Attention game dev. course graduates

** preferably grads from courses other than AIE canberra, AIE melbourne, or QANTM **

Why don't you want people who did these courses?

They probably have tons already from the AIE and QANTM. And for the record I'm NOT doing it this year- which I'm sure will make Ian Gibson and David Giles rather happy [:)]

A word of advice for anyone on this panel: revise any contracts you signed. There may be things that could get you sued if you say or show them in public. Unlikely if you are saying nice things about an institution, but if you are saying nasty things be careful.

You said nasty things about these institutions in public lorien or was it the simple truth? Being a former QANTM student I would have loved to hear what you had to say - were there any records of what you talked about, or any chance you could give me a breif ? [:)]

I said some very nasty (and imho + my programmer classmates opinion VERY well deserved) things indeed about the AIE. I really pushed to the edge of what I could say without getting sued. I'll send you an email with some details Hazard, I'm not so keen on there being a record on sumea.

The gist of it was I attacked them with their own non-disclosure agreement. I think it's safe to say that if you attack an institution with their own legal documents they are not going to be too happy about it. But then I'm still none too happy either- I wasted a year and signed over a truckload of IP. IMHO we were basically tricked into signing.

I said nothing about QANTM- I haven't been there. Nor did I say anything about La Trobe. I was on the panel as an AIE grad. Jacana was on the panel too- she was saying nice things (surprise surprise). Really she shouldn't have been on it, as she was still a student there, but I'd asked the freeplay organisers to have someone from the AIE with a positive outlook on the panel too.

NB I'm not interested in a flamewar, I won't respond to any flames on this topic.

Yes, I was still a student on that panel. But on that panel I was there as an employee of White Noise Games. I was there as a student who had gone through the system and acquired a job. I am sure that another reason I was there is because they wanted to get a female on the panel. And as far as I know Souri suggested me for the panel.

As I see it, these panels are not there to bitch about what a school did wrong, that is the sort of feedback you should give to the school and staff. They are there to share your experiences so that you can help others to make better informed decisions about their education. I can be honest about my opinion with out being blunt.

My opinion on AIE still stands true. You get two things out of it.
1) You get out of it what you are willing to put into it.
2) You take away from it what you choose to take away from it.

But then that is how I see life :) I am just unsure as to how alomst a year later I am being singled out about this. *shrugs*

Sorry Jacana, I wasn't meaning to single you out- just that panel was "Game Dev Grads Tell All", and you weren't a grad.

Secondly there was a line which the management and staff crossed with us that made us not want to have much to do with them anymore.

Thirdly I/we put an absolutely insane amount of work in, and whilst we came out with a not-so-great game (Hail http://www.fileplanet.com/120496/120000/fileinfo/Hail), we didn't actually own (or even part ownership) anything we did. Perhaps that doesn't matter so much if you make a game using a pre-existing engine, but when you make the engine yourself? A senior programmer here in Melbourne described the fully scriptable audio system I made for Hail as "a sound designer's wet dream". The circumstances of the 2002 programmers was IMHO rather different to earlier and later years.

In many ways we took away less than we started with, and there wasn't any choice in the matter. For me personally I also lost my fiance of 4 years during Hail crunch time (lots of people know this), and whilst there were other circumstances that contributed to that, it IS just a little odd don't you think?

I didn't go on that panel for fun at all.

In answer to Mdobele:

while we'd prefer grads from courses other than AIE canberra, AIE melbourne, or QANTM (because either we covered them last year or have a speaker already lined up) if you've got something interesting to say, contact us anyway.

There are now heaps of courses out there that people want the skinny on and we want to get them represented. We might of course find that our search for graduates from the more obscure courses is fruitless in which case we'll probably go hard on finding people from the courses we had last year (ie AIE canberra and QANTM)

What do sumeans think? Is it worth having AIE Canberra and QANTM represented again regardless?

Well there will presumably be people coming in this year that werent there last year so there's that incentive but aslong as the content of the talks isnt a 100% repeat of last year i dont think it matters too heavily if you have students from the same unversities/tafes (etc.) again.

If you do want AIE students I think it'd be good to get one of the new AIE Melbourne grads. Their course is a bit differet outline to what AIE Canberra has and I think it'd be interesting to hear how the first batch of grads from their course feel about it.

Thanks for the input on that! The session will have a broader focus and a couple of new angles this year, so it should be sufficiently different.

So now I'm revising the call out i posted above: AIE canberra and QANTM grads please don't hold back :-)

We've got the AIE melbourne POV covered.

quote:Originally posted by Zoot

Thanks for the input on that! The session will have a broader focus and a couple of new angles this year, so it should be sufficiently different.

So now I'm revising the call out i posted above: AIE canberra and QANTM grads please don't hold back :-)

We've got the AIE melbourne POV covered.

Dunno if you got my PM, but I'm a QANTM grad...now working at Krome. Speaking at last year's Free Play was fun :)

Apparently according to DG I make "little systems" that aie/mf aren't interested in. I think they feel the need to belittle my work to try and draw attention away from some rather serious points I've been raising. I find it rather amusing, as do quite a few colleagues- particularly those who know my work [:)]

I distinctly remember being told we didn't have a chance of owning any of our work when we raised this issue with management, and from the way DG dodged my question about ownership of IP I take it to mean that AIE students still have absolutely no rights whatsoever over anything they do (please correct me if I'm wrong, but a detailed correction).

Perhaps we should have a detailed legal analysis of all known student agreements for aussie games courses on sumea? Perhaps the IGDA could help? IMHO issues at this foundation level could spell big problems for the industry as a whole.

Seeing as this is a big issue to you why do you not, instead, take it up with a lawyer, the respective people, and leave Sumea out of it.

IMO I am getting sick of this crap being dragged up over and over again. If you have a gripe take it to someone who can do something about it.

Lorien, where the hell did this come from? Digging up someone elses thread and posting completely off topic posts in regards to it is not on. If you really want to bitch about educational institutions and champion your guerilla vendetta, maybe you should make your own topic on it instead of using someone elses as a springboard to get up on your soapbox. Honestly, I'm personally sick of seeing other peoples topics trashed like this.

*edit: just to clarify (and also to keep another pointless post being added to which I realise I'm contributing to here), my point is that this thread should have never degraded into a discussion about Loriens personal problems with the AIE to begin with. I don't care who's right or wrong, or whatever. As a moderator, I care about another persons innocent thread being hijacked and made into what it is now. And then for it to be dug up again, post event, and continued on that same personal vein in a complete other tangent is just plain rude. Make your own topic, please don't change Zoots thread into your own.

JI - the topic is a little patchy and threadless, but it seems to be a logical continuation of lorian's previous comments.

I, however, would be interested in a "full and frank" discussion if it were brought up in a more appropriate forum.

Whilst I don't pretend to know what lorien is refering too i do agree with one of her points.

I think it would be a great idea to list all the educational institutes practices on I.P control and who owns what. In my experience regardless, its the University that owns it but not alot of people know this.

Whether or not its been brought up before or not - Im not sure, maybe I havent been on sumea for as long as I thought! *Makes me feel younger* [:)]

But I agree with Mcdrewski - probably best to compile all the comments into a new thread, and what Mdobele mentions about IP practises and such would also be a handy thing for students to know of before they make their decisions on which school to attend.

Jacana, I'm not stupid- far from it actually. Do you think I would have gone on that panel and did what I did last year without having seen a (good) lawyer first?!! Also your comments make no sense to me- how did I drag you into posting again? You chose to.

JJ: it may not seem on topic, but it is: I'm talking about things that I raised on the panel this thread discusses (last year), and what was said to me this year.

Mdobele: I'm a "he" (no offence taken). And for those who don't know my full name is Lorien Dunn.

HazarD: that's exactly what I meant. Thanks.

quote:Originally posted by Mdobele
In my experience regardless, its the University that owns it but not alot of people know this.

This is in general not correct, can you specify which university you are referring to?

For Universities, students own any IP they generate as a part of their coursework or research. IP produced by staff/researchers as a part of their employment is usually owned by university and sometimes jointly with staff.

Please see http://www.gsu.uts.edu.au/policies/intellectualprop.html for the detailed policy of University of Technology, Sydney.

quote:
Students, not being employees of the University, own the Intellectual Property that they generate. In particular, Students own the copyright in their theses.

...

Where a Student's supervisor makes a contribution to Intellectual Property the Intellectual Property will be owned jointly by the Student (who is not an employee), and the University (as the supervisor's employer).

Where a Student participates in a research team whose members include Staff Members, the Intellectual Property arising from or created or developed by the research team will be owned jointly by the Student (who is not an employee), and the University (as the University Staff Members' employer).

When I was at QUT, I always believed that they owned the rights to any coursework. However, that's not the case, apparently...

"QUT has no automatic right to intellectual property created by students during the course of their study at QUT."

http://www.qut.edu.au/admin/mopp/D/D_08_01.html

...which I did not know.

Ahhh well there you go yusuf. I always heard about it from a teachers standpoint as it has happened to a teacher friend of mine and automatically assumed it was the same for students.

Looks like we definitely need a nice article on sumea explaining this..... even if I am the only one it educates [;)]

I nominate yusuf to write it. [8D]

I think Yusuf would be a good person to write it too, but I'm sure he is pretty crazy with the new semester starting and all.

At La Trobe I understand it is joint ownership. I gather that this is actually law now- unless another arrangement is agreed to by the student.

Actually La Trobe is rather better than I thought (from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rgso/information/cont_ip_policy_oct03.pdf) :

The University will not assert rights in a students invention unless:
(a) a member of staff of the University (such as the students academic
supervisor) is a co-inventor; or
(b) a third party has been granted rights to exploit or otherwise use the
invention; or
(c) the University and the student have agreed in writing.

I didnt realise that each institution has their own IP law. Is there a new thread starting on this? Has me very interested, especially since I am involved in passing on this sort of info to prospective students. Im surprised that there are _any_ institutions that claim IP rights to student created works, unless its derivative works? Surprising .. really. Almost sounds like there should be a federal IP law to cover this sort of thing, doesnt make alot of sense to have differing contractual agreements for students in digital media courses?

This may be adding to the intellectual property specific part of this thread, but here's RMIT's policy

http://mams.rmit.edu.au/l11qeacwcb081.pdf

The main paragraph regarding student work is

Students ? R&D Intellectual Property

Subject to any employment relationship between the University and a student or any provision in this policy, any R&D intellectual property created solely by a student is owned by that student.

quote:Originally posted by Grover

I didnt realise that each institution has their own IP law. Is there a new thread starting on this? Has me very interested, especially since I am involved in passing on this sort of info to prospective students. Im surprised that there are _any_ institutions that claim IP rights to student created works, unless its derivative works? Surprising .. really. Almost sounds like there should be a federal IP law to cover this sort of thing, doesnt make alot of sense to have differing contractual agreements for students in digital media courses?

Well, IANAL, but my understanding is that there is a considerable variation amongst the universities regarding intellectual property policies. I know that the policies have changed over time, generally in the direction of students owning their own work. The manner, and possibly extent, to which the policies mesh with broader intellectual property and copyright law is likely a deep topic.

The general rule with copyright in Australia is "you make it, you own it". Of course any other agreements supercede this.

You can see the variation between some institutions here http://sumea.com.au/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3146 and I am extending the list.

IMHO the real issues come when this info is kept secret or is only revealed after paying fees.