Week 8 Lecture Reflection

This week’s lecture was given by Sal Humphreys and discussed multi-player online games, specifically Everquest. It covered the currently topical area surrounding intellectual property within online games where players produce the game while the corporation who owns it profits. It highlighted for me that there is an increasing popularity in interactive virtual worlds where players produce relationships, game content and the overall game play but the contract terms under which they play are very unfair. For example; a corporation such as Sony is given rights where it can make its Everquest players/producers accede to contract terms that give ownership to Sony while taking away the producers rights to their own creation. In addition to this there is the issue of online games and virtual worlds owned and managed by large corporations, eg: Sony, where the player’s real world citizen rights are taken away, eg: freedom of speech within the virtual environment. Players have been banned by Everquest customer service for protesting against actions of game management. I agree with the lecturer’s recommendation for there to be an assessment of rights given to large corporations in relation to their control over others’ intellectual property. How far can they go?