12 September, 2011

Global pros and cons

In looking at the video game market I have come to realize that this market is pretty much a global marketplace now.  Game developers are able to create games from anywhere and put them out for anyone with internet access to consume.  This is a good thing as game developers potentially have a huge audience, but it also means that there is global competition.  There is also the challenge of providing ones game in what could possibly be a plethora of languages.

I have been thinking a bit about why companies have such long and involved terms of use and privacy policies that users must accept before they are able to use products, and I think that the competition has a big part to play in that.  Creating code for games is a long and very involved process, and if someone were to reverse engineer or in essence steal that code then all of the work that gets put into it may not be compensated.  Because there is no universal law in regards to copyright despite many attempts by multiple countries to create such a law, there is really no way to protect oneself from pirating and copycats in countries that have no laws or little to no enforcement of said laws.  Even in the US where they are taking the whole copyright issue very seriously it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to bring infractions to the attention of law enforcement.

All that being said it is difficult to learn how to program when everyone is safeguarding their code in every way possible.  The other problem is that by the time I get the know how to complete a game technology may be way ahead of my ability to code.  Hopefully the pros will outweigh the cons.

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