Mike Jones Digital Basin
cinematic media rinse cycle

Microsoft's ham-fisted Game Usage Rules

Giving with one hand and taking with the other. Microsoft's latest posturing in regard to the Gaming industry and community poses some interesting thinking and questions.

Microsoft have released a treatise of 'guidelines' to govern and indeed obviously intended to rein-in the pesky game modding community. The guidelines detail what Microsoft says you, as a game modder, can and cannot do to a Microsoft derived game.



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Game Content Usage Rules

You can’t reverse engineer our games to access the assets or otherwise do things that the games don’t normally permit in order to create your Items.

• You can’t use Game Content to create pornographic or obscene Items, or anything that contains vulgar, racist, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content.
• You can’t sell or otherwise earn anything from your Items. We will let you have advertising on the page with the Item on it, but that’s it. That means you can’t sell it, post it on a site that requires subscription or other fees, solicit donations of any kind (even by PayPal), use it to enter a contest or sweepstakes, or post it on a page you use to sell other items (even if those other items have nothing to do with Game Content or Microsoft).
• You can’t use the soundtracks or audio effects from the original game. We often license those from third parties and don’t have the rights to pass them on to you.
• You can’t infringe anyone’s IP rights in your Item, even if the IP rights being infringed don’t belong to Microsoft. Among other things that means you can’t use any of Microsoft’s trademarked logos or names except in the ways described in the pages linked from www.microsoft.com/trademarks.
• You can’t add to the game universe or expand on the story told in the game with “lost chapters” or back story or anything like that.
• You can’t grant anyone the right to build on your creations. We don’t mind if other people help you out, but you have to be clear with them that it’s not you giving permission, it’s us. (That’s how we make sure everyone plays by the same rules.)

If you do any of these things, you can expect to hear from Microsoft’s lawyers who will tell you that you have to stop distributing your Items right away.

There’s still a way to do some of these things we’ve excluded, but you have to contact us for a commercial license. Thanks, and have fun!

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On one hand this may be seen as a concession from MS, indeed an acknowledgment of modding and machinimas rightful place as a dynamic and engaging participatory digital art; or otherwise simply that MS acknowledge that fighting the modders outright is a bucket to hold back the flood.. On the other, by way of their specific objections in the guidelines, MS also make it quite clear where they see their ownership extending to and how that ownership exerts directly on what you can and cant do with a 'product'. But here we come up against that one word that is so problematic in the digital software age - Product.

You see, whilst you may BUY a JACKET/BAG/CAR you only  LICENSE a GAME/SOFTWARE. Many have argued this is one of the great consumer hoodwinks of the modern age as the result is that despite the fact that you have 'bought' the game/software you are legally allowed to use what you have bought Only as the owner allows.

Whilst some argue this is about protecting the Intellectual Property of the developers it is none the less the equivalent of buying a Car and the manufacturer dictating what colour you can paint it and stop you beefing up the engine.

In the Product world this is absurd but somehow in the software world its perfectly normal. Why a software product functions in a different conceptual framework to any other product might seem an arbitrary distinction serving no other purpose than protecting ongoing revenue. Obviously the ability for the computer to perfectly and en-masse copy and distribute is the key difference; a bit like buying a Ferrari, changing the tires and paint job and then making infinite clones of the Ferrari to give away.

Any way you slice it, this issue is complex but at its heart this an effort by Microsoft to dictate how you use their product, what you can and can't do with it. This really rallies (arguably with futility) against a dominant and prevailing game culture of user driven content and proactive co-creation. Indeed it is this culture that is arguably directly responsible for much of the great success of the game industry and there is no doubt at all than the deep pool of game design talent draws directly on this game modding culture.

Copyright issues aside, this move by Microsoft may well be seen as Bighting the Hand that Feeds if nothing else. History has proven time and again that a dynamic community of modders for a game does nothing but promote the game, expand its user-base and ensure an infinitely longer shelf life. Moreover that games that embrace the modding and machinima cultures and provide game features and functionality to aid these creative pursuits reap back the rewards in the longevity and widespread take up of the game.

Posted at 01:00AM Sep 26, 2007 by Mike Jones in 3D graphics & gaming  |  Comments[3]