Task 6 Contractual, Legal, Ethical and Professional

Task 6 Explain and illustrate the contractual, legal, ethical obligations and professional bodies within the games industry.

Contractual

Employment

 The purpose of a contract is to  make sure that the terms of your employment - what the company expects from you and what they want you to do for the company, and what the company will do for you in return for example make your work place livable  Employment contracts at game companies are pretty much like employment contracts at any other sort of company. The game industry employment contract is likely to include clauses about benefits, confidentiality, about inventions, and about not competing with the company during or shortly after the term of employment. That why it is becoming more and more popular as the years go along.

Development Agreements

Game publishers usually hire game developers to create games for them. A development agreement is a contract that spells out the terms of the development deal.

The terms is the part of the agreement spells out how much the publisher will pay the developer, what time frame the developer has to develop the game, and if there will be royalties, what the royalty rate is.

The ownership are important to justify whether the publisher owns the IP or the developer owns it.

Warranties is the developing company has to swear that it won't use anybody else's source code and the publishing company has to swear that it has the right to ask developer to create this particular game this prevents copyright and miss sold produce.

licence 

Licence is when a publisher wants to make a game about a movie or something, and then the publisher and the movie IP owner execute a contract spelling out the terms of the license to make sure there are no faults in the contract.

After that What's Being Licensed to the contract spells out exactly what the publisher is getting the rights to use.

Then What the License Can Be used for is the contract probably specifies that the publisher only has the right to make a game that works on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 platforms this prevents any problems and it makes everything legal.

After this the terms will probably not run forever. Most license agreements run no more than 5 years so this will end and another contract will come up and the same process will happen again.

NDA

NDA and Confidentiality Agreements

NDA or commonly known as the Non-Disclosure Agreements, Disclosure Agreements, and Confidentiality Agreements is or are pretty much the same thing. One party, in order to do business with the other party, has to divulge a secret of some kind a plan to make a particular game, or a new technology or process for making games, or a business deal that hasn't yet been publicly announced), and has to tell this secret to the other party. The other party agrees not to disclose the information - to keep it confidential - else damage will be the result to the first party. In such an event, dire things will happen in a court of law to the second party.

Collaboration Agreements

This is the above types of contracts cover the most frequent types of contract in the mainstream game industry. But sometimes a lot of people are building indie games or hobby games, and for those folks a very important need is an agreement that cover the all-important issues of ownership and compensation in the creation of games that exist outside of the mainstream industry. These are Games that might or might not ever generate any money. 

Legal

copyright

Copyright job is to protects the work created by, or 'originated' with, their author. There must have been some skill, labour or judgment in the creation of the work.

The first owner will normally be the author. In most cases, the author is the person who created the work.

Copyright is different to other forms of IP. It is an automatic right You can not register with the Intellectual Property Office, for that reason there are no forms to complete and no fees to pay. Once created the copyright belongs to you. You would then need to create a record of your work in order to prove the date of creation and ownership.

Trademark

Trademark are badges of origin where something comes from. They distinguish the goods or services of one trader from another and can take many forms; for example words, slogans, logos, shapes, colors and sounds this is why there are badges to find them and mark each one individually.

Patent

A patent is the invention granted by government to the inventor, giving the inventor the right to stop others, for a limited period, from making, using or selling the invention without their permission. When a patent is granted the invention becomes the property of the inventor, which like any other form of property or business asset can be bought, sold, rented or hired. Patents are territorial rights: a UK patent will only give the holder rights in the UK and rights to stop others from importing the patented products into the UK. 

Registered

Registered Designs are for the eye appeal of an object. They are applied for at The Intellectual Property Office.

Britain also has a ‘Design Right’ providing automatic protection for 15 years from the date of creation, even when a registered design is not applied for.

From August 1989, registered designs have a maximum of 25 years protection subject to renewal fees.

Ethical 

Violence is shown throughout gaming when player become addicted and become stressed due to failing missions or just playing badly at a game in which they want to play good at and show of to there friends so therefore gaming can make people violent towards one and other threw the gaming world.

Ratings of games can help parents judge a game but it cant stop children from buying the games because some parents can just be careless and buy there children anything and some parents can be strict and not but games with a age restriction on them.

Through the education perspective, there are different things gaming can teach us, some are positive while others are negative. 

Stereotyping  Through stereotyping, the video game industry focuses towards men more than women, therefore, many people think it is stereotyping against women.

Lastly, through addiction and community, participating in an immense amount of time in video game play have caused people to be addicted to it. As a result, they lose valuable time within their communities and miss opportunities from other activities that could be more beneficial for them.

professional bodies 

UKIE is the only trade body for the UK’s wider interactive entertainment industry. They exist to champion the interests, needs and positive image of the video games and interactive entertainment industry who's companies make up their membership. 

The International Game Developers Association is the largest non-profit membership organization serving individuals that create video games. 

Women in Games Jobs is a non-profit company that works to recruit more women into the games industry by promoting role models and giving encouragement and information to those women seeking to work in games. It also campaigns to make the games industry a more attractive field for women, both for new entrants and to retain women already working in the industry.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) supports, promotes and develops the art forms of the moving image - film, television and video games - by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners and benefiting the public. 

MEF is the global trade association for companies wishing to monetize their products & services via mobile. The organisation is headquartered in London with operational chapters and offices in Asia, EMEA, Latin America, Middle East, Africa and North America.