Sarah Colman and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2007). Playing on the digital commons: collectivities, capital and contestation in videogame culture. Media, Culture and Society 29 (6), 934-953.
· Commons are resources for community use which no one can own, and are in contrast to commodities exchange for profit by private possession.
· Digital media ease of copying, distribution and malleability across networks can create common pool resources that can overflow privatized property rights. Creative commons adds value I networked activities as it allows for use of pool material free of the restrictions of copyright and IP protection regimes. As mentioned in the TED video featuring Lawrence lessig earlier in the MED104 study materials, a world where the participants know that they are living against the law cannot be healthy for the culture which they’re a part of. Copyright restricts creativity by limiting access to the collective pool of information that would be possible under a commons environment.
· There is a great quote from Steven levy which resonated to me – “essential lessons can be learned about systems – about the world – from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things”. I guess this is what copyright wants to restrict and what commons wants to promote.
· In gaming, the development of the console meant that access to gaming was increased do the ease of economic and technical access it provided in comparison to expensive desktop computers. Thus took gaming to the everyday person and lessoned the barriers for entry. It was the point where gaming became popularized as they became artifacts of pop culture rather than of a misunderstood computing sub-culture. This popularization also commoditized them thus limiting their use by the audience for creative purposes.
· After this developed a hacker culture of piracy in rebellion against game commodifcation, as in an online world the tool and methods to pirate materials was easily found and shared amongst communities online.
· The gaming industry claimed massive losses in revenue. I disagree with this as gaming companies assume that each copy equates to a loss sale which would never be the case, thus the realistic figures would be much lower. Pirate would have been unlikely to buy the game in the first place but they would be more likely to buy other title later as they become indoctrinated into gaming culture and it communities. There can be no doubt that there are losses due to piracy but there are also longer term gains for the industry as more people become involved and engaged. Trying to fight it may be problematic in that they may upset the culture on which they rely via bad word of mouth.
· The games industry complacent in comparison to other media producers (film, music) as the industry emerged with piracy being a part of it and flourished despite its presence. Thus I think it could be said that piracy is a part of gaming culture that was not present in other media as they were previously analog media, when they were digitized these digital culture converged and piracy flourished a community where it was previously restricted by the distribution methods and thus unprepared for ho digitization would affect their business model.
· Abandonware – where aging games go out of circulation. This to me seems to be a form of cultural curation as these games are like books written in a lost language (operating systems) thus need to be remediated for access by following generations.
· For a commons to survive however it would have to also produce its own original materials rather than just rely on commercial remediation’s to grab user attention via new material.
· Game modding is remediation of existing commercial products where new characters, skins, weapons, scenarios, levels and missions are created using an existing game engine.
· Pirates want free games – Modders want to expand existing games.
· Modding means games are easily recyclable for different cultural contexts and thus can hold an audience’s attention for longer periods as the game content is constantly renewed and recontextualised for the audience. Game producers now commonly give consumers the tools to do this to maintain their engagement with the games they produce over longer periods of time.
· This convergence of users and producers also causes issues where IP right converge in remediation’s created by users as seen in the Quake ‘Aliens vs. Predators’ example in the reading where the creators of quake did not have permission to use the aliens or predator characters in the user driven content. I see this as a possible tactic by game producers to grab attention away from other media and attract a wider audience even if only for a short period of time and involve them within their particular community even if it is against IP restrictions.
· The next remediation of games example given was that of Machinima which are movies made by filming game action with new voices and music placed into the footage and usually are seen to increase the cultural cache of the film. However these remediation’s can also damage the brand if they create messages going against the desired message of the original material allowing for culture jamming and hackivism.
· However games are now being designed specifically to promote participatory culture within and thus the value of the media created by fans increase as commercial interest actually rely upon for ongoing success. Perhaps this model is something that other medias such as music and film could look at in order to reengage for effectively with fan bases and get them to more actively participate in the cultures they are consuming.
· MMOGs are online gaming worlds which allow players to interact with persistent virtual environments.
· MMOGs are commercially viable, not through the singular purchase of the game, but through the ongoing monthly subscriptions of their user bases as seen with the 11.5 million users of WoW who spend $15USd a month in subscriptions.
· In MMOGs the game designers are the regulators of behaviors, social rules and institutions with the virtual world. Rules such as then seem to need to develop with the game as part of a collective intelligence of the user base to promote better game play as within virtual worlds it is the users who determine happens within them – not the creators of the game – as there is no set narrative to follow, players create the narrative.
· This can be seen by some as free labour, as with YouTube, where the participants are creating the content which draws in more participants and the producers if the games are the sole profit from it. Unlike YouTube there is no mechanism like adverts etc for users to make money from the game of WoW. Thus MMOGs can be seen as co-creators of player communities and corporate game developers.
· The actions within these games can also lead to social discussions and solutions where the collective intelligence of the players leads to real world social solutions and thus is another sign of media convergence between offline and online worlds.
· Economics also converge with MMOGs where in game items are saleable in offline spaces for real world cash – separate from the virtual world. Some people say this is unfair but I don’t know why players can’t buy right to materials like they would in the offline world.
· In comparison open game designs allow players to maintain copyright within the virtual world and make money from them to encourage user driven content in the virtual space.
· Copyright has replaced the collective traditions of an oral culture with rights for authors and publishers to whom these rights were sold.
· However is an era of easy desktop creation with lowered barriers to entry, easy copying and networked circulation the line between produce and consumer is blurred and the issue of copyright can be seen as restrictive in a participatory culture driven by east access to media creating technologies.
REJECTIONISTS
· Represented by media corporations
· They see commons as threat to growth via IP violations
· Desire to minimize this threat via production, surveillance, enforcement of user license agreements.
REFORMERS
· Accommodate middle ground between commons and capital
· Creative commons propose a formal assimilation between sources, users and adapters
· As the games industry is the first entirely computer based entertainment industry it may be in a position to pioneer user rights negations for modders, artists and players as value adding partners to commercial industry.
RADICALS
· IP conflicts signal a digital socialization of production incompatible with commodity exchange.
· Commons logic as a yet to emerge “commonist” mode of production free of many IP conflicts present in wider digital culture.
· Commons are resources for community use which no one can own, and are in contrast to commodities exchange for profit by private possession.
· Digital media ease of copying, distribution and malleability across networks can create common pool resources that can overflow privatized property rights. Creative commons adds value I networked activities as it allows for use of pool material free of the restrictions of copyright and IP protection regimes. As mentioned in the TED video featuring Lawrence lessig earlier in the MED104 study materials, a world where the participants know that they are living against the law cannot be healthy for the culture which they’re a part of. Copyright restricts creativity by limiting access to the collective pool of information that would be possible under a commons environment.
· There is a great quote from Steven levy which resonated to me – “essential lessons can be learned about systems – about the world – from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things”. I guess this is what copyright wants to restrict and what commons wants to promote.
· In gaming, the development of the console meant that access to gaming was increased do the ease of economic and technical access it provided in comparison to expensive desktop computers. Thus took gaming to the everyday person and lessoned the barriers for entry. It was the point where gaming became popularized as they became artifacts of pop culture rather than of a misunderstood computing sub-culture. This popularization also commoditized them thus limiting their use by the audience for creative purposes.
· After this developed a hacker culture of piracy in rebellion against game commodifcation, as in an online world the tool and methods to pirate materials was easily found and shared amongst communities online.
· The gaming industry claimed massive losses in revenue. I disagree with this as gaming companies assume that each copy equates to a loss sale which would never be the case, thus the realistic figures would be much lower. Pirate would have been unlikely to buy the game in the first place but they would be more likely to buy other title later as they become indoctrinated into gaming culture and it communities. There can be no doubt that there are losses due to piracy but there are also longer term gains for the industry as more people become involved and engaged. Trying to fight it may be problematic in that they may upset the culture on which they rely via bad word of mouth.
· The games industry complacent in comparison to other media producers (film, music) as the industry emerged with piracy being a part of it and flourished despite its presence. Thus I think it could be said that piracy is a part of gaming culture that was not present in other media as they were previously analog media, when they were digitized these digital culture converged and piracy flourished a community where it was previously restricted by the distribution methods and thus unprepared for ho digitization would affect their business model.
· Abandonware – where aging games go out of circulation. This to me seems to be a form of cultural curation as these games are like books written in a lost language (operating systems) thus need to be remediated for access by following generations.
· For a commons to survive however it would have to also produce its own original materials rather than just rely on commercial remediation’s to grab user attention via new material.
· Game modding is remediation of existing commercial products where new characters, skins, weapons, scenarios, levels and missions are created using an existing game engine.
· Pirates want free games – Modders want to expand existing games.
· Modding means games are easily recyclable for different cultural contexts and thus can hold an audience’s attention for longer periods as the game content is constantly renewed and recontextualised for the audience. Game producers now commonly give consumers the tools to do this to maintain their engagement with the games they produce over longer periods of time.
· This convergence of users and producers also causes issues where IP right converge in remediation’s created by users as seen in the Quake ‘Aliens vs. Predators’ example in the reading where the creators of quake did not have permission to use the aliens or predator characters in the user driven content. I see this as a possible tactic by game producers to grab attention away from other media and attract a wider audience even if only for a short period of time and involve them within their particular community even if it is against IP restrictions.
· The next remediation of games example given was that of Machinima which are movies made by filming game action with new voices and music placed into the footage and usually are seen to increase the cultural cache of the film. However these remediation’s can also damage the brand if they create messages going against the desired message of the original material allowing for culture jamming and hackivism.
· However games are now being designed specifically to promote participatory culture within and thus the value of the media created by fans increase as commercial interest actually rely upon for ongoing success. Perhaps this model is something that other medias such as music and film could look at in order to reengage for effectively with fan bases and get them to more actively participate in the cultures they are consuming.
· MMOGs are online gaming worlds which allow players to interact with persistent virtual environments.
· MMOGs are commercially viable, not through the singular purchase of the game, but through the ongoing monthly subscriptions of their user bases as seen with the 11.5 million users of WoW who spend $15USd a month in subscriptions.
· In MMOGs the game designers are the regulators of behaviors, social rules and institutions with the virtual world. Rules such as then seem to need to develop with the game as part of a collective intelligence of the user base to promote better game play as within virtual worlds it is the users who determine happens within them – not the creators of the game – as there is no set narrative to follow, players create the narrative.
· This can be seen by some as free labour, as with YouTube, where the participants are creating the content which draws in more participants and the producers if the games are the sole profit from it. Unlike YouTube there is no mechanism like adverts etc for users to make money from the game of WoW. Thus MMOGs can be seen as co-creators of player communities and corporate game developers.
· The actions within these games can also lead to social discussions and solutions where the collective intelligence of the players leads to real world social solutions and thus is another sign of media convergence between offline and online worlds.
· Economics also converge with MMOGs where in game items are saleable in offline spaces for real world cash – separate from the virtual world. Some people say this is unfair but I don’t know why players can’t buy right to materials like they would in the offline world.
· In comparison open game designs allow players to maintain copyright within the virtual world and make money from them to encourage user driven content in the virtual space.
· Copyright has replaced the collective traditions of an oral culture with rights for authors and publishers to whom these rights were sold.
· However is an era of easy desktop creation with lowered barriers to entry, easy copying and networked circulation the line between produce and consumer is blurred and the issue of copyright can be seen as restrictive in a participatory culture driven by east access to media creating technologies.
REJECTIONISTS
· Represented by media corporations
· They see commons as threat to growth via IP violations
· Desire to minimize this threat via production, surveillance, enforcement of user license agreements.
REFORMERS
· Accommodate middle ground between commons and capital
· Creative commons propose a formal assimilation between sources, users and adapters
· As the games industry is the first entirely computer based entertainment industry it may be in a position to pioneer user rights negations for modders, artists and players as value adding partners to commercial industry.
RADICALS
· IP conflicts signal a digital socialization of production incompatible with commodity exchange.
· Commons logic as a yet to emerge “commonist” mode of production free of many IP conflicts present in wider digital culture.