[game_edu] Licensing Games for Teaching

[Ian Schreiber]

Depends.

Some schools do have games in their library (mostly console since those don't have installs with DRM, you just need the disk, thus no licensing issues). A single copy of a AAA console game is less than 20 copies of a $5 indie game, and you can probably cover the cost of a good number of games just with a nominal lab fee for the course.

You can stick with free games (or the occasional cheap one) to keep costs down; there's certainly a critical mass of free ones to study at this point, they don't ALL have to be 2013 IGF winners ;). If it all must be free, many of the paid games have free demos, and you could download and analyze the demo (which then lets you not only discuss the game, but also what the devs chose to make free vs. paid and why).

For some indie games, especially those that are sold as direct-download from the developer (as opposed to Steam or GOG), have you tried writing the devs directly and explaining the situation? Many of them are pretty nice people and might be willing to work out a deal for bulk pricing if you want to get a copy for each student. Most would probably get a kick out of knowing that their game is being assigned and studied in a college classroom, regardless, so let them know anyway.

If your department has any dedicated PCs in a lab where you have the rights to install your own custom software, you can always just get a single copy and install it on a single PC. Students who want to buy the game themselves are welcome to do so, otherwise they can come to the lab, play it there, and share with each other.

If your students all have iOS devices, you could focus on that platform, where games tend to be REALLY cheap. The device itself is expensive, though. (OTOH, if you can convince your department that it should just buy one for every student when they matriculate, even if you just bump up tuition/fees to compensate, might be a cool perk to mention during recruitment.)


- Ian




On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 10:10 PM, Malcolm Ryan <malcolmr at cse.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
 
So I ask this question every year in the hope that someone may have found an answer:

I have a set of "readings" for my game design class -- that is, a collection of video games that we play and dissect. I try to focus on small indie games because they are usually a) cheaper, b) more innovative, c) smaller and more tightly focused. However even though the games are relatively cheap (and some are free) the expense adds up. If this were any other course, there would be copies of the readings available in the library for them to borrow, but licensing issues seem to prevent this.

Has anyone come up with a good solution to this problem? In the long term, I think it is a copyright-reform issue, but is there a short term work-around?

Malcolm
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