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.
