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A Day of Mike

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A Day of Mike A Day of Mike Zhonghan Xiao Mike has been a lawyer for a few years; recently he found a job in Mony company, a video game company. Grown up in 90s, Mike has loved video games almost all his life. Working on IP consulting for a while, he found it a little bit boring, since he has dreamed of working in a video game company for a long time; now the dream came true. Today is Mike’s first day of work. He had a good sleep last night, got up at 7, shaved and got himself a smart haircut. Then he had breakfast at Corner Bakery, which is his favorite. Everything seems just right, “It’s my day today”, says Mike. Mike is now sitting at his desk, and starts looking around. Everyone seems to be very busy, “Maybe that’s how things work in such a great company!”, Mike says to himself. But he’s getting busy soon. “Hey, you!”, someone calls Mike,” Are you our new counsel?” Oh, yes!”, Mike answers happily, he feels a little excited about having something to do. The man who speaks to Mike is Jack Jonson, the general manager of this company. [surely Mike would already know who the general manager was] “Now young man, grab your things and follow me. We’ve got a meeting on the ninth floor!” 1 / 26 “Yes, of course, sir”, Mike answers as he collecting everything into his briefcase. “Have you ever heard of the Dragon Blade? That’s our new RPG game for this year.” “Yes, sir. In fact, I’m a big fan of that. I bought it on Steam and have been playing it for months.” “Okay, that’s good. And what do you know about the Dragon Hunters?” “Well, that’s a dragon-hunting game of Micorhard. I’ve played it, and in fact I’m a big fan of that kind of game.” “Good, good, good.” The manager seems to be satisfied about his answer. “So here comes the problem”, the manager says as he gives a document to Mike. “Take a quick look at this, and tell me what you think of it, and please see the video in this DVD”, says the manager. Mike finished reading the document and is watching the video. He frowns. The video is a comparative video that contains video materials from those two games, Micro’s on the left, and Mony’s on the right. They are about a boss (a powerful monster that players need to defeat in the end of a chapter) fight against a fire dragon. It’s easy to tell that these two games look extremely similar. Players attack the dragon and at different health levels, the dragons would use different abilities. For example, at 50% health, both the dragons would strafe fire from left to right, and players would jump on a rock to avoid being burnt. This is one similarity that Micro presents in their video. But this is not a significant similarity. It’s easy to 2 / 26 change the percentage health standard. But in Micro’s game, the dragon would change his behavior every time he loses 10 percent of his total health, but in our game, it’s every 25%.” Mike keeps speaking, “Here are other things that seem similar. Such a similarity would make someone, who doesn’t know they’re two completely different games assume that one of them is a sequel of another, or a DLC (Downloadable Content, things like a new updated chapters in a existing game) provided by the manufacturer.” The manager asks “So they are saying that we infringed their copyright of dragon hunter?” Mike replies，“I don’t think our programmers and writers would ever have done that. But this video, man, it is lethal. Imagine they upload it on Youtube, and naming it something like Mony steals game from Microhard, people would give lower rates on our games in their reviews. And when new consumers read about those reviews, they might have a doubt in our good will, and turn to other games. And we might need to pay them a lot of money. Even worse, players would no longer trust our games. Because players tend to associate themselves with games they love, for example, people who love NBA 2K are usually considered to be basketball lovers, and people who play Call of Duties like guns and wars. You know why people who play Dota have a feel of honorable towards people who play League of Legends? Because League of Legends steal things from Dota 3 / 26 and in the old advertisements LoL relates itself with Dota to attract players. But you could see those comments on Reddit. We’ve been a company that has creative minds and the respected craftsmanship, it’s a selling point in our games. Imagine if we are related to copyright infringements, and become a thief, that hurts our interests. I need to dig deeper before I can tell you exactly what we should do.” “I agree. But that is just what they claimed. Can you give me some instructions about explaining things in the video and steps we should take, so I could tell others on the board.” “Well, these two games do have something in common. But they must have a good reason for claiming infringements. Lets do a simple illustration about claims they might have. In my opinion, the stories share a common theme, but those two games were written under very different coding systems. For the coding part, they didn’t claim that we copied their work.” Mike replies, “Just give me some time. After researching I would went through all the possible aspects and give you a complete report.” “I can see you disagree too. And what about the video? What should I tell the board?” The manager asks Mike. “OK, I don’t think they have gained enough evidence yet, since our game are released only a week before. I mean, not enough evidence legally. It’s not reasonable that they have run through those complicated tests. For examples, comparing all the items, I mean gears, (items that the players 4 / 26 equipt themselves with), in the 2 games and have a conclusion that 80% of the items are similar, or have same effects. Even they do find some similar gears, the amount of those are only a small percentage, and cannot be considered as a similarity in legal contents.” “You know that if they have their claim, they should be responsible of prove that we steal their ideas, which would be extremely difficult in this case. And that would cost them a lot of money, much more than they earn from their stupid dragon hunters. This been said, I suppose they dig into the details of those games and find some similarity there. For example, in the final Chapter of our game, players must defeat a elder dragon in a dome shaped cave, which means they can only avoid being ignited, while in another chapter of their game, players must do the same thing. I’ll explain this strategy. There are numbers of things that can be done to make the fight with Lo’Jel, the Elder Dragon (or any other dragon, for that matter) easier. And they are different from Micro’s game.” “First, do the damage yourself. Lo’Jel, like all dragons in the game, has the Dragonskin perk, which is a passive skill. This means that he takes half damage from anyone who isn't the player, this means your NPC teammates. Unless you've increased the difficulty to Torment, this means that allies, while useful, are almost always going to be doing less damage than you can. But in Micro’s game, players just need to avoid being killed and press some buttons when the game tells them to do so. They don’t need 5 / 26 to do these damages as they do in our game.” “Second, don't take the damage yourself (when it is possible). In the Lo’Jel fight, there are three NPCs attacking him along with you. They may not be able to overcome his Dragonskin like you can, but all three are marked Essential, meaning they cannot die. Let them get the first couple of hits in on Lo’Jel, and he should keep his focus on them for a while. If he turns to attack you, feel free to run, try to find cover, and let them get his attention again. Even with Lo’Jel focusing entirely on them, there will usually be at least one still standing at any moment, with another getting up soon. This seems to be similar, but in our games, players need to let NPCs take the damage. While in Micro’s, they simply evade those damages.” “Third, look after your friends. The NPC allies in this fight may be Essential, but that doesn't stop them from spending most of the fight in recovery mode(time between their death and rebirth). Directly healing them is often a waste of time, as they cannot die anyway, but buff spells like Courage, Rally, or Call to Arms can make them last longer between recoveries, and help them keep Lo’Jel's attention longer. If you have high enough Restoration, though, Grand Healing and Guardian Circle can be quite effective. The former heals all three allies and you at the same time, while the latter creates an area that will continue to heal you over time for a minute, keeping you healthy while leaving your hands free to keep 6 / 26 damaging Lo’Jel.
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