Thomas Burelli
French Guest
Professor
Thomas Burelli is a law professor in the Civil Law section at the University of Ottawa. In 2021, he decided to reconnect with one of his favourite hobbies and combine business with pleasure by creating a university course on video game law. In his course, he tackles issues related to both video game design (namely regarding ownership, especially when players get involved and create their own mods) and the regulation of their marketing (game classification, environmental impact, as well as addiction-related concerns); not to mention the legal issues tied to the consumption of video games (including esports, streaming, and efforts to combat toxicity in video game spaces). In 2020, to counter the effects of the pandemic, he recreated the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law in the game Minecraft. In 2021, he broke his vow to never make a video game and began developing one about video game law: Reset 2047. By 2023, having clearly not learned his lesson, he coordinated the creation of a video game set in the Supreme Court of Canada: Les échos de la cour (“echoes of the court” in English), published in 2025 and available on mobile and Steam. Lastly, in 2025-2026, he contributed to the creation of the mobile game Trump the World. You think you know Trump? Determine what’s true, build your “Trumpidex” and, whatever you do, do NOT make him angry.
Welcome to Otakuthon 2026!