Gamification is the application of game elements and digital game design techniques to non-game problems, such as business and social impact challenges. This course will teach you the mechanisms of gamification, why it has such tremendous potential, and how to use it effectively. For additional information on the concepts described in the course, you can purchase Professor Werbach's book For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business in print or ebook format in several languages.
11.4 Legal issues
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來自 University of Pennsylvania 的課程
游戏化
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從本節課中
Gamification in Perspective
There are many legitimate limitations, concerns, and dangers from gamification. Some of them can be avoided through thoughtful design, but others must be considered directly in any implementation. The final lesson details gamification-related techniques that go beyond those covered throughout the course, and concludes with a look toward the future.
與講師見面
Kevin WerbachAssociate Professor
Legal Studies & Business Ethics
You may not realize it from this course, but my degree is actually
in law, and most of my research work has been on legal and
policy aspects of the internet and related emerging technologies, as opposed to the
more strategic and business oriented aspects
that we're focused on in this course.
But the two things do come together,
in the discussion of legal issues around gamification.
And, while the primary considerations in developing a gamified system, are not
law so much, there are some areas where legal and also regulatory considerations.
Could become important.
And so, they are worth touching on in the
context of risks and concerns, for designing a gamified system.
So, let me quickly go through five issues in which the legal system could become a
problem, or you might get sued by someone
because of some issue in a gamified system.
The first is privacy.
One of the aspects of gamification is that you're
going to get lots of information potentially, about your players.
Information about who they are, their profile, and so
forth, but also, tremendously granular data about what they're doing.
Every action they take in the game, potentially
can be collected, and that's a great thing.
That's the basis of the analytics, and the
ability of a well designed gamified system, to
optimize for the player's interest, and provide real
learnings for the company that sets it up.
But the flip side of that, is the developer of the gamified system.
Is going to have tremendously detailed and personal information about the players.
And that necessarily brings into play, concerns about privacy.
Now, privacy is a big legal area.
It's developing very quickly.
There are lots of questions about privacy
online, and in various kinds of digital context.
Which are still not fully addressed by the existing legal system.
It's also something that varies tremendously, based on where you are.
Here in the United States where I'm based, we
tend to have a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards privacy.
We let companies do a great deal, without prospective regulation.
In Europe and other parts of the world, there
tends to be, much stricter constraints on what can
be done with private information, what sorts of data
can be collected, and what can be done with it.
So, be careful, when designing a gameified system,
especially anytime your getting access to personally identifiable information.
Information, that tells you something, definitely, about a single individual.
Second issue flows from the discussion earlier about exploitation, and playbor.
The concern that a gamified system, could
give rise to employment or labor law issues.
So, I put up here the graphic from
the target checkout system that tells people their score.
And I talked about the potential for that to feel manipulative to the workers.
I also gave you the example of
the so-called electronic whip at the Disneyland hotels.
That one, in fact, came out of a
labor dispute, where the workers were complaining about
their working conditions, and one of the issues
that they brought up, was this leaderboard system.
So, there are a variety of rules in many countries,
restricting what you can do as an employer vis-a-vis your employees.
And there also are rules when employees
get together, and want to collectively bargain.
As with many aspects of law, they vary country
to country, and employment law restrictions tend to be.
Far stricter in European countries, than they are in the United States.
But even in the United States, there are
limitations and considerations on what you can do.
so, these are issues that will come
up in any kind of internal gamification situation.
Where the game elements are being used in some
way that affects people's work performance, and the question is
whether it's being properly disclosed, and whether it's consistent
with what the law requires as far as working conditions.
Next issue is the potential for deceptive marketing.
And so, I gave you early in the course, the Jesse Shell video from
Dice, where he talked about the potential
of gamification, somewhat joking or sarcastically and he
spun out these scenarios where gaming and
game elements were embedded as advertising everywhere in
the world, and in fact even, piped
directly into our brain through some advertising mechanism.
A lot of those ideas, if they became reality, would give us pause.
And there are rules even when you don't go
that far, about what you can do to market something.
and, in particular, some of these concerns have to do with stealth marketing.
If the gamified system, is not clearly designed to market.
If people think that they're just playing a game
for fun, but in fact this is designed to
get them to buy a product, there might be
a concern that, that's some, somehow a deceptive trade practice.
Things like advertising, in particular, are regulated in some countries.
So, there's a broad area there for external marketing focus gamification.
Where there might be issues if it's not clear
to the people involved, that this is a marketing technique.
If it's clear, if people understand that this is like advertising or
something else that's trying to sell
them something then it's not necessarily problematic.
But the fact that the games make people feel like something
is rewarding for some reason other than the product they're getting.
Opens the door to this big problem.
The next one is intellectual property.
This is a huge issue across the board,
on all sorts of digital technologies and digital activities.
Intellectual property law, regulates access to information or digital assets.
And so, all of the virtual goods in
a gamified system, even things like the badges.
The visual aspects of the system,
are potentially protected by intellectual property law.
And, this is an issue with and again, any kind of digital system, but it's possible
in designing a gamified system if you think
that things like the structure and the badges.
Are something that you can take from someone else's
system, you might run into problems in that area.
Beyond intellectual property generally, is the question about
virtual goods and virtual assets, and whether they
may have some legally protected value, above and
beyond what they mean in terms of intellectual property.
So, this is an issue that's comes up with online games.
What happens, if a user spends a tremendous amount of time and effort,
and maybe even pays real money, to get something virtual in the game?
In the game, what they get is this
beautiful building her,e do they have something of value?
What happens if the game designer wants to take it away?
Poof, it's gone Or somehow change the rules and
the value, does the person who acquired that thing.
Again, at great cost of time and potentially cost of
real money, have any legal claim, as they would have
for example, if someone sold them some physical product, and
then tried to take it away in an analogous situation?
The courts so far have said, not really.
The courts so far have said this is a license.
It's something you get contractually but not something you get as a property right.
But this is an emerging and evolving area of the law.
And one to keep an eye on in things like gamification.
There also are some specific issues with virtual currencies.
There is a law in the U.S called the CARD act here.
Which regulates gift cards which are similar in some ways to
some of these gamified virtual assets or virtual currencies, in that you
are paying real money, to get the gift card, which then is
a kind of virtual token, that you can redeem at the store.
And so issues come up, like, what if the gift card expires?
Someone paid money for it, but can the company then say, great,
we just keep the money and don't have to give you anything.
There's potential for abuse there.
So that law regulates the use of stored value in
this way on CARDs, not clear how it applies in gamification.
And again here, we're talking about specifically.
Things like virtual currencies, not badges and leaderboards, and so forth,
that, that don't have some tangible value, somehow attached to them.
But in that area, there are some questions that can
be raised about the legal treatment of these kinds of services.
So, all of these are issues to keep an eye out
for, depending on the nature of the gamified system that you're developing.
There are of course many other legal issues that will
come into play, just like any kind of business activity.
But when in doubt, probably a good idea to consult
with council, or someone has more expertise about the legal issues.
Especially as they apply, in the particular jurisdiction that you're in.
