In 2003, I co-founded the weblog Terra Nova, which examines video games and virtual worlds from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. While the majority of my research on games concerns the intersection of intellectual property law and digital games, I also participate more broadly in the emerging discipline of game studies. Game studies scholars are interested in play, games, and entertainment software as a new form of media.
My current research is described at the Rutgers Player-Authors website. The following pieces are also related to my game studies research:
A Legal and Structural Investigation of Online User-Generated Content Systems (NSF #125077) (forthcoming)
An investigation and report describing how copyright law is implicated by and shapes user-generated content in online games.
Feature Contributions to Gamasutra:
(Gamasutra is the online version of Game Developer Magazine)
- The Erosion of Creative Freedom? The Battle over Publicity Rights – July 2012
- Minecraft, Intellectual Property, and the Future of Copyright – January 2012
- Virtual Justice - December 2011
Minecraft as Web 2.0: Amateur Creativity and Digital Games (2012)
in Amateur Media: Social, cultural and legal perspectives
This book chapter considers how the digital game Minecraft has both enabled and benefited from various Web 2.0 practices. I begin with an explanation of the concept of Web 2.0 and then consider how that concept applies to the space of digital games.
Rules of Play
4 Games & Culture 379 (2009)
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) constitute social jurisdictions governed by rules of play. When we consider the work of Johan Huizinga and subsequent theorists of human play activities, we find that ludic rules differ from legal rules in important ways. The goals of play also differ from the goals of law. In applying law to MMORPGs and other virtual worlds, it is important to recognize that jurisdictions of play are structured in ways that are fundamentally different from the ways traditional legal rules are structured.
The Planes of Power: Everquest as Text, Game, & Community
9 Game Studies (2009)
This article describes EverQuest as a fictive text, a computer game, and an online community and explains how these three distinct frameworks lead to different legal regulatory modalities. In combining elements of fiction, game, and community in an integrated framework, EverQuest challenges a prospective legal regulator to weigh policy considerations in determining how best to respond to an object and social practice that entails the interplay of various authorial, strategic, and community elements. Ultimately, the question of formulating an optimal regime of legal regulation for virtual worlds like Norrath must be seen as a new question to be addressed by the political process.
