Employment:
This type of contract contains the terms and conditions set for a new employee, usually explaining what the company will expect to get from the you and what the company will do for you. Just as you would see in any other type of contract fora regular job. I the Games industry, it would be likely to receive information on benefits of the job, confidential, inventions, and not competing against the company shortly after realised from employment.
Development Agreements:
In the games industry, games publishers always hire games developers to hire there games, and so will receive a contract setting the terms of a development role/deal.
Terms - This part of the contract will explain how much the developer will be paid and how long he or she has to create the game.
Ownership - Its important for developer to know whether the publishers owns the IP or the developer.
Warrenties - The Developers must swear to not use someone else's sours code/codes while making the game. The publisher must also swear to give description of the game to the developers in order to create the particular game.
License Agreements:
When a publisher wants to make a game about a film for example, he must create a contract spelling out the terms of the license.
What's Being Licensed - The contract spells out exactly what the publisher is getting the rights to use.
What The License Can Be Used For - 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.
Territory - The contract specifies what parts of the world the publisher's game will be published in. Publishers always want worldwide rights, of course - but licensors often charge more for that.
Term - The contract probably doesn't run forever. Most license agreements run no more than 5 years.
NDA and Confidential Agreements:
Non-Disclosure Agreements, disclosure agreements and confidential agreements are all basically the same the thing. One party, must share a secret discussing business of a plan, a plan to create a game, an idea for a game or a new games technology not yet created. The other party must then agree to this idea and agree not to disclose this to the first party, if not, consequence will be met int the court of law.
Collaboration Agreements:
The contracts above cover the most used and most common types of contracts found in the games industry. But a lot of developers and publishers now days are creating indie games or hobby games, as such, a very important need for them would be secure ownership and compensation of their game as it is outside the mainstream industry. The majority of indie and hobby games fail and its mostly due to the lack of responsibility handed down, where no terms are set in place for who gets what, who owns what and who's makes what in the game. A collaboration agreement sets rules to how the game should be managed/controlled, who owns the IP, how the games is or was intended to be used, how any income will be handled and how termination of the project will be governed.
Game Ethics
Ethics: The science of morals in human conduct.
Morals: Concerned with the goodness or badness of character. The principles of what is right and what is wrong.
Introduction to Gaming Ethics
There are a number of potential of ethical issues posed by gaming:
Violence:
It can be agreed that engaging in video games does have many ethical concerns. Through violence, there are many games involving violent acts as well as other content related to violence. This may lead many people to believe that playing these types of video games can cause a person to be more violent.
Ratings:
Through the ratings of the games, it helps the parents of young children to pick the right game for their kids. Though, others are concerned that this rating system doesn't prevent people from acquiring video games that are considered to be inappropriate for their age.
PEGI - In 2003, a games age rating system was announce for Europe named PEGI(Pan-European Game information) its soul purpose was to raise pedant awareness of the suitable age of a game, this would affect their decision on whether to buy a game or not for their children. This system is now supported by most console manufacturers, such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The age rating system was developed by the ISFE (interactive software federation of Europe)
Education:
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.
Addiction:
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.
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