Co-creative Culture and Labor

The key-expressions this week are "immaterial labor" and "co-creative culture". 

The video "Counter-Strike for Kids" is a double example. In one hand, it shows how user-created mods can be acquired by game companies, either to be purchased with the game they mod or as a new game - in this case, as a new game. When it became the most played mod of Half-Life, Valve developed it further in order to make it a new title. As seems to be a recurrent Valve practice, the company hired the modders for in-house development. Valve made its editor available with Half-Life, so that fans/players could make their own levels. This kind of practice fosters a "co-creative culture", a culture in which players are allowed to create on top of what companies developed in the first place. This originates either better versions of the original work/game or brand new works/games. Counter-Strike is an example of the latter.

The co-creative process doesn't end there, as this video-example shows. Deriving from the mod that became a whole new game, these people created a whole new piece, in this case, a parody video.

When I'm faced with this kind of derived-pieces-of-work, I can't help thinking about my father. He was an art teacher. He's students were usually under 14. When they had drawing exercises in which they could do anything, if they did something that resonated obvious products of pop-culture, like cartoon characters or famous people, he would reject their work and tell them to start all over again. His argument was "you are just deriving others’ work, that's not original or creative!". My father's view questions this notion of "co-creation". I don't share my father's view but I like this challenge. To what extent is derived work co-creative? Where is the border between copy and original work, if the subject is shared by two 'authors'? The answers to these questions are not always obvious. Is this “co-creative culture” a “non-creative culture”, instead?

Rationalization and Instrumentality in Play - presentation

First of all, here's the presentation: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddbnq7ts_0fcw2qm3p

The following post was written together with Anette Ottzen.

This week we were invited to discuss rationalization and instrumentality in play, inspired by readings about: a general notion of “rationalization of play”, by Henricks; an analysis of the Dragon Kill Points ‘feature’ as seen through a foucauldian perspective; and, finally, achievements in the Xbox Live.
It was inevitable, in the context of “rationalization and instrumentality” to speak of Gamification. So, to bring this discussion into the table, we suggested 3 case studies: the mini video, the ‘piano stairs’ video and Foursquare. The other case studies are tightly related to some concepts founds in the readings. To illustrate the issue of work as opposite to play, we present a Minecraft video and the case of the mcDonalds employee motivation system. And finally, we suggest Farmville as a problematic example of the panoptic control.

Presenting the case studies “the Piano Stairs” and “the Mini Getaway”, we wanted to show how two major car companies are trying to communicate to /interact with potential costumers using different types of engagement in play.  During the discussion, interesting observations in context to restrictions of the games within time and space - and in reflections on the concepts of instrumentality occurred.
Both games are physically placed in the public space of the city of Stockholm - and both games underlie the limitation of a short lifespan. The Mini Getaway has natural time and space limitations in the construction of the game. Players have one week to capture the virtual Mini within city borders and hold on to it by running away from competitors. This concept carries strong references to the “Getaway in Stockholm” underground street race videos. By engaging players with the promise of a brand new Mini, users will go to great length racing through the city streets to protect their car, a rather predictable - but not sophisticated - game interaction.
The Piano stairs concept is, on the other hand, more blurry, as it is tied up with the novelty factor - that probably runs out within a week (for frequent transients). Placed in a busy train station ,a toy piano is embedded in a stairway in order to direct people to the physical stairs instead of the escalator. Unfortunately, in choosing the Piano Stairs, people created a new problem, clotting in the daily flow of people. Therefore, the notion of instrumental play is questioned in the Piano Stairs video. People engaged did not go straight up the stairs (as would have been the preferred social behavior) but playfully ran up and down, creating chaos, some even jumping on one note repeatedly. The promoted healthy lifestyle presented in both videos does not only seem a bit hypocritical having the sender in mind, but also seems unfulfilled, as the games do not seem to have left any lasting change in the behavior of their users.

The point made in the Dragon Kill Points text underlies a distinction between work and play. To question this distinction, we look at Minecraft, more specifically to one of the most famous fan videos uploaded to youtube - “Building Megaobjects in Minecraft”. In this video, a Minecraft player is showing one of his in-game constructions, a 1:1 scale model of Star Trek’s Enterprise, and asking for help to build some of its parts. It is clear that this player spent a lot of hours playing the game, and that he has put a lot of effort and planning into this task. This kind of endeavour looks very much like work.
As employee at mcDonalds, you are the subject of different achievement systems and gaming mechanics as part of the employee motivational system. Starting you carrier, you are obligated to set six month goals for your time of employment. When this happens, employees do not know that the system is very rewarding and that advancement in the mcDonalds hierarchy happens rappidly. Although, almost every employee succeeds in personal progress within the time period and is, of course, rewarded in doing so. Another game mechanic at play is the “Super Size” sales system that encouraged employees to persuade costumers into going larger when buying menus - this sales behaviour is rewarded by points that transfer into prizes at a later point.
These examples show how the line between work and play can be very thin. It’s also a current trend to try to bring ‘playfulness’ into work environments and bring fun to usual work-related tasks. But how is this intrumentality of play removing meaning from it?

Two of Foucaul’s concepts used in Silverman and Simon’s text are control and disciplinary power. The panopticon comparison is used to explain the community control made possible by the Dragon Kill Points system and its effects in ranking and power structure maintenance. In Facebook Games, namely Farmville, neighbors are of key-importance to progress in the game. These neighbors - people who are playing the same game and who accepted to become neighbors  - have an active role in one’s game. They can visit each other’s farms, help each other and send each other gifts. The more a player interacts with her neighbors, the more she will benefit - progression, game money, and useful gifts. Community control is necessary for progression, giving it a role that is different from the role of dragon kill points in Everquest. In the case of Farmville, control doesn’t have a power-structure maintenance function, but it is necessary. Friends and friend-control is necessary for the progression in the game and it doesn’t have major ranking-consequences - it is a game rule.

The Foursquare example appears to illustrate Jacobsson’s text on Achievements. It was chosen because we considered it would be the ultimate example of a design whose core is achievements. Interestingly, the discussion in class brought a new question: “are badges the same as achievements?” Foursquare rewards its users with badges when they complete certain ‘goals’ - checking-in for the first time, being in the same local more than 3 times in one week, being in a boat, etc. When we first brought the case to class, we were seeing these as achievements, motivated by the argument that old Activision badges could be seen as achievements found in Jacobsson’s text. the interpretation of the difficulty or effort put into obtaining that achievement is, though, an interesting point. We would argue, though, that the way in which Foursquare implements badges resembles achievements in the sense that they motivate users/players in the struggle to reach a goal - become the mayor of a certain place. These badges are side-goals, they seem to have been thought of just as achievements. The fact that “less” effort is put into getting those badges or a certain game’s achievements relates to the nature of the game itself. If we consider foursquare a game, we can argue that it being a game that is ‘easy to play’ explains why its beadges/achievements are also ‘easy to get’. We can, inclusively, predict the existence of players who approach foursquare badges differently, maybe in ways that meet Jacobssson’s “approaches to achievements” - casuals, hunters and completists.  

/ Anette and Maura

Emergent Play & Control

This week we look at game rules - constituative, operational and implicit ones (according to Salen and Zimmerman), paying special attention to the role of implicit rules.

As we mentioned in class, it is easier to think about rules (of all three kinds) in the board-game context. Video game rules tend to be forgotten, since the constitutive and operational ones tend to be less ‘maleable’ or ‘mangeable’, as Steinkuehler puts it, than in analogue games - they are imposed by the code. So, looking at situations when people play with the rules in a digital context is usually related to tricks players find, as the videos suggested as case studies show. 

All of this week’s case studies are related to tricks players developed to make their gameplay more effective, more beautiful or maybe just to show off their game knowledge. I would say these videos illustrate ‘special interpretations of the game rules’  rather than “ways of playing with the game rules”. This same issue is underlying Jakobsson’s piece. What he calls ‘playing with rules’ is ‘interpreting the rules’, a basic element of game play. The extent to which one can ‘play with the rules’ or the number of different interpretations for a game’s ruleset varies according to the nature of the game. Some designs afford more ‘interpretations’ that others. This resonates with the ideas in “Staying Open to Interpretation: Engaging Multiple Meanings in Design and Evaluation” , by Sengers and Gaver. In this paper, the authors argue that “new techniques in HCI itself are converging to suggest that multiple, potentially competing interpretations can fruitfully co-exist”, this is what I see happening in the games where the cases were taken from. The designs afford multiple interpretations, some being more obvious than others. These examples show some less-obvious interpretations of the rules. The ‘obviousness’ of these interpretations relate to the player’s creativity and knowledge of the rules.

The tricks players develop, besides showing how rules can be interpreted in many ways, show Steinkuehler’s point that “the game that’s actually played by participants (...) is the outcome of (...) [a] ‘mangle of practice’ of designers, players (...) and broader social norms”. Those tricks are a result of players exploration of the designed game rules that have to be evaluated by the game community and that occur in a context. The rocket jumping mechanic was common among several game communities, it didn’t go against its norms. The twixt example, though, is an example of a trick that was within the designed rules but not within the community rules. Social norms dictated this case as an example of “breaking the rules”.