Copy Grounds

This semester we read selections from one of my favorite books on the pitfalls of theorizing of intellectual property–James Boyle’s Shamans, Software, & Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Drawing on examples from a diverse range of topics including genetics, fiduciary trust, and artificial intelligence, Boyle demonstrates how classical liberal theory attempts to resolve the tensions between public and private spheres through an appeal to romantic notions of authorship. James Boyle is currently the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and the co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. We were delighted to have him answer a handful of student questions and his responses are featured here.

Copygrounds: Do you think contemporary technological developments and social practices have devalued the notion of individual authorship to a significant degree? That is to say, does the emergence of the Internet, “remix culture”, file-sharing, and other collaborative systems signal a departure from romantic notions of authorship? continue reading…

I don’t mean to be overly sentimental but I am especially proud of my students this semester. They are all awesome and I can’t wait to see how much trouble they get into in the years ahead. This post includes a sampling of the various media projects they produced during the spring semester. There were more but some technical glitches prevented me from posting everything. Hopefully I will get some more of them posted during the summer break. Below you will find video games, documentaries, mashups and remixes, short films, and 3D models and animations—all produced by students from our Introduction to Digital Media course. Enjoy!

First up is Melody Bolton’s Hipster Rex, a video game using Melody’s own hand drawn art and 2D Flash animation. Think of it as an avatar builder at the outset of some groovy MMO. Click the dino to check it out!

Next we have a beautifully done stop motion video put together by Olivia Debeck. continue reading…

Along with aspiring filmmakers our class is also home to a growing number of ambitious video game producers. We have lots of fun each semester learning the ins and outs of 3D modeling. But we also spend considerable time learning about the video game industry itself. This semester we read a portion of Greig de Peuter’s and Nick Dyer-Witheford’s Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the field of game studies. The authors’ work is grounded by the concept of immaterial labor—a reoccurring concept in our class. This book insightfully explores video games through a cultural, social, and economic lens. We are honored to have Greig de Peuter respond to some of our questions below.

Copygrounds: Is there something substantially different about the immaterial labor associated with video games as compared to radio/television? Much has been made out of the passive nature of the engagement with these latter technologies, but isn’t the process of interpretation or the creation of meaning similar for both? Or more broadly, do you see continuity or a significant break in the transition from so-called ‘industrial labor’ to ‘post-industrial labor’?

Greig de Peuter: A short answer is that there are continuities and discontinuities. As students in the course know, there’s a tradition of reception studies that’s challenged simplistic assumptions of audience passivity and emphasized the active agency of mass media audiences in the meaning-making process. Even so, it wasn’t unusual for early game-studies scholars to herald the interactivity of computer and video games as a democratizing advance over the viewer or listener’s position within one-to-many broadcast media—an exercise in contrast that obscures continuities like corporate ownership structures and marketing-led content design and so on. Looking back, early celebratory perspectives on interactive entertainment might be read as rehearsing some of the ideas later associated with the rhetoric of user empowerment now surrounding Web 2.0. continue reading…

This last Thursday the Electronic Game Developers Society hosted their annual end of the year showcase featuring games developed by EGaDS members. EGaDS is a student organization at the University of Texas at Austin dedicated to computer and video game development. Two of our students, Chris Rose and Melody Bolton, presented games they have been working on at the expo. Chris has been involved in developing a 1st person 3D environment game called Deep Blue which features a game engine designed from scratch using C++. I had a chance to play the prototype and was very impressed. Melody has been working on a Flash-based game called Hipster Rex which features plenty of hand-drawn content. I hope to have Melody’s game available here on Copygrounds in the near future. Kudos to both Chris and Melody for doing something awesome.

Alright it has taken me a while but here they are. I will be showcasing student media projects from last semester in this post as I get them compressed and ready.
Group 4 shows us how it’s done with a behind-the-scenes look at a community of video game designers right here at The University of Texas. Group 5 pokes fun at file-sharers, industry hitmen, and recording artists. No one is spared. Group 3 lambastes the gaming community by giving us a glimpse of the upcoming action/thriller The Starcraft Kid. Group 1 takes us on a trip down memory lane to revisit old school file-sharing.

Group 4 from copygrounds on Vimeo.

Group 5 from Copygrounds on Vimeo.

Group 3 from Copygrounds on Vimeo.

Group 1 from Copygrounds on Vimeo.

Oh the end of the semester is just about here. The caffeine is flowing, students are camping out overnight in the lab, everyone’s toiling away in a mad rush to get things done. That can only mean one thing…Final Group Projects! All the projects will soon be available for viewing here at Copygrounds but in the meantime here’s Group 4 with a teaser trailer for their upcoming video game documentary.