“Don't clone my indie game, bro”: Informal cultures of videogame regulation in the independent sector

Phillips, Tom ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1732-4514 (2015) “Don't clone my indie game, bro”: Informal cultures of videogame regulation in the independent sector. Cultural Trends, 24 (2). pp. 143-153. ISSN 0954-8963

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Abstract

In the contemporary games sector, independent developers feel there is an inadequate level of protection for their intellectual property, particularly with regards to game clones. There is also a sense that neither players nor policy-makers completely understand the specificities of how IP may be creatively, if not legally infringed. As a result, there has increasingly been a shift towards the construction of a culture of self-regulation for indie developers, attempting to publicly shame cloners via social media, directly impacting infringers' reputation and sales and bypassing formal regulation.This article uses interviews and workshop discussions with developers to examine the manner in which this informal culture of regulation has been perpetuated in relation to current videogame copyright legislation, and suggests how the interrelation between producers and policy-makers may help to inform the direction of future policy decisions. Examining the way appropriate practice is informally managed in independent gaming, the article considers the soundness of policy in the contemporary videogames industry.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Please check the License conditions for the work which you wish to reuse. Full and appropriate attribution must be given. This permission does not cover any third party copyrighted material which may appear in the work requested.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	videogames,copyright,policy,community,creativity
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	15 Apr 2015 12:50
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2023 09:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/53108
DOI:	10.1080/09548963.2015.1031480

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