From Copenhagen, Oct 16 |
Background:
Fan studies/Political economy
Terranova and social factory (working for nothing)/Jenkins and participatory culture (everyone media rich)
Picking at social factory:
Are theories of post-industrial labor enough for understanding what work means to co-producers?
There is in fact agency, etc. and the actors aren’t just dupes for the cog machine.
Two examples:
- GI Joe mod as resistance
idea that love of the game and creation = rights
equate the mod with DeCSSS makes the mod no longer a game but a symbol of resistance - AOL volunteering as passionate labor with intrinsic rewards
15k people volunteering
access to gui to create content, etc.
These larger theories can’t get at specific people’s voices nor cover what happens when work becomes not work anymore.
Olli Sotamaa
Democratizing the console environment?
www.uta.fi/hyper
Do the XNA and WiiWare actually democratize? Not really. They more just extend the oligopoly.
Modding is more democratizing.
“casual modding” includes LitteBigPlanet, etc.
MyBuzz (website or PS3? to create quiz games).
Julian Kucklich
Collusion: Mapping connections between games and users
cheating = de-lodology
Titiana Terranova
Within gamespace, some moves are possible and some impossible for specific people. This goes hand in hand with labor concept.
[Mark]
I find it funny that Julian really wants to do a roundtable chat but he is following the lecture format. He says that he doesn’t want to do slideshows and he keeps saying “we’re talking about…” but yet he still just lectures. Too much stuff to cover in too little time. 🙁
[/Mark]
Gaming capital (not cultural capital): capitalizing play, bending the structure, commodifying gamespace
distribution of risk from center of games to periphery
the logic of play is infused by the logic of gain and more and more logic of risk
Aphra Kerr – NUI Maynooth, Sociology
Outsourcing risk
Discourse: Rise of open innovation, etc.
Reality: Distributed productions and offshoring, Accumulation by disposession
Not much stuff going on in Irish gaming market. Middleware, underbidding licensed stuff, or distributed original production.
Three trends: disintermediation (online distribution), distributed production, ownership and policing of IP