So I decided to make a separate blog post addressing the concerns on copyright and classification relating to my chosen concept of online video experimentation – gaming.

So gaming’s been a relatively new concept since the introduction of video-sharing mediums such as YouTube, before it would only be highlighted through low budget review shows on television as well as advertisement. But now gaming’s a rather versatile genre capable of getting a wide variety audiences – it sounds like another typical genre only there’s one main concern when creating something through the gaming genre – copyright.

Now for our 2nd Project in this OVE studio, Apple and I have decided to work with gaming and Vines, thankfully for the game I’m working with (Counter-strike), the developers and publishers (Valve) have an implied sense of freedom to use their content to your desires. It’s implied through their promotion of Tournaments being streamed through Twitch, their features in-game that allow users to download, watch and record their own games and many more factors that imply that Valve is very lenient when it comes to recording and sharing their content. However, many other companies tend to take this matter a bit more seriously, mainly because they want to make as much money as possible. For example, companies such as SquareEnix only allow certain people to exploit their content online when a game is released because for starters, if the person is popular (which they most likely are), it would promote the game to a wider audience. This is because they don’t want people simply watching the game online as opposed to physically buying a copy and playing it yourself. But eventually as time passes, they begin to let more and more people upload their content when they believe their sales have already peaked as high as it can get.

As a studying media professional however, regardless of what game content I’m going to be using, it’s still a good idea to try and get in contact with the game developers/publishers themselves to make sure that what I’m doing isn’t going to be a breach of copyright and cause all sorts of havoc.

It’s the same with music as well, although I may not be exploring this particular game, game’s such as Grand Theft Auto which have built in radio soundtracks tend take copyright issues seriously because they themselves are liable for copyright/contract breach by the record companies that allowed them to use their music and no one else. But if I were to eventually work with music and they happened to be owned by a record company, I would send an email asking for permission to use it as opposed to risking any sort of copyright breach. Although I did use a song in one of my sketches, thankfully that track was free.

TL:DR – So even though I’m working with the content from a developer that’s really lenient with copyright, I would still email them asking permission to use the content just to be safe.

Now with classification, for this particular game content I’m using (Counter-Strike), it’s classified under either M or MA15+; the reason I can’t find a definite answer is because they don’t sell hard copies of the game (that I know of) and the only way to purchase this game is electronically where they don’t clarify the rating most of the time.

Moving on, since this game’s intended for viewers/players of a certain age, it’ll probably need to have some sort of restriction placed upon it as a media professional, so I would probably set the video/blog post as password protected – providing the password only to those suited for the content – also placing a disclaimer to make sure people know what they’re getting into. Something like ‘Caution: Swearing and Violence’ which are mostly present in all of my sketches.