[game_edu] Student IP for coursework

[Välisalo, Tanja]

Hi,
I teach a game project course at the University of Jyväskylä with my colleague, and our approach has been to

  - recommend students agree on these matters in the project group, like Jose mentioned, preferably right at the beginning of the course,
  - give students the basics of IP legislation, so they get an idea on what their rights and limitations are,
  - give the students a template for a written contract, and
  - offer to comment on their finished contracts.

If people outside the course contribute to the project, I have urged the students to draw up a contract with them as well.

About 95% all of our student groups in the last 5 years have written and signed an agreement. In practice, some have decided that publication and/or commercialization of the game has to be agreed upon by everyone, some have decided that a majority vote is enough, some have even agreed on precise percentages of future profits. So it is really up to the students! In the end, I think discussing these things and understanding the different possibilities is good practice for students, even if they never end up taking the project further.

We usually also ask the students for the right to use their game, or video/images of gameplay in different public events, PR material etc.



Tanja Välisalo
University Teacher
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Jyväskylä

________________________________
Lähettäjä: game_edu [game_edu-bounces at igda.org] käyttäjän Jose P Zagal [jose.zagal at utah.edu] puolesta
Lähetetty: 24. elokuuta 2017 18:26
Vastaanottaja: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Aihe: Re: [game_edu] Student IP for coursework

My advice is that institutions (and faculty) should stay as far away as possible from owning or asserting any sort of IP rights over student work. At most, try to assert the right to use students work for promotional and educational purposes (e.g. we want to show your game at our booth, or have screenshots on our website). I also don't think it's our job to get directly  involved deciding credit and ownership among students. That being said, I always strongly recommend that students discuss among themselves and figure out what they want to do BEFORE they've done anything - and here is where we (faculty) can provide input and advice including guidelines for using assets made by others, tools with non-commercial licenses, etc. In other words, don't own anything, it's on the students to figure it out (with your help), and yes, there will be a lot of missed
opportunities by students (e.g. team was never able to agree on something, so publisher gives up).

Jose


On 8/24/2017 7:38 AM, Ian Schreiber via game_edu wrote:
Question for those of you who teach courses that involve the creation of games that may go on to be commercialized, submitted to festivals, or similar (e.g. capstone courses):

What do you do, if anything, involving student ownership of IP? Do you have them sign a contract as part of the syllabus (and if so, what's in the contract and how did you put it together)? How do you handle cases where some of the student team might want to take the game forward and others would not? How do you deal with crediting and ownership in the case of students who are low performers, or who are late adds or late drops (or who contribute to the project peripherally even though they're not taking the course, e.g. a student whose roommate provides some art on their own time)? And... how much of this is covered by university or department policy, vs. how much is entirely up to you as the instructor?

Just at my own institution it seems like there's no standard, every professor handles this differently, so I'm interested to hear what others have done in this space.

- Ian


--
José P. Zagal
Entertainment Arts & Engineering
University of Utah
jose.zagal at utah.edu<mailto:jose.zagal at utah.edu>
@JoseZagal

https://www.eng.utah.edu/~zagal/
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