Vince Zampella and Jason West v Activision
As the game market continues to explode with major publishers consolidating at an equally astonishing clip, what representation will creative talent need in the industry of tomorrow? Although as they grow Activision and EA are becoming increasingly vilified by gamers and workers alike, what hard lessons and growing pains from similarly evolving industries like publishing, film, and music can be mitigated?
By now anyone who doubts the game industry’s stature beside these and other entertainment industries is like Rand Paul categorically arguing against the Civil Rights Act on national TV. Sports agent, acting agent, game dev agent? They don’t customarily have representation before employment now but they do have lawyers after incidents. Wouldn’t the former be a better alternative?
All the implications of that Internet
Within the past few days, Wikileaks has released tons of confidential US military documents. How will and can they be pursued legally (haven’t been able to load the site at all today!)? What rights to access such information are emerging in the age? Episodes like this definitely seem unstoppable within the current framework, but maybe a new and more capable one could be forthcoming. Maybe not, and if not, there will need to be new tools to minimize and control the effects.
On Facebook, etc: It seems like a privacy violation story breaks weekly after social networks make minor tweaks to their settings. Privacy is one of the most interesting and elusive legal issues (sup penumbrae) and takes on a whole new form with so much traditionally private information being digitized and transferred all over the place.
And the big monetization question ever lurks. I love how, related to my first point, microtransaction based games are proving richly profitable for networks while the results of ads, except for Google’s case, have been modest. iTunes music and apps have set a new precedent that Hulu is tweaking, yet the majority of rights holders resist and resist. New ideas cometh and helping them blossom sounds very exciting.
Telecom was a monopoly
But is it still? The business model and operations still reek of single or dual party control of the majority of the industry. We see it in high-profile, controversial cases involving iPhone exclusivity or Google Voice and voip alternatives to staggeringly priced voice plans. But it could be argued that there is much more; ingrained attitudes and corporate culture directly from the Ma Bell days lurk, creaky craft union organization is expensively applied to retail store and call center workers, and competitors like Wimax and Lightsquared are chipping away despite having a hard time before.
Hopeful that I can work on big, cool issues.