Why Co-Creation Matters: An Interview with John Banks... A 4-part series...

[JCitron]

This is a 4-part interview with John Banks. Yes, THE John Banks from the old Auran. The community manager from 2000-2005! Dr. Banks worked on his Doctorate degree while working at Auran. He's study was, and appears still to be, the involvement in the online user community and game development.

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-one.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-two.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-three.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-four.html

I believe much of this studies, and work with Greg Lane in the early days that led the way that Auran and now N3V work today with the user-community driven assets and download station.

John

 

[johnwhelan]

When you read through it Trainz all seems to have happened a bit by chance, John Banks being in the right place at the right time.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

When you read through it Trainz all seems to have happened a bit by chance, John Banks being in the right place at the right time.

Cheerio John

Very true. I noticed that too, but I wonder how much of his theories went into this as well. I wonder if perhaps Auran became his test bed to try out his theories.

John

 

[Lataxe]

This is a 4-part interview with John Banks. Yes, THE John Banks from the old Auran. The community manager from 2000-2005! Dr. Banks worked on his Doctorate degree while working at Auran. He's study was, and appears still to be, the involvement in the online user community and game development.

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-one.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-two.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-three.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2014/05/why-co-creation-matters-an-interview-with-john-banks-part-four.html

I believe much of this studies, and work with Greg Lane in the early days that led the way that Auran and now N3V work today with the user-community driven assets and download station.

John

This stuff is interesting - very interesting since it's crucial to the very existence of the Trainz mode of content production. But those articles do woffle on & on, eh?

I did an extract that I hope summarises what the bloke is on about, in his own words but with much of the woffle removed. Here it is:

The ‘free labor’ argument .... is that through these kinds of co-creation activities we see significant value generated that creative industries rely on. Following from this the argument is made that this extraction of surplus value is unfair and exploitative. Furthermore, co-creative production practices may also contribute to the precarity of creative professionals working lives. The concern here is that this ‘free labor’ may replace the jobs of media professionals. This political economy critique questions accounts that emphasise the empowering and potentially democratizing, participatory potential of these activities.

I try to account for the motivation and incentive diversity that I encounter in my research. Yes this includes the business bottom line of games developers and publishers achieving profits. But the developer side here also isn’t just constrained to these incentives – I hope the account that I provide sufficiently foregrounds the motivations around craft-skills and professional identity in which developers have a sense of intrinsic reward from contributing to these co-creative networks.

Among the players themselves some headed in an entrepreneurial direction, what started out as nonmonetary hobbyist practice developed into pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. Others provided accounts of how their participation in co-creative communities helped them gain skills that became job opportunities, for example as online community managers.

Co-creative production cultures then rather than being approached as distinct and incommensurable economic and cultural domains, with their related incentives and motivations, is more a site of dynamic and emergent relations between markets and non-markets. But in saying this I’m not suggesting that these activities should simply be reduced to their market or economic value.

An area that is unfair is the formal legal instruments that purport to govern these relationships and here I’m referring to EULAs. These agreements (if you can call them that), seldom if ever fairly acknowledge or reflect the nature of these relationships and the value players are creating. The agreements are generally totally one-sided.

A significant issue for the players was transparency. They wanted to know what the developers were intending to do with the co-created content and they also wanted detail on decisions made by the developer that impacted on these co-creative relationships. ...... This was along the lines of ‘we know you are using our content in various ways and gaining value from that, but we want you to inform us of this and give us an opportunity to express our views’.

Sometimes Auran mismanaged this communication.

But when players thought that these norms and expectations around transparency and communication were infringed they would then start considering the practices to be unfair or exploitative.

The term respect came up in a good few interviews with various developers...

By emphasising the diverse understandings and motivations of developers and gamers do I risk overlooking the extent to which these very understandings are shaped by such structural conditions, which is different from determined by them. Even if these understandings are canny and knowing am I perhaps avoiding dealing with the conditions of capital that contribute to all of this?
In the introduction to her book Boyd also acknowledges the “capitalist logic that underpins American society and the development of social media…”

An interesting point to consider here is that perhaps the adaptive behaviours and practices that she describes so well just cannot be understood in terms of “the capitalist logic”.
The way I approach co-creation is to start with the participants’ understandings, practices and behaviours. I don’t start with assumptions about broader capitalist logics and then ask well are these practices coopted by or opposed to those logics.

When you ask how we might characterise the ways these co-creative gamers / consumers relate to the developer companies and publishers I emphasise that it is diverse and I foreground in the book their understandings of this. Some view it as a rewarding opportunity to have their views and opinions influence design and development. Others at times are suspicious and sceptical about the commercial motivations driving the developers. Others view it as an opportunity to learn more about game development and gain skills in this area. For some it is about the quite intrinsic rewards that come from contributing to an online game fan community.

This relationship fascinates me, I admit. There are often flame wars in the forums around content ownership, rights to re-use, limitations on cloning-changing and so forth. Personally I think a lot of these wars can be explained by the cognitive dissonance in creator's minds between the two types of value being created - the commercial or capitalist value and the value to do with pleasures and reputations got from the act of creation and the act of giving. Many creators become upset when they "forget" their original creating/giving motives and the associated values they sought, by becoming enmeshed in the dominant capitalist memes of property & profit.

Personally I've always drawn a very hard line between my "for profit" activities and my "for other values" activities. I want paying when I go to work. I want to own a thing if I bought it. However, if I make a piece of furniture for pleasure not profit and give it away, it's no longer mine - with no rights or ownership of any kind retained by me. This makes life very straightforward. I still have the pleasure of creating, of giving and of having the reputation that goes with this. I don't need a monetary payment or control over what the recipients subsequently do with what I made and freely gave to them. It's theirs now.

Why do freeware makers, then, rarely do this? (I know some do, of course). I suspect they cannot shake those capitalist memes.

Lataxe (sorry for the fat post).

 

[johnwhelan]

Very true. I noticed that too, but I wonder how much of his theories went into this as well. I wonder if perhaps Auran became his test bed to try out his theories.

John

I'm quite sure it did.

Cheerio John

 

[itareus]

..I did an extract ...... Lataxe (sorry for the fat post).

When are you going to post the extract ?

Sorry could not resist that one, but academia is all about waffle and how to make a thousand word say what ten could.

Did I just do that ?

Chris

 

[wva-usa]

For those that might be interested in exploring this subject even further, John Banks authored a book, "Co-creating Videogames", a few years ago which can be previewed at Google Books.

This well-researched informative volume provides readers with an explanation and analysis of the relatively new phenomenon of user-generated content integrated into professional video game development. Banks (Queensland Univ. of Technology, Australia) describes an individual case study (Trainz) in great detail, offers more general perspectives of other companies and other games, and outlines the overall issues and problems with this practice. These include determining how player-developers can be recognized and renumerated for their contributions to a game and the difficulties of integrating relationships with large groups of external content creators with a core professional development team. Other sections of the book explore current academic and philosophical research in game theory and co-creation. The content is supported by citations from player-developers, descriptions of meetings that the author attended in person, and insights from industry professionals that validate and explicate the author's points.