we have two game labs where students can play games. The PC

> lab has lots of different games installed, and we've been using Steam's

> Cyber Cafe option. As far as I know it's the only way to get decent pricing

> options for multiple copies/licenses of the same title (on Steam).

>

> Our library also has games available for checkout (only the recent consoles

> though), and we've tried having handheld consoles available for checkout as

> well. That last option wasn't that popular though.

>

>

> Jose

>

> On 3/4/2012 6:18 PM, Malcolm Ryan wrote:

>>

>> Does anyone have experience with getting computer games into their

>> school library?

>>

>> For my game design course I give the students a list of "readings" --

>> games to play each week that illustrate the concepts we are going to

>> be talking about. Most of the games I use are small indie games from

>> Steam. I find these games usually illustrate a particular idea more

>> succinctly than a major title, plus they are a lot cheaper.

>> Nevertheless the price tends to add up as the session goes on and

>> many students are reluctant to pay.

>>

>> If this were any other course, the readings would be available in the

>> university library for them to borrow and possibly also sold as a

>> subsidised anthology. I would like to find a similar arrangement for

>> my students?

>>

>> Does anyone have any experience doing this successfully? Might it be

>> possible to arrange a special license with Steam?

>>

>> Thanks,

>>

>> Malcolm _______________________________________________ game_edu

>> mailing list game_edu at igda.org

>> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_edu

>

>

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-- 
Nick LaLone
Texas State University-San Marcos
Systems Support / Master's Student
www.nicklalone.com
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