There is a 3 main obligation that must be followed within the games industry. These falling under the three categories Contractual, Legal and Ethical.
Contractual
There are a few different things within contractual that play a large part in mainly the employment of the games designers. First of all, someone that would be looking for a job in games, maybe a 3d modeller or a junior programmer might receive a opportunity off a major company or even just a low budget game. They would usually receive a contract in which it states how long they are being employed for a certain pay and in what role. This is known as the Development Agreements. Within this can also be information on royalties and other perks of the job. There can be something known as the licencing agreement as well as the developers agreement. This states that the game company and maybe the idea owner decide to bring a game out on certain consoles such as the PlayStation alone or decide what parts of the world there game will be published in; this licence agreement running out after a period of time. Non-disclosure agreements are basically the confidentiality between the two groups involved (usually the developer and the games company). An agreement is made so if any information is leaked or spilt by the developer in a way that jeopardises the company then legal action can be taken in court against the developer. This making the disclosure very important as it prevents people’s ideas getting stolen. A collaboration agreement is a different sort of agreement. Focusing more on indie games set alone, the collaboration agreement guarantees how the project is managed and controlled.
Ethical
There has been a number of big ethical kafuffles within the gaming industry however; one that stands out clearly the most for me is the recent incident between Australia’s classification board and Saints Row new release game, Saints Row 4. This little scrap was because of the main content within the saint’s row game. The provocative drug use within SR4 is the main problem with the sexual explicit weapons used in the game. This is something that had to be dealt with by the creators, “Volition”. A Version for Australia was soon developed in response and the ethical situation defused.
LEGAL
Copyright is a very large issue within any major company or just a young design with an interesting idea. The concept of someone stealing your idea within an area as big as the games industry is quite daunting however; the copyright laws in the 21st century are relatively good. The ease of being able to copyright something with the click of a button the keyboard makes it the easiest way to make sure your work isn’t blatantly copied. A piece of work is instantly copyrighted as soon as it is posted theoretically anyway however a piece of work is copyrighted mainly your whole life and from 50 to 100 years on top of that, therefore making copyright one of the most useful tools to protect your own work. Sometimes represented in this form: Copyright © 2005-2007 [your name/company name]. For example, on the game website for Minecraft, we get a copyright logo. Therefore showing the company name and the period of the copyright, demonstrating how good and useful copyright is to a games company. On the topic of copyright, Trademark s another significant topic when speaking about the legal problems and solutions within the gaming industry. The symbol trademark is used to differentiate your product from someone else’s. The Legal side of games is widely seen with the symbol and logo PEGI 7 for example standing for Pan European Games Information. This legal obligation is a necessity within the gaming industry as a game would have no way of being published with incorrect or without the standings.
