Challenge 5 - Second Assault

To recap, the game I designed in this week's First Strike was about Metallica and Copyright Infringement. It was a Facebook game that combined elements of Parking Wars and Mafia Wars while attempting to teach a lesson about what happens when you steal music. This part about the teaching is what needed work, so here it goes.

Copyright Wars

You have at your disposal a list of songs, each one worth an amount based on their in-game demand, which is in turn based on how loved the song is in the real world. For example, Enter Sandman would most likely be more sought after than St. Anger, and The Unforgiven would be worth so much more than The Unforgiven III.

You can gain songs in two different ways. One is to legitimately purchase them and the other is to steal them. Games are cheap in-game, and any song you purchase legitimately cannot be charged against you by other players. However, it still costs money, and people can still steal the tracks from you. Stealing, on the other hand, is free, and so you can rack up a big tracklist by stealing.

Every hour, your songs increase in value. If you purchased your songs, they give you a constant $15/hour. This value does not change over time. If you steal a song, however, it starts out worth $25/hour and its value increases by $15 every hour. A stolen song also comes with a note that says "Stolen From [whoever]" so if someone ever finds that you stole a song from them, they can catch you. If you are caught with a stolen song, you pay that song's value x10 to the rightful owner of the song. So on the one hand, you may build up a legitimate music collection and plan to just catch anybody who steals your songs and make your music that way. On the other hand, you could steal a lot of songs and hope to not get caught. Remember, the more lawyers you have, the better chance you have of winning if someone claims you stole their songs. Heck, you might have, but with enough legal representation, you're off the hook.

The twist: If you steal a song back, it is still a stolen song, even if it was legitimately purchased in the first place.

I'd say the main education this game has to offer is that the current copyright system is flawed. The RIAA drains regular citizens of all their money for downloading a song or two, when said songs cost 99 cents on iTunes. My attempt here was to design a game that goes to same lengths to show just how ridiculous and flawed the system is, that even legitimiately purchased songs can be stolen via file-sharing, and even people who purchase music can be persecuted.