Arthur Parsons - Games Director @ TT Games

For today’s guest lecture we were visited by Arthur Parsons, a very well-known Traveller’s Tales veteran. Arthur has spent 17 years in the games industry where the majority has been employed as lead designer and game director, working on multiple AAA games such as the LEGO franchise and many others.

To kick off the presentation Arthur decided to describe the responsibilities and tasks that he has to take on when working as a games director at TT. Arthur stated that having this particular role comes with multiple great responsibilities such as, knowing your audience and Intellectual property whilst involving the team as much as possible; this allows Arthur to immerse and drive the team into the project as much in result to get the best possible outcome.

Intellectual property is a great challenge when it comes to creating a video game based on a franchise, according to Arthur. He described how IP is hugely important as it determines the success of your game. Throughout the presentation Arthur repeated how it was so important to stick to multiple factors when working within the IP, for example: Using all of the IP, Involve the key stakeholders and also think as a fan. These multiple factors will allow you to jump on the right track to creating the certain game. For example during the guest lecture Arthur spoke about a past experience working on a project with employees who didn't particularly know the IP well. He described how before the project was started, he would set a movie list, where all employees would have to watch within their own time, this method was used to allow all employees to know the movie which will result in getting the best representation of this particular franchise. This section of the presentation really stuck out to me with unanswered questions, so with a little bit of research I discovered that intellectual property does not just entire knowing your audience to create the best representation of a franchise it is also the legal side to the matter.

“Sure, the instruction manual, source code, and art files may be subject to copyright, but nothing stops another developer from ripping off your basic gameplay idea and publishing a clone with original art and programming” (Siders, 2013).

The quote above from Siders (2013) ‘Game Developers: Intellectual Property Is All You’ve Got, So Make Sure You Get It’ article describes how when creating a video game, you really don’t own anything that you produce and release, this is open for the world to copy. The above quote describes how multiple factors within a video game development pipeline can be subject to copyright, but that doesn’t stop another developer from ripping off your basic gameplay idea, publishing it as their own with completely original art and programming. This is seen regularly within the industry with representations of games such as Crossy Road, which is hugely inspired by the original game Frogger, these both games use the same mechanics, but with completely original artwork and programming these representations can be made successful with no legal consequences. References: Ben Siders (2013). Game Developers: Intellectual Property Is All You’ve Got, So Make Sure You Get It. Techli [Online]. Available from: http://techli.com/2013/05/game-developers-intellectual-property-is-all-youve-got-so-make-sure-you-get-it/#. [Accessed: 17 April 15]. XGN, (2012), Arthur Parsons over LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes – Interview [ONLINE]. Available at:http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sQaCSLC-cro/maxresdefault.jpg [Accessed 17 April 15].