Terra Nova

Who owns e-sports?

Got an interesting law article in the snail mail by Dan Burk. "Owning E-Sports: Proprietary Rights in Professional Computer Gaming." Unfortunately the digital version is behind paywalls. Man, does that seem stupid. Amazon charging $10 for a law article?  It's an interesting article, but not $10 worth of interesting. Is any research article worth $10 sight unseen? Anyways.

Burk's analysis highlights the fact that the law of real sports depends on the physical instantiation of those sports: Stadiums, bodies, playing fields, equipment. As a result, e-sports, where all these things are intangible, cannot rely completely on the pre-existing sports law. And as we know, intellectual property law seems out of place, since the primary issues do not revolve around the writing of created signifiers to RAM. As a result, the legal foundation of e-sports is murky.

Here's the intro anyway.

Player-Authors Project - Survey One Data (Draft)

Hi everyone,

I posted here soliciting participation in the Rutgers Player-Authors survey of player UGC practices in games.  We are beginning to study the results.  A draft summary report of basic descriptive statistics is posted here.  Please do not cite or repost this draft version, as the numbers will likely change slightly.  We will have a firmer version posted on the Player-Authors website soon.

However, based on initial analysis, the following appear to be true:

• We had over 400 valid responses
• The survey participation skewed substantially male (over 80%)
• The median age of respondents was roughly 30 years old
• The PC was respondents' most popular and preferred gaming platform
• The Sims was respondents' most played game among the available options
• Respondents shared UGC on YouTube more often than on other listed platforms
• The most common motivation of respondents for creating content was intrinsic pleasure (enjoyment of creativity) and the least common motivation was financial (to make money)
• The most common UGC practice of respondents was making new objects within games
• The least common UGC practice was costumes and crafts
• Respondents generally favored the genre of action/arcade/adventure games the most -- racing and sports games were the least popular
• Roughly half of respondents stated that they had created "remix" UGC
• The most common reference material for in-game "remix" UGC was "other video games"
• The most common form of UGC creation among respondents was "maps/scenarios"; the least commons was "music/sound effects"
• Minecraft was the most popular platform for UGC sharing among respondents; Second Life was the least popular.
• The same was true for downloading: Minecraft was most the popular platform (among those listed) and Second Life was least popular.
• Respondents had a range of opinions on the value of UGC.  Most respondents thought that creative tools and the ability to access player-created content were important to their enjoyment of games.  However, many players felt that UGC was not so important to their decision to purchase a particular game.

More information about the player survey, including a finalized version of the Survey One summary, will be posted on the site shortly as we continue to refine and analyze the data.  We will also be posting initial results of other components of the Player-Authors project.

Please note: If you are a game developer and want to participate in Survey Two of the project (targeted at the UGC perceptions within the developer community), that survey is still live and posted here: http://bit.ly/playerauthors2

Thanks!

Greg