User Generated Content System Seller or Legal Nightmare with Zachary Rich

[Music] uh how's it going everybody i think brandon sort of led in there my name is zach rich i am a video game attorney located in silicon valley i work right now with some of the largest players in vr ar uh and the gaming space um so today's talk we're really going to focus on user generated content as brandon had mentioned and bear with me here because my webcam is at the top of my screen and my notes are on another screen so if my eyes start looking all over the place you guys all know why um so a little bit about me uh i am an attorney in florida and in california i was formerly the lead for press start legal from 2017 to 2019 when i made the move out to california to come to work for amazon games

my career has been focused mostly on intellectual property privacy and commercial issues within the interactive entertainment industry i'm a member of both the international trademark association and to the international association international association of privacy professionals or iapp you may have seen some of my work it's been published on gamasutra when i was running press start legal one of my ways of giving back to the community and i believe that's the way how brandon actually located me the first time is i host a used to host an ama called i am a video game lawyer on reddit's game dev community where for at least the entire day of wednesday at least twice a month i answered questions from the community about various legal issues uh but today's talk we're going to focus on user-generated content so let's let's talk about what we're covering today we're going to talk about what is user-generated content we're going to talk about user-generated content agreements or for the rest of this talk you know ugc agreements do you need them

what do they do where should i place them how do i know that my users and gamers all accepted these terms we're going to talk about the risks of ugc in your games how you can mitigate those risks and what you as a company as a game developer should really be thinking about if you're looking at creating a game like a minecraft like a dreams like a second life anything that's going to give the users the ability to create what i'm going to dub the flying penis it will have context i swear just bear with me so we're also going to talk about how to navigate ip related issues with user generated content how deep do these go can because i allow users to create uh sonic the hedgehog using voxel blocks in my game will sega and so you know have a claim against me uh for ip infringement and are there any protections from ip rights holders upset with user generated content in my game that i can use today

to protect me as my company and use it as a shield and we'll get into that as well but first a disclaimer nothing in today's presentation should be considered legal advice i know that's kind of counterintuitive as i am a lawyer talking about the law everything discussed today is my general opinion based on current laws in the united states the facts of your case may vary very differently from what we're discussing today and different outcomes will come and affect your situation greatly this presentation does not create an attorney-client relationship i don't know you you don't know me outside my floating head on this beautiful graphic that brandon has provided moving on so what is user-generated content you know ugc or some places you can see it listed as ucc's user created content includes all types of communications sounds videos it's the material that your users are creating within your game they are uploading it they are recording it they

are communicating they are transmitting through your game and these are all of course legal terms of art but you know deep down inside user generated content can be anything some the songs that beat saber allows users to create to worlds and minecraft create direct replicas of right now colleges because of kovid but people have made uh the entire middle earth from the lord of the rings series you've seen people create things like hogwarts within minecraft there are a very big popular trend happening right now or games that allow you to make games so a very popular game on playstation dreams allows you to create games within games these are all user-generated content of course there are some not so obvious ones that we're going to touch on a little bit later and one that one particular company blizzard would wish they had thought about back then which is starcraft and warcraft both have user created scenarios game modes custom game modes etc you all remember uh dota that is

uh a game mode that originally was created in warcraft 3 and then spawned the entire moba genre we're going to talk about ways that you can put phrases within your ugc license that you won't lose out on the ip rights to those creations like blizzard did other examples of the games in the community out there you're looking at second life roblox arc the sims simcity you know these are all uh areas in which you are creating tools to allow your users to create um content for your game your game is just a sandbox and you're filling it with the content that your users are creating one thing that we are not going to discuss today is anything that would fall under a community content policy so for example this is when users are using your game assets to create youtube videos or spin-off comedies for example the red versus blue series that used halo

and since we only have 30 minutes we're going to try and stay away from this entire area of law and focus purely on user generated content within a game and how that affects game development so do i need a ugc protections in my terms of service the answer is yes if your game is going to feature user-generated content you're going to want ugc protections in your terms of service the big question why and we're going to we're going to dive into this a little bit deeper but at a the highest possible level is because when you surface your terms of service at the start of the splash screen of your game that nobody ever reads and they scroll all the way to the bottom and click i accept well guess what you just made sure that they accept a legal document whether they read it or not that is entirely on the user they scrolled to the bottom they clicked accept the law treats that as you had an opportunity to read that document and therefore you are bound as a user to that document

now these ugcs address a lot of very important issues both in player usage rules how will they use user created content within your game and it also addresses the ip implications of having user generated content within your game you know typically you want to see different copyright licenses to reproduce to distribute different ugc within your game environment and potentially allowed other players to interact with your ugc what i mean by that is if your dreams and somebody created a fantastic game you want the copyright license to reproduce and distribute that within your platform and we'll dive a little bit into what that actually means in copyright licensing in just a minute but as a developer and a publisher this is vitally important to you and you want to think about ip ownership ip

licensing do you want an assignment of rights would you want the actual right to own the particular ip so every game every situation is going to be very different and you know the question of why you would want a license over actual outright ownership really comes down to what your tolerance for risk is for example if somebody is assigning to you all their rights in ownership of content they've created for your game but that content is actually uh derivative of a another third party's ip so for example the sonic the hedgehog example you don't want to own that you want nothing to do with that you want to be able to say that this violates your terms of service because it is someone else's intellectual property and remove it from your game or at the very least have a license to reproduce only that ugc within your game environment that way you can live within your game

and if in the event you know sega comes knocking on your door your door you can then take down this particular content and we're going to get through different mechanisms that you need to put in place to shield yourself as a developer from these issues in just a little bit now ugc as i stated can contain different infringing content that may expose you to different liabilities but if you take proper ip protections uh different processes different current uh legal issues for example it's very popular right now it's it's been blast across the news you've heard it it's called section 230 of the cda it's something right now that president trump is aiming to take down this is a tool that you as a game developer can use to protect yourself there's also something called the digital millennial copyright act in the takedown process within that act i'm sure many of you are familiar with that uh either through youtube or through other mechanisms but this can actually be used for you

as a game developer and a publisher to protect yourself from this content as well now what you have to think about when i was talking about risk tolerance is if you take ip ownership of ughc you potentially could have billion dollar businesses created for you i know that sounds ridiculous because it is going to literally be a one in a you know billion chance that this happens but i like to focus back to what we were talking about earlier blizzard lost and really never had the rights to dota when it was released it was created as a game mod in warcraft 3. next thing you know the developers are working with valve to come out with dota 2. you have a spin-off which then created not a spin-off of dota 2 but a spin-off of dota which became league of legends this entire concept of mobas was created as ugc and warcraft 3. and if you look at warcraft reforge

which is the latest remaster of warcraft 3 blizzard actually changed their ugc agreement to own the rights to anything that is created with their game modes now they are willing to accept that risk one because they're blizzard but two because they're not giving free range tools like a minecraft like a dreams like a roblox to create whatever users want they have to create uh ugc within the confines of the game rule so in the in the case of warcraft there's only so much you can do with the existing warcraft models maps etc you can't create say pokemon outside of naming the characters within the game that you can't change game models etc so these are the types of issues that you have to examine every time you're looking at what to do with ugc and how you can protect yourself from infringement claims with this type of content now let's take a look at an example this is a ugc provision that you would likely see within your own game and there's a

couple areas here that i want to highlight so the first and i'm going to give you all just you know quick second to read this and i'll read through it with you you know you are responsible for all communication images sounds and other materials and information that you record communicate upload or transmit to the service in this case the service will be your game you hereby grant studio you and this is what i want to highlight a worldwide perpetual irrevocable sub-licensed transferable assignable and non-exclusive royalty-free right to license use reproduce distribute adapt modify translate create derivative works of publicly perform publicly display digitally perform make have made sell offer for sale or import ugc [Music] that very long massively run-on sentence that lawyers like to create basically gives you the studio the right to do whatever you want with ugc you can create a game

based off of it you can create levels based off of it anything your heart so desires if you get a popular character that is created within your game and you would like to remove it from the game and create a tv show based on it uh if you want to create merchandise based on it that provision gives you the ability to do that going further we're talk we're going to highlight down here you represent warrant and agree that ugc in its use may not violate any third party rights including intellectual property rights now i know that jessica schreiben was here yesterday discussing intellectual property issues in video game development but what this is basically saying and it's giving you basically a knowledge out and what i mean by that is you don't know and you can't know because in theory your game world is so big you have so many users so many people playing that you cannot police every bit of content so you are taking

it on face value that as a user who's agreeing to this provision within your terms of service what they are creating the ugc that they are creating with your tools on your platform does not infringe on a third party's intellectual property right and that's important for the next couple of slides [Music] so how do you protect yourself from infringement claims over ugc well as part of your agreement within your terms of service you want to obtain those representations the representation that we were just discussing so you want to make it clear that the user is representing or the player is representing that they own the generated content that they're creating uh that there's no confidential information within that ugc and what i mean by that is the user is not creating something off of their day job say they work for apple or amazon facebook you know ea sony microsoft etc

if you're working at that studio and you're working on say an unannounced game and you then create that character that game level that game mode etc in somebody else's game in this case your game uh you want to make sure that this is not any type of confidential information and so you're getting the players to warrant that that is not confidential that's important in case a studio comes knocking on your door wondering why their next unreleased hit is appearing in your newest t-shirt uh you want to make sure that the ugc does not infringe on 3p rights it's what we were just going over and that the ugc does not violate any part of the user's agreement and this goes to what i was discussing with the flying penis problem uh a lot of times when you give people the ability to create whatever they want unfortunately you're going to get some bad actors who are going to create things that you probably didn't intend and they call this the flying penis problem is an issue that a past client of mine

had to deal with with their kids version of minecraft for lack of a better term and it gave it was marketed towards a sub 13 age class it was built around the idea of similar to minecraft giving kids the tools to build whatever they want and what ended up happening is their world was filled with user-created flying penises and this is content that went against the rating of the game it's content that would violate different child protection issues and this having this particular verbiage within their terms of service allows them to terminate the user's account delete the ugc and wipe their hands clean of it but what about protecting it in the law you have two current standing shields let's call them to protect your company the first is the digital millennium

copyright act and the takedown policy this is why the verbiage that we discussed earlier about not having knowledge that the work being created is in violation of a third party's rights because you want to not have this knowledge so you can then act as a innocent third party you are just a service provider you are not to be held liable for the content that is created on your platform and in the event content that is created on your platform does violate a third party's rights you have created a process to remove that content now the digital millennium copyright will not protect you if you treat ugc actively and what i mean by actively you're a curator of it you're using it in other places you're replicating it you're creating game modes off of it you're creating

different series off of it etc if you are actively involved in managing user generated content you now have knowledge of what that content is and because of that knowledge you then can be held responsible for infringement they would have to prove it but it makes your case of defense much weaker now there is a catch to getting this protection under the dmca one of those is you have to be registered as a service provider there is a link on my presentation copyright.gov dmca directory faq where they walk you step by step on what you need to do to register as a service provider now this term service writer is used so broadly so if you are a game that includes ugc that has the ability for users to create accounts to log into to play your game you are considered a service provider

the second and as i mentioned earlier in the presentation is something you've definitely heard of recently it's constantly being talked about and that is the communications decency act and more specifically section 230 and that states no provider or user of an interactive computer service and again similar to the dmca this is extremely broad shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider so what does that mean in plain english that means you the user cannot be held sorry you the service the interactive computer service cannot be held liable for what your users create on your platform now this has seen some recent gutting there's a lot of calls right now out in congress and in the senate to uh gut section 233 because of these protections and i have been on both

sides i've used the cda as a shield for my clients and at the flip side i have had it used against me other ways that you've seen this at play right now you see it played out in the news right now where twitter and facebook cannot be sued for what their users post you'll see a lot in countless user reviews you see it in craigslist host classified ads um it's it's literally everywhere and it's impossible to see the internet exist today without the cda because if you could be held liable your game your platform your website for what your users are doing within your game why would you create it in the first place in fact this was possibly the most influential law to protect the innovation that has allowed our the internet to grow and strive so wrapping up at least the presentation

and then we're going to take a q a because i like to be very interactive with the people who are listening hence the amas that i used to run games that feature user generated content is it's an extremely exciting way to get your users interacting with your game world and there are so many ways to do it you could take the minecraft roblox dreams approach where you were just creating the platform and you're allowing your users to run with it you could go the starcraft sims way of creating tools within your game and allow users to use those tools to create other game modes other content but it's very limited you know there's so many different things to consider but each has its own risks and each has its own protections that you have to put in place to make sure that you as a developer as a publisher are in it for the long haul and will not get hung up on an infringement lawsuit my linkedin is on here so is my twitter please feel free to reach out to me guys at any time with any questions

i'm going to turn it over to brandon um brandon i'm assuming you guys have some q a that we're going to do right now yes that is correct i am still here with you i want to thank you again for your time and walking us through this this is actually a pretty new new type of i'm glad you're kind of introducing us to this topic and educating us on it because like you mentioned user generated content is a blossoming industry and uh in a lot of ways it's actually refreshing to see i would i wouldn't call them amateur game developers i would just say more accessible game developers using these systems to kind of get their feet wet with game development and not quite making the plunge into college just yet or learning complicated tools to kind of produce their idea creatively but like you said there are a lot of legality issue and we saw that i think at the beginning of the year with dreams when they first released and a

lot of hype was around that because i think part of the marketing i don't know it was intentional on their side was recreating a lot of classics and i think naturally young developers uh lean towards fan art initially before creating something original so that that kind of was kind of like the perfect storm of uh at least with zach and and your lawyer friends sitting sitting at the couch just laughing at this is going to be a disaster so i want to kind of hear more insight about that like as you were seeing that kind of uh blossoming absolutely so you know for developers young developers who are just starting out to be able to create something like using dreams is is a is a godsend this these tools did not exist five six years ago even last year really the the ability to create a game within a game uh is

is really the best way to test your abilities to determine whether or not this is for you now the flip side of that is provisions like the one i have up here the ugc provisions you don't own really the rights in what you're creating so you want to be really careful when you're operating as an early developer within something like dreams flip side of that if you're creating a game like dreams the most important thing you can do is to make sure that you have a ugc provision you want to make absolutely certain that if someone is going to create the next billion dollar game you own the rights to it you know if blizzard could go back in a time machine to when dota was first created on their custom game modes and then send an update to their terms and conditions to be like we want the rights to this you best believe they would i mean they missed out on a massive opportunity and you know ask them how many people are playing heroes of the storm exactly and i i think one of the you're touching actually on a good point

i think the biggest game that uh initially um played off of this is it's i i feel like at least um it's the same thing as dreams it's the guys that that that kind of saw this as an industry but uh which is a little big planet right just a lot of uh accessible tools and uh although they were kind of locked within the sony ecosystem and i feel like for dreams uh it's it's um suffering the same thing too like in a way where uh that i mean they're they're owned by sony and of course they they get a lot of resources from sony so they're not crying about it in terms of uh the amount of marketing and and and and power that they're getting but like how much bigger would have they been i honestly if it was more like on my minecraft level or roblox right where where it's accessible to all these other platforms and creators are freely able to create without having to own

uh have a buy-in uh basically and um talking about roblox they would be massive crazy too yeah they would massive right yeah exactly if you could take dreams out of the the sony ecosystem and say put it on pc similar to minecraft or or all platforms make it completely accessible to everybody you would have basically created the early stage game developer playbook you would you could go out and market your opportunities to schools to stem programs to you know developer meetups hey come play our game and create a game within that system you know they could take it even a step further and i'm just spewing out ideas for anyone here who's listening and writing it down who wants to run with this but um you know you you could create a platform where ugc is at the center of it and make that platform accessible and then you could go one step further where if you could go as restrictive as a ugc platform like the one that i had up on the screen or you can go really loose and maybe uh

have sort of a revenue share agreement if you create something within my game that all of a sudden is amazing and people are buying my um my game to play your game uh you can do a rev share split and just build that platform and then something if that game spawns outside of your platform um maybe you take a stake in it maybe you invest in these developers if you're a growing publisher this gives you the chance to find new talent and you know i'm gonna get a lot of slack for saying this but talent cheap because they haven't really created anything uh yet so it's it's an idea it's growing you see it now so like youtube was created because of user generated content user youtube was just a platform um and look at where it's at now it's the same with social media these were all platforms that with user generated content became what they are today youtube is actually a great comparison uh i think that's the first time where you kind of made that connection for me where yeah

it started off very similar to a lot of these uh user generated type of um uh creations or platforms and um as an example roblox right so this is where i i'm starting to age myself here where out of the blue suddenly i'm made aware of this where it seems like every kid was playing it and for me at first glance i said what is this subpar graphic output like flash level type of games how you guys playing this but everyone was stuck because of the idea of creating their own levels and games and setting the rules and being a god basically uh at a very young age and if anything roblox i feel is the closest to what you are speaking of because i feel like their team is realizing uh it's a monetizing business i feel like they they at least

make an effort with their content creators and working with them to not only produce but like really amplify a lot of the creation and and a lot of these guys on the roblox universe at least a lot of them went on to i think we're gonna have a guest a couple a couple weeks ago from now on the game devon chain who ended up paying for his college education just through the revenue that he created with his roblox game which is a foreign it's amazing isn't it if you look at when roblox was launched and this although slightly related to ugc slightly unrelated and just a bit of general great advice to everyone who's who's tuned in when robots launched they were pegged as a minecraft clone and had a decent user base but nothing really to write home about they pivoted and built this platform based on user-generated content to differentiate themselves from minecraft so we're not just a voxel-based you know sandbox game world

we're giving users and they appeal to a younger base and the ability to create something and some of it's really like fascinating i mean these are uh you know when i was a kid when we had computer class it we were playing around i believe the game was like magic mountain where you had to like solve math problems and climb up a tower in like 8-bit graphics on an old windows 3.1 machine possibly macintosh but you know these opportunities didn't exist back when we were all kids and now someone created this platform and you don't see too many challengers to it i mean you have dreams and there are other games that have been announced that seem to see this sort of spark and want to turn it into a full-fledged flame but i think what we're going to see over the next couple of years as vr expands as ar starts to become more widely acceptable more platforms that give the users these abilities will become more mainstream and a great

example of course i i haven't played it yet i believe it's still in enclosed beta but just judging on the uh launch trailer by itself uh facebook's horizons is going to be that it's uh from what i've read online and what i've seen in the trailers it's giving users the ability to create worlds within worlds where they can create games within that world and do it now in vr yeah i mean i i think fortunately unfortunately i i think the visionaries are are kind of being sparked by outside traditional game development studios like facebook roblox it's not like from the ground they are a game development studio obviously but i feel like that the makeup of that company is more tech tech on the tech front and i it wasn't like as if a bunch of call of duty developers came together and came up with this idea same thing with minecraft it was great created with originally a a small a two-person team right um i think the

funny thing with minecraft is what er ever since they got bought by mike microsoft i i feel like a lot of what they've been putting out is kind of like in the opposite direction i mean they're they're having more like official minecraft uh experiences and unless talking about user-generated content which they were built off of which is a very weird um weird business plan uh because now they're but even with minecraft the the java version because i believe there's two there's the windows 10 version and then the java version the java version is still extremely popular because it's the only one that supports mods and mods are a form of user-generated content that you as the creator the mod don't really own any rights to based on well depending on a ugc provision within the terms of service but uh you know minecraft became popular because of the java version mods uh and and it's still popular today

and these are great examples of how you can create a game and then give sdks and the ability to create mods i mean look at all the different half-life games uh half-life 2 games that were spawned based on mods day of defeat uh was was a big one totally blanking there was a particular zombie team fortress was one team fortress 2 um not call of duty the similar one counter-strike can't believe i couldn't remember that counter all these were half-life mods yes yeah i mean and all these were user-generated content that's very true like when i was growing up how i got into gaming at least my first steps was through modding and at that time studios i felt like especially with valve they made an extra effort to make it as part of their launch to create tools or make their tools accessible to a lot of newbie developers right to kind of get their feet wet and there was a long absence i think a

period where that wasn't the objective anymore i feel like at the late end of ps2 era to ps3 uh that community was largely ignored and then uh recently like what you said that that has kind of been taking over not officially by games like minecraft roblox uh to kind of fill that need and void but at the same time it's it's kind of weird like the proposition is um isn't set so that you're not hearing a bunch of like top roblox creators getting that job at activision or blizzard right i mean we're they're simply not looking in that not yet exactly and i feel like a lot of that community is being ignored for the reasons of well this is not or they're not being real game developers which is probably kind of like the attitude of what modding was before but even more jaded now because these guys if anything

have such a bigger audience uh they have the social engagement down to the point where they're being supported uh financially but like being championed by their fans on a greater scale because social media wasn't really a thing back then during the counter-strike days so if anything they're more amplified but for some reason i feel like there is still like a foreign idea of like well those guys are a roblox communicator isn't a game developer which uh i'm with you man i i think if anything i'll give you a great example so have you heard of the game natural selection i i think that's what it's called could be wrong so it was a mod for half life that gave you this third person rts with the first person shooting elements to it well they went on and created natural selection too um completely on their own totally built engine et cetera you know not based on a mod and valve actually sued them because they technically owned the rights to

the mod which and then owned the rights derivative works based on the mod now they actually entered into a publishing deal which then resolved the lawsuit but [Music] there is opportunity to create something within a game if you're an early stage developer you can create ugc and use it to build your portfolio just be careful with you know what you agreed to read the terms of service guys i cannot stress this enough if you're if you're a developer who's creating something within a game read your terms of service if you're a developer in studio getting ready to launch your game hire a lawyer to create your terms of service because you want to be the one who has these rights uh to this various content so you kind of mentioned before even within your presentation to kind of get these uh this type of thinking because you never know when it's gonna blow up right if anything you want to have the ability to be flexible and make a living off of it right and really there's no reason why the next stage or the next step after a

successful roblox creation minecraft creation dream creation uh to want to go ahead and work for a major studio right some people sure but for others it's like you're you're a full-fledged game developer and the goal i think for a lot of game developers is to work on their own ideas eventually right and but if you're skipping that whole middle step uh the roadblock as you mentioned is facing these corporations that have these terms of services that eventually own everything that you did and you have no idea because you're again you're just not at that level where you're a seasoned vet to to even know what that is right you're just mistaking absolutely a game and creating it and that's that's where people like myself where jessica and you know we come in and we're lawyers support this industry um you know we want to be able to help you uh and help people guide you know sail through this relatively messy you know

one thing i i learned when i first created press start legal was the gaming industry it's a massive massive multiple billion dollar industry i believe i saw a statistic the other day that the gaming industry eclipse music and movies combined and i think television was thrown in but i don't want to overstate it and one thing i learned from the legal side of it is that we have this massive billion dollar industry that is just grossly underrepresented by legal and you see things like uh last year two years ago there was a big fight between uh bethesda with fallout and with hbo and warner brothers with the westworld game that was almost a direct clone and you see it every day people making clones of your game and and you're not taking proper precautions to protect yourself ugc and games that spawn you know huge hits like dota and league of legends and you guys being the ones who should own the rights

to this are not thinking about it that far ahead and then of course there's the flip side of that if you don't have ugc provisions within your terms of service and you have ugc within your game you want to make sure you're protected from other rights holders from coming after you for infringement you know you don't want nintendo sega activision blizzard et cetera all knocking on your door you know or various studios marvel disney etc you know tapping their foot at you waving their finger going hey you know what are my characters doing in your game uh you know i want money now because you know you're infringing on our rights and these provisions help and defend you against these types of cases of course that's also a gross exaggeration and i will point back to my earlier disclaimer that every case is different but generally having these provisions following the dmca take down policies that you'll create and as told it's completely gutted you can use

the cda as a shield uh you these will protect you if you wanted to create a game like dreams roblox minecraft etc and a lot of what you're saying it comes from both ends because um even the the sole developer who who are working on this platform don't don't think it's going to be a make a hit by the end of it uh i think a lot of these companies are starting to think that this way but like when they created these platforms they didn't really think of it well there's a lot of it's it's a lot like what youtube was before it became on youtube right where yeah they just you never know and if you can't afford an attorney you know there's different ways attorneys will work for you or work with you i'll give you a fantastic example in a game that involves user generated content and this is the type of game that that creates the tools and just gives you sort of a sandbox to build within it involves dinosaurs when the game was first coming out nobody thought it was

going to be as popular as it was not even the creators and they did a 5 web share with the attorney who assisted them because they didn't have any cash to pay for one uh and the game ended up blowing up it was a huge hit and they have a sequel out that has nothing to do with dinosaurs um but also uses user-generated content and you know the particular attorney that i know who who worked for this particular company is now sitting back collecting his five percent checks every month that are just you know paying for his house up in seattle yeah i i i it works in mysterious ways and i feel like a lot of game developers on the popular side it's it's more like you know we're always leaning and we don't know how well it's going to do but the the the percentage that actually does a surprise hit it works the same way it's like oh wow i had no idea it's going to do that well so uh yeah a lot of it starts with creative inspiration believe in yourself if you're going to create a good game whether it involves ugc or not

people will play it you know always focused on the first thing which is i want to create a game that people are going to want to play everything else will come with that uh you know you don't need to worry about multi-billion dollar marketing budgets etc i mean i'll use anthem as a great example i think uh brandon you and i were talking right around when anthem had launched you know i think two two years ago or a year ago and you and i were both excited this was going to be a great new game and it turned out to be a massive flop because it doesn't matter how big your marketing budget is it doesn't matter how big the publisher behind you is all that matters is that your game is fun and people want to play it and that's what you should be focusing on first and foremost yes uh it's a dangerous it's game development is a very dangerous territory for for for everyone that's involved and you never know because it plays into like any other entertainment like the timing besides your product the people that you talk with how you connect with people all these mathematical variables have to

work in unison for you to kind of put out something that actually has resignation and if anything user-generated content is i'm glad that this industry is booming i i'm glad that there's a modding community now because you know the old modded community if anything has evolved into this and i i feel like there's a new generation of content creators finally that is echoing at least what what the times are are asking for you know a huge involvement of social media uh the ability to kind of uh amplify your own message and having all the tools and and social media sites to kind of work at your disposal and it's exactly what gdex is built off of us like how do you have an idea express it and sell it and profit off it and be successful at it i mean that's the whole cycle i feel like every game developer has to do and user generate content if anything

removes a lot of the barriers of learning a thousand programs that us us game developers have to learn and all the tools are super accessible as we mentioned many times before i think it's a perfect formula and like you said we're already seeing the the the remnants of great success within those platforms like the roblox i feel like is at the top of my list of a company that is realizing this and and doing it really well um in minecraft even though they have a huge following at javascript i'm not seeing that type of individual success um as much maybe i'm wrong on this but i'm not hearing at least a single person on that side where it's like well i'd say i would say it's different success you know right with with minecraft its popularity is based on the user generated content or this the ability to create ugc uh they give you an open sandbox and literally you can do just about anything

in it and if you have the ability to mod uh or learn javascript and can create mods within that game it just it's an open open book whereas roblox it's a little bit more structured in the sense that your goal is to create something or play within something someone else has created so you'll see sort of the differences between the two but both are wildly popular um because of their respected uh differences in the way that they're used and played with people around the world yeah definitely um well i mean we're at we're at the end of the hour and uh i'm so glad that you you you're talking about this because i feel like even with as a game developer and many colleagues were very much unaware of this industry and only because i've been doing the podcast for so long and i'm talking to a lot of people that i'm learning more and more about this part but it has one of those weird issues where everyone knows about but no one really knows about

it type of thing and i'm glad you're shining a light in that subject because i do feel like it's um it's a sleeping giant uh that it's gonna be a bit crazy uh in the next couple years and i feel like you're going to be behind if you're a game developer and not know anything about this industry absolutely and thank you for having me brandon uh for everyone out there who's looking to learn more i cannot recommend enough that you join the gamedev community on reddit connect with your fellow developers talk about what you're creating collaborate make friends make partners you're going to be stuck on an issue that someone else has solved and this is your you know use the community at your disposal to solve these problems uh and if you're a troll who just wants to hate on people who have problems or issues and you know maybe maybe don't don't join reddit you know stay out of stay out of the community but there's one thing that you know i i got into this industry because i love working with creatives

uh and creative types and there is just so much support within this community uh especially with everything you guys are doing with uh game dev unchained and with g docs it's just uh really amazing to see and watch it grow well on behalf of the community i'm glad you're you're on our side to kind of help us through this because if anything words or words on contract scares us the most they should do not sign something without reading yeah yeah in fact i think in a lot of respects a lot of the game developers signed things because they are intimidated by the words on the paper but uh take heed if anything on zach is warning and and make sure to consult with a lawyer and and and do what's right and do the due diligence because of all the pathways that i've seen within the industry uh there's always a good percentage that's going to lead to success

so you do not want to be left out of that at the end of the the road and and be your pocket pockets empty basically so uh i can give everyone three great words of advice uh one get a lawyer i know they're expensive well worth your time two never signed anything without reading it and three an email exchange back and forth is not a contract i gotta i gotta go back to all my emails inbox i then to thank you dude i want to thank you for coming on it's always a joy you're always schooling me on something uh every time i have you on it's great and i hope everybody i'm sure everybody out there who are watching this or watching this later is definitely going to take a lot out of it you're educating a lot of people and shining a light on a sub subplot of the industry that's actually quite big which is what's fun about the game industry there's always little areas where

it's actually like its whole whole own beast uh so i want to thank you for the time and uh this is the moment where i just hand the mic over for you to kind of have you tell people where they can find you follow up and and have extra conversations with you absolutely uh so you guys want the easiest way to connect with me would be through uh twitter at pancake232 that's 2ks uh that's that's the easiest way to get in touch with me these days um if you're looking for fantastic legal advice i cannot recommend uh jessica schraeben who was on here earlier i think she was here yesterday she has actually taken over prestart legal so if you are looking for legal advice within the game industry that is a fantastic resource to start i also again want to call out the game dev community over at reddit is a fantastic resource and you know the fantastic people at gamedev unchained brandon everything he's doing and g ducks it's just you know working as a community is the only way that you're going to grow and solve problems

and do it in a way where you can learn and then help somebody else who might be in the same spot as you so heed my three warnings uh and be nice to each other all right thank you zach and uh we'll keep chatting because i have some legal legal stuff that i always want to go over with you all right so i have a good one now absolutely you too [Music] [Music]