Game Developer’s Bill of Rights

BY: BRIAN ROBBINS  |  Advergames, Casual Games, Game Industry

The IGDA has just posted Eric Zimmerman’s Game Developer’s Bill of Rights. Eric presented this at the Montreal International Game Summit. Eric created this based on the inspiration of Scott McCloud who did a similar thing for Comics Creators.

While the entire article and Bill of Rights is a good read, it isn’t all directly applicable to developers, and certainly not Advergame developers. Eric acknowledges as much, having designed these to be more of a talking point, than an actual contract terms.

My biggest issues with the rights, as presented are that several of them seem to assume the worst of game publishers. Most notably:

7. The right to promote and the right of approval over any and all promotion of our games and ourselves.

In a positive developer/publisher relationship, the game developer should be tasked with doing what they are good at, namely designing and developing great games. While the publisher should be tasked with doing what they are good at, namely promoting and arranging for distribution of said games. While I do think that developers should have some say in the game promotion, I don’t think that developers should by default have veto power over any and all promotional materials. By and large, most developers don’t know how to promote themselves or their products, and getting them more involved in the process will not only waste time and money (for everyone), but may also significantly detract from the final marketing results.

Apart from that, I think Eric’s done a great job in trying to get some discussion going, and by and large I agree with most of his points.

(From: Reality Panic)