Category: News

New York’s Court of Appeals issued a ruling today on actress Lindsay Lohan’s lawsuit against Take-Two alleging her likeness was appropriated without permission in Grand Theft Auto V, and that ruling is: “dismissed.”

This seems to be a nail in the coffin of the long-running legal fight, which started months after the game’s release in late 2013.

Lohan claimed that the GTA V character Lacey Jonas (pictured) was meant to be a likeness of her, used without permission, and so in 2014 she sued Take-Two and creator Rockstar Games in New York Supreme Court for alleged violation of her privacy.

At the time, legal expert Zachary Strebeck noted in his Gamasutra blog that “under New York publicity rights law, ‘any recognizable likeness, not just an actual photograph’ is protected. Should the court find that the various elements of the Jonas character are a recognizable likeness of Lohan, she could prevail on proving that Take-Two and Rockstar have infringed.”

By September of 2016, a panel of five judges had dismissed both Lohan’s lawsuit and a similar one brought against Take-Two by reality TV star Karen Gravano, noting that “even if we accept plaintiffs’ contentions that the video game depictions are close enough to be considered representations of the respective plaintiffs, plaintiffs’ claims should be dismissed because this video game does not fall under the statutory definitions of ‘advertising’ or ‘trade’.”

Lohan’s appeals eventually brought the case before the state’s Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, which published an opinion today stating that while images of people in games (or any computer-generated medium) do constitute “portraits” under the state’s publicity laws (herein references as Civil Rights Law  §§ 50 and 51) such portraits of Lohan do not appear in GTA V. 

“We conclude a computer generated image may constitute a portrait within the meaning of that law,” wrote the court. “We also conclude, however, that the subject images are not recognizable as plaintiff, and that the amended complaint, which contains four causes of action for violation of privacy pursuant to Civil Rights Law §§ 50 and 51, was properly dismissed.”

Retention is important to the success of online and free-to-play games, but it isn’t only achieved through reducing churn: It’s just as much about effectively winning back lapsed players. So how can designers boost retention for live games by focusing on returning players? 

In this 2015 GDC session, Jagex Game Studios’ Phil Mansell describes the wide range of design and product management techniques for improving retention rates of returning players in online games by taking a look at Runescape.

Mansell uses case studies and data from game initiatives to explain what worked and what didn’t across game content, community events and communications, offering tips on how other designers can capitalize on the potential of returning players. 

Developers interested in learning how Runescape retained an active community can now watch the talk completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

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The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Redmond, Washington

NTD’s Software Development Support Group (SDSG) supports Nintendo licensees in development of software on Nintendo platforms.  Members of the group are experts in Nintendo hardware and software development tools, providing frontline support to developers around the world.

SDSG members work with AAA development teams to help solve some of their hardest problems, while also educating new developers on the basics of Nintendo development. SDSG members are engineers and educators, utilizing both communications and software development skills to help development teams large and small.  If you are ready to enable developers to create the best possible experiences, we want to hear from you   

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

• Develop and share expertise on Nintendo software development procedures and techniques
• Answer technical questions and advise developers that are creating content for Nintendo platforms
• Create tutorials, demos, and documentation for Nintendo platform development
• Create content for and present at workshops and technical conferences
• Participate in the design, development, and support of various software development tools
• Create concise, easy to read documents which will facilitate efficient game development.
• Up to 10% travel

SUMMARY OF REQUIREMENTS

• Three or more years related experience
• Strong Knowledge and understanding of all aspects of software product development, related tools, and testing paradigms
• Experience in programming embedded and application software for video game platforms and related development tools
• Strong programming skills in C/C++ and at least one additional modern programming language
• Development experience on Unix, Linux or Windows
• Strong skill in one or more of client/server based software creation, Systems development, development tools, platform graphics, game engines, low-level drivers or power management
• Knowledge of software project tracking and source control
• Technical writing skills
• Strong systems design, problem-solving and debugging skills
• Undergraduate Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree, or equivalent work experience required
• Valid passport may be required 

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

“When your game becomes toxic, your reputation precedes you,” UX researcher and advisor on online harassment Katherine Lo cautioned the audience during a talk at GDC this past week. She was one of four experts that offered advice to developers in attendance at the talk entitled “Mitigating Abuse Before It Happens” and, though the words of each speaker varied, the message was the same:

The best way to prevent abuse and toxicity (and keep your community management team happy) is to build the foundations for a healthy community directly into your game, rather than address issues as they spring up post-launch. 

Many of the insights brought forward during the talk were centered around VR communities and spaces, but there are a number of takeaways from the session that can be applied across other areas of game development as well.

Lo argued that community management should be integrated into design and policy-making practices from the very start and that developers need to embrace proactive strategies to ensure their players both feel safe joining the conversation and don’t feel like they’re being penalized for engaging.

She explained reactive methods of community management can easily become expensive and taxing on engineering resources as developers try to both identify and fix problems that have already emerged, potentially derailing post-launch roadmaps and content releases while trying to remove a “toxic community” label.

To that end, Lo championed mid-development collaboration between different sectors of game development to best combat toxicity early on, arguing that community, trust and safety, and data science teams can work closely together to design systems like semi-automated flagging systems that highlight possible cases of harassment and elevate them to human agents.

Though she maintained that it’s important for those teams to have some level of understanding of what each arm of game development does; does your community management team understand how engineering works, like what’s expensive or cheap to implement and does your engineering team understand what community managers experience on the day to day? 

On the design side, Lo urged developers to “consider the way the mechanics in your game encourage cooperation and toxic behavior,” something XEODesign CEO and game designer Nicole Lazzaro then elaborated on in depth. 

Those familiar with XEODesign may recognize the ‘4 Keys 2 Fun’ design philosophy that Lazzaro brought up during her portion of the talk. At its core, the ‘4k2f’ model highlights four kinds of fun (hard fun, easy fun, serious fun, and people fun) and associates emotions with each. 

“In VR, emotions are deeper, stronger, and more personal,” said Lazzaro. “You can’t design emotions directly, but the mechanics and the emotions coming from those mechanics drastically change how your game is played.”

Lazzaro explains that the first step to mitigating abuse through design is to think about exactly what behaviors mechanics in your game reward. Not only is it possible to use game design to reduce the abuse in online communities, Lazzaro pointed out, but a lot of abuse happens because game mechanics are actually unwittingly encouraging it. She encouraged devs to think about their game as a funnel and look at what they’re bringing in that makes a game feel more inviting or less conducive to abuse. 

She suggested developers introduce empathy hurdles (or mechanics that rely on trust, player interactions, or friendship) to reward cooperation with others. Using mechanics like this to instill values into online communities can proactively attract and encourage the desired core values of community behavior in a player base. 

Lazzaro says developers should identify gaps in game design that may lead to potential abuse down the road. If one specific area of fun is lacking, for example, players may come up with their own ways to play and satisfy their own goals, sometimes at the expense of other players through activities like griefing or harassment. She encouraged developers to look at the emotions that are coming from such players during the short and long term and design challenges within the game to satiate those emotional needs.

Closing out the talk, Flaregames’ head of community and customer service Tara Brannigan offered developers some tips and examples from her own experience in the community management world that may help them effectively foster non-hostile communities.

One strong example she put forth came from Flaregames’ Zombie Gunship Survival. In that case, the developers opted to tie players’ community account to their save file. If they got banned for uncouth behavior, they’d have to restart their save file, or petition the developers to have it restored. This significantly cut down on the amount of misbehavior in the game, Brannigan explained.

Here are a few more general tips Brannigan shared during GDC:

• Give yourself time to understand what your community management strategy is (and give yourself time to figure out how to deal with behavior on different platforms)
• Create really clear rules and terms of service
• Act on those rules, or they don’t matter
• Empower the good. Nail down what experience you want, then reinforce it.
• Only responding to the misbehaving sends a message as well
• Figure out what the worst case scenario is, both ethically and legally, and have a plan before it happens. 
• “You don’t know what you don’t know,” so have plans for the known situations so you have more time to deal with the wild ones when they pop up.
• Developers, give community managers a career path, otherwise you’ll only have entry level community managers as folks with good experience promote up into other roles.
• Your community managers and your customer service team should be different people; one builds the city, one puts out fires
• Beware burnout; it’s a realistic outcome if devs don’t have the backs of their community team or value what they do

“Community is now, more than ever, an actual part of game design,” concluded Brannigan. “It’s not something you staple on the end”

A group of developers from French studio Eugen Systems have hit out at management after failing to make any headway after over a month on strike. 

The company saw 21 of its 44 employees walk out in February in protest over unfair treatment, with workers slamming the Wargame and Steel Division creator for failing to compensate devs for overtime, ignoring minimum wage laws, and refusing to acknowledge employee contracts. 

Now, six weeks later, those on strike have lambasted management for ignoring their demands and refusing to negotiate. 

“After six weeks on strike and an obvious lack of will to change the situation, Eugen Systems’s management finally show their true colors and aren’t trying to hide the fact they have no intention negotiating anymore,” they explained in a post on the Union of Video Game Workers website.

“Our last meeting of Friday, March 23, lasted only a quarter of an hour. And for good reason, confronted with systematic rejection from management, we asked whether they would accept to negotiate anything. Their answer was brief and precise: no.”

The group says all of their proposals have been denied by Eugen management, including those that wouldn’t incur any additional costs for the company. 

For instance, Eugen has refused to spread the docking of wages from days on strike over several months, a standard compromise that would leave those protesting with enough money to live each month. 

With management refusing to play ball, the on-strike devs have decided to “harden their methods” by reaching out to the French labor tribunal of justice. 

“About fifteen previous and current employees of Eugen Systems have initiated a procedure with the prud’hommes (labor tribunal of justice). However, this only concerns previous litigations and will not help solve the background problems about working conditions and consideration for the work provided,” they added.

“These six weeks of strike have not been entirely unsuccessful, however: we were able to consult each other, link up with organizations and people. Our situation is not unique, and many other companies take advantage of their employees’ passion to put in place working conditions that are illegal.

“We invite every person, group and association that see in our struggle a just fight to help us, however the means: mediatically by sharing the articles talking about our situation, financially via the strike fund, morally with your messages of support and by testifying to the legitimacy of this struggle on social networks.”

You can find out more about the strike by checking out the full blog post right here.

The Academy of Interactive Art and Sciences (AIAS) and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) are accepting submissions for the 15th annual Into the Pixel video game art exhibit. 

Into the Pixel was established to celebrate the talented, hard-working artists who help create and shape the many weird, wonderful, and downright gorgeous virtual worlds the games industry knows and loves. 

The 2018 collection will be premiered at E3 2018, and will be selected by an panel of jurists including Campo Santo lead artist Jane Ng, Blizzard Entertainment senior art manager Seth Spaulding, and curators Glenn Phillips and Nora Dolan.

Submissions may consist of in-game or concept art, including character, environmental/landscape, and any other pieces used during production. 

Each years’ collection (which can all be viewed online) covers a huge array of genres and platforms. Previous exhibits have included scenes from triple-A blockbusters like Uncharted 4 and Destiny, to smaller releases like Rime and The Banner Saga 2. 

As always, the 2018 collection will be auctioned off on eBay to raise money for the AIAS Foundation and ESA Foundation, which are attempting to grow and nurture the games industry though a variety of initiatives and grants. 

The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 20. You can find out more about the exhibit, including a full set of submissions criteria, by checking out the Into the Pixel website.