The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We all live in a digital world. We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust.
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united!
>> Welcome. My name is Anna and I'm the director with the Polish office. And I will moderate this event together with Rafael who is present. We would like to show you a short video that highlights the main theme of our session. So please watch the video and enjoy.
(Video).
>> RAFAEL FERRAZ VAZQUEZ: Thank you, Anna and good afternoon, everybody, my name is Rafael and I work at the corporate law division at the World Intellectual Property Organization. And I would like to start by thanking those who have contributed to the creation of this video you have just seen. So it's video games and Coconut Games and Technology Development, Zone Bedizzy.
So together, we will be gathering you through this workshop on unity games. And everything nude to know about revolution and gaming trends. If you are following this event remotely, we will welcome your questions through the chat. Questions to our speakers with my colleagues, and we are monitoring the chat to send me your questions but as well, we are responsible for the organization of this event. Thank you both to my colleagues. And please allow me to thank my co‑moderator Anna and the Polish patent office for the excellent partnership with WIPO in this event, and other topics. So Anna, back to you.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you so much, Rafael. And thank you for the great cooperation of WIPO. Before we move to the main part of our workshop, please let me introduce our special guest, madam Edyta Demby Siwek, the president of the Polish Patent Office who will just say a few words. President, the floor is yours.
>> EDYTA DEMBY SIWEK: Thank you. Good morning. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I am really excited to start this workshop. I think the last game I played was Tetris. I would like to show how the different intellectual property rights fit together in supporting the video game industry.
When I think about video games, it’s not just play anymore. The technologies to play well go beyond the limits we have previously seen. The plot, the audiovisual elements, the score, et cetera. The question is, can it all be protected ,or rather should it be protected?
Having said that, there is a clear need for a frank discussion on video games. The idea 2021 is the best opportunity for this exchange. Use the chance for active discussion with international experts of the IP and the sector of video gaming. I wish you all satisfaction and stimulating discussion. Thank you very much.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you very much, president. That was very inspiring and I think playing Tetris will never be the same. With this excellent introduction, let's move to the main part of the workshop, reminding all the participants who are either physically present or participating remotely that they can actively participate in our discussion. So after each session, we will take as many questions as possible provided we still have some time. And if you would like to ask a question here on site, please raise your hand and then we will give you the floor.
Online, we will also use the Mentitool with some quiz questions so you can engage more in our discussion and even have some fun. The you will see the information in the chat box. At the end, you will also see the leaderboard with the winner of our quiz competition.
So let's move because we have a lot of interesting panelists and let's move to the main part, the first topic of our workshop.
The video game industry has boomed in recent years because of a variety of ways to play games. This is thanks to digital copy game sales, mobile games and platform games, streaming game services and so on. The COVID‑19 pandemic has propelled the tree to make more money than movies and North American sports combined. Poland has proven to be a booming hub for the gaming industry because of the access of the certain games and events a lot of independent game developer companies have sprung up. Mobile games generated 274 million US dollars in revenue in Poland in 2020, making it the largest segment of digital video games that year.
So now, let me introduce our first speaker, Ms. Andreea Medvedovici‑Per, streaming online from Bucharest. Andreea, we can see the market is growing and growing, do you think it will always be like that and will the video game industry continue to rye? Andreea, the floor is yours.
>> ANDREEA MEDVEDOVICI-PER: Thank you so much. I'm so pleased to be here. I hope I will set the scene for this very interesting panel on the video games industry by presenting a few information and facts and industry. I'm representing the European Game Developers Federation. The I'm the vice president of EGDF and the federation is representing 19 trade associations of game developers around Europe and over 2,000 studios developing games mostly SMEs but not only.
To set the scene, I would just like to make a point in the fact that the video games market is ‑‑ is now forecasted to be in 2021, a $176 billion market. So that's huge taking into account that according to news by 2024, it will reach over $250 billion. It's more than music and cinema combined. Not only now during the pandemic but also before that. So it is obviously the biggest contribution to the entertainment market in the world. For example, in the UK alone, it's more than half of its entire entertainment market in 2019, so before the pandemic. So will it continue to grow he, obvious, yes. Why will it continue to grow? Because it re‑invents itself over and over again.
Talking about re‑invention, you mentioned about tetras, amber studio in Romania, just a few moments ago, created Tetris V, I think you should try it out if tetras was last game you tried out. Yes. It's re‑inventing itself. It's so normative. It will grow and it's not going to grow alone. I think this is something that' very important to mention, the market that it will not grow alone because it drives and enables digital growth throughout the sector, throughout everything that digital Internet and everything else. So because of innovative technologies that it first ‑‑ that it creates and tests out because of business models and new innovative breaking artistic content. All of these things will not only help the industry grow, but it will also help other industries to grow with it. So I think that's very important to know.
Talking about Europe, because we also need to see what is going here on our turf, let's say, I just want to let you know that we have over I think around 5,000 game developer studios and around 200 game developers with almost 90,000 people employed in the sector. That's huge. That's a lot of game developers and publishers, from big world giants line Ubisoft. I know we have a panelist from Ubisoft here, big giants to very small studios. All of them though from the smallest to the biggest creating original IP and making this beautiful world a more creative and more entertaining place.
All of these people working in the sector in Europe, obviously create games annually. When we talk about how many games are created in Europe annually, we can obviously look at around ‑‑ a few thousand games created and this obviously means original IP, or franchises or very different type of entertainment that developers in Romania and Europe, of course, are creating. The market in terms of how much local game developers actually bring in revenue. The market in Europe is 12 billion Euros joining the European budget by local game developers. Publishing these few thousand games per year. And I think that's relevant but it's also relevant to mention that although they are obviously very concentrated as in many other industries. So the bulk of the revenue coming from some very big actors, that does not mean that the importance of those games create, that generate not so much revenue as others. They. They create IP. They create very complex IP. And they create world and artistry and entertainment for a lot of people and that's obviously hugely and very important.
Also what I would definitely like to mention is that it's the actually the only creative sector that turned out to be pandemic resistant. From everything from books to music to architecture, saw a steep decline in revenue in 2020. The only one and the single one that actually showed an increase, a 9% increase according to Ernst & Young report was the gaming sector.
I don't want to change the subject before actually mentioning that the impact games also had in helping the other creative sectors in this time of need. I think this will be a trend that we saw accelerated now in the pandemic but we'll see it in the future as well. So many creative sectors needed a home, a shelter, and video games turned out to be just that.
For example, you have entire museum collections that moved in game. So that they can actually be seen by people being seen in game and huge concerts taking place in game. And this type of action. You see the video game sector as the leader and it's a sector that enabled other creative sectors as well.
Since we have a theme of video games uniting, it was a uniting factor during the pandemic for the people who were stuck and also for socializing and interaction with others and the video game sector could really do that.
So again, to just quickly mention that a part from its record revenue data, which is obviously important, what is important is that the industry is helping create complex IT locally. Because a game needs great artists, for example, this also needs great music. It needs great stories. It needs a lot of ‑‑ a lot of combinations of different creative people and different people creating different IP, which creates an even more complex IP, which is the game itself.
I think this influence is very important.
In terms of how it will continue to grow, this amazing industry of ours. I would like to mention the fact that an amazing growth was in the past and I'm sure in the future as well is led by the fact of ‑‑ and the popularity of the mobile game sector. I think it's important to mention, obviously, because obviously, I think because of ease of checking out your mobile and playing a very short game, I think mobile games have made everyone in this world a gamer or definitely if they are not a gamer, a potential gamer. So it will grow a lot.
Due to these new engines that are created, it's making it easier every day to create games, and this is very important and relevant and once again, the innovative power and the innovation that the gaming sector leads and that it breathes new innovation into other things.
I would like to conclude by saying it can also challenge and actually change the way we look at IP. It changed and challenged a lot of things before. It also changed and challenged the way we look at IP, knowing it's so complex. It's original content. It's also content taken from other things and it's part of code used on different things. It's similar games together. It's a lot of things that make the relevance of a huge discussion on what IP means for games and what it's go to make it even more relevant, right, in this ever changing world and in this world where games and IP is created more so much more than ever before but also in this ever connecting world which obviously can share IP with one click all over the board.
Do I still have one more minute? I have one more minute?
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Yes, it's okay.
>> ANDREEA MEDVEDOVICI-PER: Okay. Cool. I painted a very nice picture of the video game sector, but I also would like to mention a few of the challenges that we have. Globally but also here in Europe and I think that are very important to mention. So what we need for Europe to be even more competitive in this industry, and for Europe to create even more IP in this amazing industry of ours are a couple of things. All of them are connected to something which is called access. First of all access to data. This is a huge discussion that we are having in very different other parts of the ‑‑ of the public debate. Access to talent. I think that's very, very important. Educating the next game developer generation. What keeps us from growing even bigger is obviously the talent pool that is not yet ready to help us develop even more games. Educational tools need to develop so they can thrive in the sense that we need seen by the number of gamers that are interested to play games.
There's a lot of money in the industry, nevertheless, there is also a lot of lack of money for the small entrepreneurs in this industry. So for the small studios, access to funding is still very hard to grasp. And I think that's very, very relevant. The video game industry being so enormative and obviously be a creative sector itself, it's very, very risky in terms of the revenue that you get. In order to have more creative and original IP created in Europe, we need more small independent studios to be able to create games to Sur drive creating games and this means access to funding as well. There's creative Europe which is a help to ‑‑ towards our industry at the European level but at the state level, I think each state and the authorities in each country in Europe should understand the potential is amazing that this industry has to help it grow even better.
There are countries in Europe and our hosting country Poland is such an example. There are countries in Europe that have already understood that, and that creating great value for the studios and the development studios in those regions, but I say more countries in Europe should understand the potential and help create more ‑‑ more games in their country and be a part of the success that this industry is globally and as a whole.
I think it's very important. Obviously also access to markets.
So this is in a way to conclude, a bit of setting the scene for what the videogame industry is. A hugely important sector for the creative sector but also for digital sector, because through the innovations it drives growth in everything, in everything that it does, and it touches and obviously also a creator of amazing original IP.
>> RAFAEL FERRAZ VAZQUEZ: Thank you very much, Andreea. That was a great start to our event. You raised some very important things that I'm sure are going to be mentioned again. So moving directly to the second topic which is focused on Internet property, mainly the circle of IP, how IP is shared in video games. We will discuss different types of IP that are relevant for the different players of this booming industry. As mentioned in our introductory video, the protection of copyright, trademark, designs and patents play an important role in this industry.
We're going to hear some firsthand details about it. So starting with our first speaker is Ms. Deborah Papiernik, who is the senior vice president of new business and strategic alliances at Ubisoft that I hope that everybody heard about. So without further delay, Deborah, the floor is yours, please.
>> DEBORAH PAPIERNIK: Thank you very much. It's not always easy to know when a game becomes an IP, but I guess we all agree that it starts with an excellent game play. I go like to give you some examples of IP creation within Ubisoft's creative teams. Rayman was first launched in that '95 with along with the play station and after successful iterations we developed a Rayman to Wii in 2006 and that's how the Rabbids were born. A couple of years later, the Rabbids had a game of their own, and they became a brand that quickly outperformed Rayman as on IP. They are now associated with one the most respected brands of the industry in Mario's Rabbids game. Now within the great party game released in 2008 on the wee, the mini game that was most played was a very simple dance game, and after the release, a couple creatives suggested to turn this mini game into a full game, adding motion captured dancers. A year later, the Just Dance IP was created.
So here you can see how the Rabbids that were born under the wings of Rayman became an IP of their own and Just game was a mini game of the Rabbids became one the most recognizable video games brand. So for me, more than the process, I would say IP creation is really a bottom up journey.
It really comes from the team. It's a bottom‑up journey with many roots to explore. And I give you ‑‑ I could give you many other examples, ranging from Assassins, Far Cry or many, many others.
Now, how to continue to create IPs. Once you have them maybe you just want to nurture them. At Ubisoft we maintain a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe that's because we are always a challenger. We continue to take risk and create new games and brands all the time. One significant example is our capacity to embrace the creative opportunities of every new piece of hardware or software. We're always present at the launch of every new platform, VR, blockchain. Even if you know the market might be too small. But new platforms is a great way to launch new game plays and launch new games.
Now along with our own original IPs, we work on things like Avatar or Star Wars. This makes internal IP or IPs for movies enables us to reach wider audiences and attract top talent which you just mentioned is key to our industry. We have a true playground of games to work on.
Now, the only route to success in games is excellence. And to grow our videos into brands and worldwide games. There's no thing as a local brand in games. First focus is on developing great games.
Now, what happens next? Once again the brand, we can find new ways to engage player as and even go beyond gamers. A great way to engage players is esports and rainbow succeeds it's played by more than 75 million gamers and now has more than 40 professional teams completing in Europe, America, Latin America and Asia Pacific and today video game viewership is increasing way beyond gamers. We also develop content to dig deeper ‑‑ to dive deeper in the world we create and to reach wider audiences. We are active in publishing with books and board games and plushes and lifestyle and we also develop location‑based experiences with escape games attractions, entertainment centers and films. We partnered with NetFlix to create Assassins Creed live action that can appeal to wide audiences.
I would say our brands are global and very rich both in terms of narrative and depth. They are in a great position to inspire all types of industry but that doesn't get a lot after tension with other sectors to be associated with our IPs. I just mentioned NetFlix, but in addition to featuring original IPs on NetFlix, we are bringing their franchises into our game. We are creating a special in‑game experience in rainbow 6.
And music is interested and the UK rap artist, Storm Z was a playable character in watchdog region with his own missions and the music was made in game.
Consumer brands as well. So we can include them in our games when it makes against with the respective DNA. A new character had Milton Luxury Watch was launched in Far Cry 6 and in real life. Of course, I'm giving you examples from Ubisoft, but you have heard about big, big examples all over the world.
Beyond pure entertainment, the video games industry is the first cultural brand around the world. We speak to all, whatever their gender, their age, their culture or their social position and yet mobile played a big part. We are recognized as a cultural industry, and we continue to strengthen our position in the field of traditional culture. We are active in education, the Assassins Creed, the educational mode delivered from the Assassins gain, where we have Rabbids coding. We work more and more with heritage and monuments and museum.
After the fire of Notre Dame, I asked my team to develop a virtual reality develop on the cathedral, based on the 3D model of Notre Dame initially developed for the game "Assassins Creed Unity." We also augment the visit of monuments to increase the engagement of the visitors. For instance, we have an augmented reality "Assassins Creed" themed escape game in Paris.
And last September, the Rabbids invaded the gardens of Versailles with fun mini games with augmented and we develop live shows and we do symphony concert and we turned "Just Dance" into a live show. Again when you go all of these roots, you have to be careful to be careful to respect the DNA of the game brand.
We also distribute to document, the scientific documentary recently on PBS with great success, sheds new light on the role of women during prehistory and it was illustrated by more than 15 minutes of "Far Cry" Rayman in‑game videos. That's a scientific documentary. We even work with the health sector. We develop a Rabbids game for a connected toothbrush and we are working with Novartis to help with the lazy eye.
We have capacity to engage players in all types of activities as a conclusion, the video game consumers are the most engaged, the most demanding and the most vocal consumers of all industries. We have no choice, but to thrive on excellence. Our job is not easy. These video game projects are huge and complex, but we are extremely lucky to be working in the entertainment industry and have teams driven by the same passion. And even the video that you showed just before, and that talks about IP as in trademarks which is not a fun subject, but your video is fun, and it looks good and it's nice. Also because it's linked to game and entertainment. We also helped gain additional excitement and buzz in our gaming communities and this is a positive feedback loop to grow our IPs more and more. Thank you etch have.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you very much, Deborah for the fascinating insights. We will now move to our two speakers who are actually with us here onsite and afterwards we will take up some questions. Right now, I would like to give the floor to Ms. Anna Piechowka, and she has developed an article and it's available on WIPO.org. Anna?
>> ANNA PIECHOWKA: I would like to say that the intellectual property to the video game industry. IP is the heart, soul and spine of each video game and to this also games company most valuable assets as a result, also intellectual property law is very important, and it should be one of the main areas of consideration for each developer and for each other entity on the marketplace.
Since I'm working in the development and publishing company as an attorney responsible for IP protection, I would like to offer you some of my thoughts on legal aspects of creation and sharing of intellectual property. So to start with, it is of great importance for each game developer to ensure that its IP is legally protected and to build an effective IP protection strategy.
As already mentioned several times here, I believe, the game and almost all its elements are intellectual property. Not all of them are, however, protected without the need of going through the formal registration process. And usually, the only IP right acquired by a developer or his employees just because of the newer creation are copyrights. Likely the whole game industry, I would say this is the most important IP right it comes to the protection of video games since it covers the broadest scope of video games elements. Such as you saw in the video like software or music, visuals and many, month are. Basically other IP rights in order to be protected in most cases should be pretty set. This is the case with trademarks which as mentioned can protect name of the game, or title of the game or logo of the game or less obvious things like characters' names or even looks of.
Tenets can be used to protect innovative parts of the game, and each registration is dependent upon the actuality specific requirements and payment of fee.
The challenge ahead each developer is always to first identify which elements of game's IP are the most valuable and which IP rights are the most suitable to protect that and which countries are most important territories for protection and then obtain the strongest possible protection given available budget, time and needs.
And then, when the IP is created and IP rights under place, I mean acquired by the developer, the developer can start to share is to different entities. Legally speaking, sharing IP will always have either a form of rights transfer or license. And to put it very simply, transferring rights changes the ownership permanently, while licensing means that we will just give someone consent to use your IP while retaining ownership of it.
So unless the developer wants to just give up to sell the rights to a video game and forget about it. It will go for the licensing. And there are many different licenses out this in the video game market. Some of them are to offer the game and license it to the consumers. For example, when a development company is working with an outside publisher, it will start with concluding the license with publisher and give its rights to publish the game.
The publisher will typically conclude many licenses with many different entities on market, like console manufacturers or digital mat forms or manufacturers of physical copies of game. Other licenses can serve for purposes like promotion of the game, strengthening the value of IP or even building the franchise. So these are things like, for example, mentioned by Deborah before, with have IP sharing agreements and experiences and many, many other examples of how IP can circulate between different entities on the market.
What is particularly important is how the game companies can use their IP to interact with the players and to build strong communities around their games. First of all, from the legal perspective when the consumer buys the video game, he or she just obtains a license to use it. And in the moment basic form, such basis, such license will just include using the game's IP for playing the game. However, sometimes the game companies are deciding to give their players some other additional licenses in order to further interact with them and those licenses can for example, enable players to create and share fan content and the most popular types of fan content are streaming and let's play videos which show the play through of the game but there are many, many more like drawings, paintings, cosplay and even game modifications. There are always some terms of share content. It's usually a noncommercial use. Sometimes the development company or another game company is also asking players to give it a reverse license in order to endorse fan content and use it in future. This is the license between the company and the player. And there are also other mutual licenses and other interactions, like user generated content, which is UDC. Like building his own maps or building Oz or anything else which cannot be variable to other players depending on the game.
Part the possibilities of creating and sharing it will differ significantly from title to title, but the common element is the user generated content requires a license from the company and from player to the company, since UDC just becomes part of the game.
And to end this very short presentation or at least I hope it was short, I would like to emphasize one thing in particular. When we talk about IP and licensing in video game, we usually think about how IP just serves the purposes of video game companies and gaining revenue on a selling video games but in reality, it serves so much more purposes like strengthening or building the bond between plays themselves and between the player and the company and building whole communities of players of certain games. Thank you.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you. I wish we had more time for further discussion. Unfortunately, we are on a tight schedule. So let's move straight to the third speaker, Ms. Masha Stolbova, head of Natus Vincere, from Kyiv.
>> MASHA STOLBOVA: Thank you will. It's a real pleasure to be here, just a couple of steps of away from a remarkable place from Natus. So I will be talking today about IP circle, it's a sphere that is closed but it goes beyond the video game. (No audio).
>> RYSZARD FRELEK: Sorry, if I can jump in, because I think Masha has been muted or am the only one not hearing her?
>> I have to say, me too.
>> RYSZARD FRELEK: Oh, yes. Now it's okay. Now it's good Masha.
>> MASHA STOLBOVA: I'm sorry. I will briefly repeat in the beginning for everyone that missed it. So I will talk about the IP of esports organization that a little bit goes outside the video game industry, but, still it's very close. So in esports organization, it starts from two basic sources. The first one is the organization itself and the second one is the intellectual property. Natus holds trademarks it in various. And with advertising, programming, computer games, so market, entertainment and so on, but meanwhile, you can find that in ewe grain, Natus has the trademark for restaurants and bars and for sure this is not a mistake. And of course, Natus has a lot of items that are covered by the copyright protection. We are working on copyright registration in the United States.
The most interesting part of our today discussion is intellectual property with the team players whether the US or UK, we would likely deal with agents. Frankly speaking, this goes going to the CIS as well. Why do I mention agents? Because they significantly thank the way of management of IP, by all the players and they guide the organization in these. But luckily or not, Natus has many agent and we manage the intellectual property. We get the game. We get the image, the appearance, the graphic data, voice, and we get the right to use different derivatives and modify that.
What do we do next with intellectual property? I want to tell you the secret, but it's closely linked to video games. So now we talk only about mobile games. Andreea mentioned mobile games we have one discipline back in 2020, and you might think that it's not too serious for sports and you will be here like minded with our old fans who are used to gold and CS gold. Let me tell you. Just one week ago as champions of blast four competition we got a prize payment in the amount of $125,000.
And it's the rabble stars world finals we got $200,000. That's not serious, right? Here we come to the real answer why we strongly need intellectual property in esports. Anna mentioned valuable points about building community and so on, but the first point, for, of course, the business, is generating revenue.
Let me with the four areas. The first module is the promotion of the game by Natus players. This was briefly mentioned by Deborah and Anna. We get the license agreement with particular game developers, for example, Ubisoft and our players prepare special content and advertise the game.
Sometimes we need to publish this content not only on the pages of the Natus but we go to the personal pages of the players and sometimes there's so much request for such content that we need to take separate to streamers just to ask them to not to play for us during the tournaments but just to create the content itself. There's maybe two core IP implications that we have here. The first one is ‑‑ there are some game developers who want to get everything at once. I mean they want to have unrestricted rights for the intellectual property created. It's a problem for us, of course it may be because when your license is sub‑licensable, and perpetual, there's no limitation to the purpose. And yada yada. You can find your trademark used in very unexpected places.
The second way of our communication with the game developers is in game items. There are various types of in game items that have intellectual property use. Users can buy them and use them instead of default items, game items. They generally do not run into any specific game advantage as in our cases and so the in‑game.
So it all started really well back in 2014 and '15, but now COVID boosted the purchases so much, that it seems like we are secured. Once all the challenges that maybe here is the repeal of these items in a certain time. For instance, if the team wants to terminate the agreement, what happens to the non‑purchased items and how long can the end users actually use these items?
And the second challenge is on the second market. Is it allowed at all? So these are the basic questions here. The third model is integration of the player in the game. Just a week ago announced the best CSO player becomes the character of Rachel the legends. He's turned into a 3D model and just inserted into the game. So you can buy this in‑game item now in Rachel legends. We had so many questions around this deal and mainly there were intellectual property just in case the partnership end.
We will see how it works.
And the final one is NFT integrations. So we are now planning to have in a couple of weeks the one game will release and we will see how one more integration works for us. So I think that I'm a little bit run out of time. So yes, we can speak about this topic forever. Again, I will be glad to answer your questions. And thank you for your kind attention.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you very much. I'm sorry for not rushing you. We want to give the floor to the participants on site. If there are any questions if you could please go tort main table because you need a microphone. Yes, gentleman, I think you were first.
>> PARTICIPANT: Okay. So first of all, thank you so all speakers for your discussion. My generated is related to video games and related to something else as well. So the question is mostly about creating the narratives through video games and I will give you two examples what I mean.
First one is about the game from Ubisoft, as was mentioned several times and the Ubisoft said this was the creation of Notre Dame and historical figures. I had a chance to intergame with Nikolai Machiavelli. The way I saw them in the game impacted my perception of historical figure as well, but this is an example. Another example is more modern and more political. So Russian developers created a strategy game which was in like 100% in accordance with Russian propaganda view of the war. Even if we had the war, there was the cartoon of the president of Georgia, and the way it was looking, it was pocking him. If we go to the story line of the game, it was 100% in accordance with this nonsense Russian view of the war.
So to wrap up my question, my question is: Is there any kind of relevant and serious debate about video games as being used as propaganda or this is not the case yet and this debate isn't relevant in video game industry? Thank you.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: I would like to ask if any one of our speakers would like to take the question.
Anyone online maybe?
Can you, Anna?
>> ANNA PIECHOWKA: Very briefly. The question is very deep and we don't have time to discuss it maybe in detail, which it should be answered, but, yes, there is starting discussion about this, there about many other new aspects, I would say of video games because the market of video games is moving and the more it's booming, the new problems are discovered.
Yeah, in recent years the discussion about also political messages in video games and I would say many other aspects has started, but at the same time, I will say that the area is very new and we develop to see how it goes in the future.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you, it was indeed a difficult question. So thank you so much for the answer. I know we have two more questions, but I know we are tight on schedule. If you could give your questions and just be very brief so we can try to answer. So maybe you, sir, please go first.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much, to all the speakers and my question was for Ubisoft representative. Some of the interesting things that you said in your speech, and one of them, especially caught my ear that you underlined the company continues to take risks and I would like to ask, what risks exactly are we talking about? Because as far as I'm concerned Ubisoft has basically turn them themselves into the marvel studios of the gaming industry and if there's two companies who don't do that involves risk, you create product that's accessible to anybody and provides a minimum level of challenge, do you think that you are pushing your impact, to pushing it between cinema and the house.
>> DEBORAH PAPIERNIK: Thank you. We don't just nurture our big IPs and stay there, and we try new things all the time and we go to routes. We launched hyper scape which was a tree to play. We hadn't done a big free to play before. We released this one. It was not a success and we learned that we went all the way and we learned and we'll do better next time but it's not just being the Assassins or Far Cry. It's something different. It's something new. The fact that we were very early on VR, now the all the early publishers were on VR not all support new technology. Yes, we launched something linked to blockchain. We are very early in that. We also take risk.
The tact that we are profitable company, it doesn't mean that we do not take risk. We do games that are history based and it's more contemporary, and so it's a very large pan and also, there are plenty, plenty of games that are developed internally and are actually reach the market. So this you don't really see because they are never announced but we take the risk in the sense that our teams are free to propose new concepts all the time and we let them start to develop and then go on for months, six months, maybe two years and sometimes we kill games because they have no future, but at least we try.
So there's a lot of money and resources put? That as well, continue to innovate.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you so much. I know ‑‑ is it a short question?
Okay. So just like really please be brief.
>> PARTICIPANT: Perfect. First of all, I want to make a comment about this session that I love it's dominated by women because in the gaming industry, it's male oriented.
My question is for Anna and Ubisoft representative said something about NFT. I want to ask about specifically small creators, small artistic creators, what do you think about the legality of NFTs and the future of NFTs, because if you want to make your IP as independent artists and go through the whole little thing, it's challenging, but NFTs offer a faster way to making your copyrights. So what are the challenges and legally speaking.
>> ANNA PIECHOWKA: Yes, maybe very briefly because the fact is that the discussion about NFT is now very intense within legal, I would say ‑‑ between lawyers because we still don't know. So maybe I wouldn't say there's any concern about legality, but the aspect of virtual, purely virtuals and NFTs are still to be determined when it comes to intellectual property and the effects of all of that. I'm sorry. I won't be very helpful. This is like a big topic and still discussed by lawyers themselves.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Thank you very much and I think we will be talking about NFTs in the final topic. So I can see you still have some questions but maybe we can answer them at the last session when we still have some time. So please let me introduce right now our third topic on the main challenges for the future, actually, I would like to introduce our speaker Andres.
>> UMAR GARBA DANBATTA: The floor is yours.
>> ANDRES GUADAMUZ: Thank you very much. Thanks to the organizers for the kind invitation to this panel. This is a truly honor to be in this company. I have to start with a very quick disclaimer, I'm just academic who has been writing on the interface between copyright and technology for many years but I'm also talking from the perspective of someone who has been a king gamer for most of my life as you can see from the gaming chair that I'm talking from. And you can also insert your how you to do fellow kids meme here.
So I'm talking from a perspective on industry outsider and also someone who is keen on looking at the industry from a policy perspective, particularly talking about the interface between games. And intellectual property. This is an exciting time for the games industry. It was one the creative industries that not only managed to weather the pandemic but also managed to thrive as well. This means that the present and future of the industry looks very bright and healthy. I would like to comment on a few trends that we can see. Perhaps more cautious perspective and outsider perspective as well that with the understand that these are from a friendly outsider.
First opportunity that I wanted to talk about very briefly is something that has been mentioned, the emergence of the meta verse. The definition of what is the meta verse tends to be elusive. Some all virtual communities from the early days of web could apply or meet the definition of the metaverse. Things like multiuser dungeons or mods, the term metaverse has become ‑‑ it was coined by Neil, and it was an immersive version of the Internet that could only be visited with some form of virtual reality equipment.
Over the years, the virtual reality element appears to be very important to what we understand to be as a meta verse but really when we think about it if with think about some form of immersive, most of the implementations of something that could be considered meta verse have been the virtual world games, things like MMOs, massive multiple players, and Warcraft and Star Wars of the Republic, just to mention a few I played and spent way too much time in. However, the meta verse as we see it is being presented in sort of the Facebook meta verse, let's call it. It is a platform‑based environment for developers are going to games that work for specific development environment. Be it hardware or software. This you have presents a method more like the oasis in ready player one. Or where all IP, all the developers and all the intellectual property will inhabit in one single space. So the opposite of this vision has to do with the things that we have talked about already, is a vision of more open and decentralized metaverse and no vent centralized authority, and will be run by Internet 3.2.
The games will continue to be their main application, okay? This brings me to the second opportunity and challenge. So with the potential to have more prevalent multiverse environment, and new business opportunities and the growing user base there is going to be quite a lot of potentially to make more of the platforms interoperability with one or another or there will be one platform to make it work with different types of intellectual property. So as a gamer, the interoperability of games has been very, very important from the interesting legal perspective arising in this area.
From a more strict copyright, it's an important part of how computer programs are allowed to interact with one another. So we encounter a future where the multiverse platforms become centralized and this the question of interoperability is going to become central pane the third opportunity, for gaming that's already happening is the potential use of tokenization. This is in the deployment of the so‑called web three in which our apps platforms powered by blockchain and other hypercurrencies. There's questions about opportunities and challenges grounded in reality. What I find interesting from the NFT, they are being sold as potential marketplaces to develop in some games, they can purchase characters for sale. It's proving to be an interesting environment.
Some players have to make an investment and invest, sometimes massive investments. There is no guarantee that there will be a return on investment. Maybe we will encounter some challenges with that and just to go quickly the other potential with tokenization, there's potential for gamers to tokenize things like goods, skins, characters and games because it will be opening exciting opportunities for the future interoperability. So you buy an icon or scheme in one game and tokenize them when you move to another game.
I don't know if this will ever work, but a lot of users are abuzz thinking about these opportunities and things some consider would be the use case for web 3 apps in gaming.
Just to conclude a brief remarks with my user hat and gamer hat on, we want all of these amazing innovations to continue but no one is paying attention to the pipe and the buzz words thrown around in the space, while the metaverse and NFTs could bring about interesting opportunities, blockchain technology can also be considered expensive and slow the networks which is one the challenges so which ever solution is chosen, it will have to be understood in private blockchains and I can explain that more later.
One thing is for sure, you will find me in the frontiers of these breaking worlds blasting something with magic. Thank you very much.
>> RAFAEL FERRAZ VAZQUEZ: Thank you very much, Andress. It was a great introduction to this panel. Let me jump to the next speaker who is Matthew, who is with Microsoft. Microsoft, perhaps was responsible for the first game of many of us, solitaire. So Matt, please take the floor.
>> MATT SKELETON: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today at the IGF and I also will be speaking a little bit about some of the challenges and students that we focused on both today and looking into the future. I want to say briefly, though, at the start, that as we heard, there's no area of law that's more pervasive to gaming and critical to the future, legal. The head of Xbox says innovation is our only true long‑term differentiator. And I really appreciate that sentiment.
It's the health and success of this vibrant. Sector. To those of you in the room who play a role in the functioning of that system, please accept my gratitude in keeping our IP system blessed and effective.
Now shifting to the challenges and the opportunities of today and tomorrow, I thought I might start to share a limb bit about the Xbox vision for gaming at the outset. Microsoft estimates that there are about 4 billion gamers on the planet Xbox, our object sieve to reach all of these players with compelling experiences that put the player at the center of the experience. Our goal is for every gamer on the planet to play the games they want, where they want with the people they want. And the challenges and opportunities that we focused on are those that really help to advance this vision.
Most recently for us, this has meant three challenges. First continuing to develop new and innovative gaming experiences. Second, finding new compelling offers and third, new ways to deliver the experiences. And, of course, intellectual property rights and considerations are fundamental and pervasive across all of these challenges. To speak about the first area and say a little bit about an example of a new innovative game experience. I wanted to speak about Microsoft flight simulator. Speaking of a game that was first for some of us to experience and some people don't realize this, but Microsoft flight simulator is actually older than Microsoft windows.
We ‑‑ as we know, gamers air highly demanding very engaged group of customers and I love that among the teams that I get to work we, we are all gamers, and we bring our high standards and expectations for moving gaming forward to all the projects we work on. Certainly, the most recent version of flight simulator has been no exception. A signature of the flight simulator series through all releases is that each new release has set a new bar for 3D virtual environments. This is certainly true for the most recent release and a hallmark of the new release are composited together to deliver the experience. For example, flight simulator has ax I generated buildings and topographical data and street maps from open source and community projects and on and on. It also uses the power of Microsoft Azure to deliver air traffic, weather and navigation. The result is the player can fly virtually across the high fidelity of the planet. And during the pandemic, we have seen this experience bring joy to people in ways that we never expected. Humans are curious and during a time when travel is restrictive, flight simulator has given them the means to explore the world right from the convenience of their PC.
And, of course, this requires a bit of IP work with the satellite imagery with the data and the agreements with the aircraft manufacturers. Sue face it to say, it's a lot but we are super proud of the achievement.
Shifting to the second topic. Another challenge is new offers that give gamers a means to play and discover new content at a compelling value. To help satisfy gamers' appetite. There's a game pass that provides access to over 100 games this offer represents a tremendous value, considering that the subscription price is a fraction of the full purchase price for a single title that might be included in subscription.
Certainly, inside Xbox game studio and we have 24 wholly who owned studios. We are tasked with developing tiles to support the Xbox game pass. So this includes titles from our game franchise is like Minecraft, Halo, Fallout, Elder Scrolls Series, Sea of Thieves and Age of Empire and more. And, of course, Xbox game pass includes games from the largest publishers from the Xbox platform. We have committed to launching new titles on a day and date basis in Xbox's game pass, which means the titles available in the subscription offer on the same day it's available for general commercial release and we strive to have one new major release to game pass every month.
Copyright is a fundamental basis for our ability to invest this substantially in new content. We have brought much of our ‑‑ as much of our back catalog as possible to Xbox's game pass and offering each new title in the subscription requires a careful review of the content and whether there's any obstacles that are posed, including the game the subscription. Copyright is about understanding licenses and we navigate with care.
The third area of focus I wanted to briefly discuss was delivering new gaming experiences.
In particular, I wanted to talk about project X cloud. X cloud is powered by an Xbox console in the cloud. It's executed on a device that sits in a data center while the player is remote. The player can access the service and play this from variety of supported device types and a mobile or device type or a PC or a game console. This is included in the price of pass. The service can be accessed from a mobile device: Younger gamers in particular are not just digital natives and mobile natives. The service also allows gamers to enjoy all of the games in subscription offer, by bringing their own device. So it's a compelling solution for those who have a mobile phone or a tablet, but are not able to invest in the game console.
And project x cloud also implicates a number of intellect property issues just as with Xbox game pass when we include a title in project x cloud, we do a careful review of the rights and licenses for third‑party content and any time we think about including third‑party content we are sure that we obtain sufficient rights to offer the title through a streaming service like project X cloud. Those are three areas of opportunity and challenges we are focused on.
Thank you. And I look forward to any questions.
>> RAFAEL FERRAZ VAZQUEZ: Thank you, Matthew, that's great insight in the new advances on streaming and the implications for Microsoft. Without delay, I have the pleasure to also introduce the last speaker of this topic, would is Mr. Olivier Piasentin, founder of Ikimasho. Olivier, the floor is yours.
>> OLIVIER PIASENTIN: I shall speak quickly. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this panel. A little be background. These are the opportunities for the next year as a game studio owner, I will defer a little from the previous persons. But I will still hear the same things hopefully from different angles. One quick note, I started with VR because I saw a great business opportunity earlier on, I think Deborah mentioned new hardware gets you opportunities to establish game designs and IPs early on and start with lower competition parking values so I came in rather than just enjoying the games I'm making which I do by the way, I will be talking about meta verse user generated content, everything. So let's start with that first.
A game company wants you more and more online. They need model your behavior. They build academics around the game systems and they sell you more content, and they also bring you on a subscription base for the services. And meta verse being the promise of the ultimate always online experience, that's why it seems bundled up for those companies and for us customers. We either look like giant games building on mini games that we will add to each other, or on the other hand, what was metaverse, you can chat with friends and enjoy doing things instead activities. I can add to these existing hubs or systems or I can dream of the starting new businesses inside those hubs.
For instance, I do believe that VR tourism is going to be a thing in the future. Going place to place with a friend of yours or a main friend of yours that will be something. Of course, there's the whole thing about giving tools to communities and realizing systems that allows users to build content and to expand the worlds they are working.
These, of course, raising some concerns with IP and fairness to world users who contribute to the world. I can direct you to some recent roadblock issues, but it's always been the case amazing studio, turned into films. You can get an idea with that, being online any time for the meta verse also applies to the people would built the metaverse. The pandemic has shown that we can work differently and remote is not built‑in games. You still work pretty well. And I believe this could help in terms of job opportunities across the world. At the same time the challenge is onboarding and properly training the new recruits, especially their juniors or fresh out of high school or their training.
So we must balance this fantastic opportunity to get anyone on board to build your products with their training, their careers and also the perspective of diversity and inclusion that have been put as foremost topics in recent years especially for publishers in America which want to show studios to and paramount to employees. If you are to live in that online life, more than you do at the moment, make sure that you are acknowledged by other player and this translates across games.
This is something that goes a little bit topic of why interoperability which is a technical hurdle, but it needs to be addressed in terms of meaningful users like, if I'm always online in the FIFA game, how does it translate when I first start Battlefield Campaign. How do I get meaning across different IPs by learning the same. If you are on blockchain, that may be how you identify but that's only one part of the issue because they represent as many APIs that you need to connect to and I cannot stress all NFTs are all blockchain possibilities referred to, greener solutions that are being currently developed.
Who you are on the online system, because at some point if you create content and you deliver it and you sell it, well, you are actually making revenue and you need to be taxed now on our online identity and you it has to relate to who you are in the real world for your taxation bill and intellectual property.
We will have several meta verses and we track gamers which is probably not fun. But what has been it is tailored to be fun and TikTok, they will promise anything is possible and we want everyone to come for free. So on the one hand you have carefully constructed IPs that need to be structures and the other end, well, as marvel and asterisk and fresh IPs drive everyone for free ton there and this balancing of how you drive your IPs across this meta verse and meta verses, is something that has to be taken into account. Is publishers and game studios like mine. We need to design those properties for multiple exploitation from start.
It's no longer to think about these games and if you think about this, the IPs it accounts for 30%. Ubisoft and Microsoft, have broader licensing of the IPs, and this is a reflection that IP game studios should lead to. That was maybe a lilt quick. New hardware is coming out every so common, and your development react, and AI, personal assistance and the structured financing for bigger projects, coproductions and financing and also to companies that add to each other's expertise, insurance for the stuff you own online, all of that stuff. It's really booming and amazing and so I will make sure I see you around in the next years. Thanks for your attention.
>> RAFAEL FERRAZ VAZQUEZ: Thank you, very, very much Olivier. That was a great presentation. So let's move to our last speaker and the pleasure to introduce Dimiter Gantchev.
>> DIMITER GANTCHEV: I can tell you that different events are happening all over the world, and many are educating developers on what they actually have and what kind of income streams they can bring to themselves. And with this in mind, of course, WIPO has a very important educational function and I wanted to let you know that we are coming up with an updated second version of our flagship publication, mastering the game, which is coming out next month which is three times bigger than the first one, and it is trying to reflect all of these interesting developments which have taken place in terms of legislative developments, in terms of business models what you will find in this publication is a much larger geographical scope. We are trying to cover the different regions. We are keeping up the practical focus. It's the tool for developers really to find themselves ‑‑ find their way in the different forms of IP that are available to them. We also have some new chapters on esports. We introduced the AI issues that were not there a few years ago. So trying to be up to date and to offer you something which will be valuable.
So you are all welcome to consult it and hopefully you will make use of it. We are using it as a training tool, and we organize events around the world and there's a growing demand for such events from different parts of the world. So we hope it will be something of interest.
Rafael back to you. I know time is pressing.
>> RAFAEL FERRAZ VAZQUEZ: Thank you very much, Dimiter. Indeed very interesting publication, if I can say that myself as a part of the team. So also, of course, WIPO has a number of initiative on. I started on the video games in the comparative analysis a few years ago. We have interactive infographic on how IP shaped the PlayStation and we have video games developed being planned in Asia and Israel and Baltic state countries. I would like to thank all of those in WIPO that participate in the different initiatives, Dimiter and Ryszard, and many, many more. And I also would like to thank for the online audience would have a very good number of participants in this workshop and thank again the Polish patent office and the president and Anna for the great partnership. Now let me pass you back to Anna.
>> ANNA DACHOWSKA: Unfortunately, we have to finish. I hope it's just the beginning of our dialogue on video games and their future. Thank you so much to all the participants to all the speakers to my co‑moderator and please, see on the screen the winner of our quiz. So congratulations!
And I wish you all of you a great day and looking forward to seeing you at our next events. Thank you so much. Bye‑bye.