Hi, I'm trying to summarize here a conversation I had with Xav. As both of us don't agree on all aspects, Xav please correct what I'm saying if you feel it's biased ;-)
Basically we are interested to create games that are connected to social aspects - we don't pretend to teach anything but we'd love to see the player ask himself new questions about his environment after experiencing the game. In the case of HackIt, questions about ownership on the web and behavior of its users , to say it quickly. Added to that, we believe that it's important with our game to polarize people : if we want to gain some visibility, we need people to love or hate our games but not be indifferent because we are small and don't have millions to spend in marketing... So, basic agreement : raise social questions and create games that act as troublemakers :-) Now, another aspect : as you may know, we are currently facing legal questions related to copyright due to the fact that we are using the real web sites in our game. We are currently investigating the question with lawyers, and on another hand, some game choices will have impact (proxy versus plugin might have legal consequences for instance) on that matter - but basically the point is that there is currently a risk on this that we don't fully apprehend. If we feel that the risk is too large, we'll need to change the way we do things with our representation of the web sites. Be if we feel that the risk is acceptable, there are two paths : 1) one possible option could be to go with what we have currently at the risk of being sued because we believe that we can make the case law (jurisprudence in French, not sure about the word) evolve and win the lawsuit. 2) Another option would be to still look at how to change the game so that there is no legal risk, without losing the core experience of the game. I'm not sure how to do that, but it's a discussion we haven't had yet, there might be ways. The flaw with the second option, as I see it, is that even if the game itself acts as troublemaker, we might still meet difficulties to create some buzz. We might want to partner with a game portal or find some other way to gain visibility in order to compensate that. The flaw with the first option is that if we are sued, even if we have a good chance to win at the end, it will be a lot of money (good lawyers are expensive !), time and energy spent on that, that we will not spend on the game. Independently of legal considerations, there is a risk here to lose our focus on the content of the game itself. For me, the question here lies on where we want to provoke reactions : on the game itself and its content (second option), or on the way we display this game and how users actually -in the real world- behave towards ownership on the web (first option). I won't go too much into details in this first mail on how Xav and I disagree on the choice of these options. I prefer to give the situation, let Xav add his comments, and let you think about it if you can take a little time for that. We can start disagreeing after that :-) So, what do you think ? Thx D
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