End-user agreements in videogames: Plain English at work in an ideal setting

Abstract

Much has been written about the simplification of legal English, especially considering its implications upon the power relationships between companies and individuals and how consumers’ rights may be at risk when contractual terms and conditions are not sufficiently clear. It is true that over the last decades great progress has been made in this respect, and contracts (especially clickwrap agreements signed online) already show signs that the user is taken into account and unnecessary obscurity has been avoided: this can be seen, for instance, in sentence length, in the decrease in legal jargon, in syntactic structures avoiding excessive subordination and passive sentences, and even in the use of direct address forms (“you”) instead of anonymous third persons (“the user”, “the purchaser”. However, when a product is aimed at a younger audience, such as some videogames, the simplification must be even greater: such is the case of the Terms of Arbitration used by Mojang for the renowned “Minecraft” game. In our study, we shall look at how the drafters have made an effort to reach the maximum of simplification in the terms, to the point where, through the use of dialogic language, an attempt is made even to create complicity between the user and the games manufacturer.