Open Content in Summary

We're on to the last panel session of the conference now - a summary panel with Larry Lessig, Stuart Cunningham, and Sal Humphreys as well as conference host Brian Fitzgerald. Larry starts by pointing out that what's happening in the computer games field is real, it's common, and traditional property owners have exactly the wrong intuitions in dealing with it. For one, there is a significant monetary value being generated in the online environment (there is even a story of sweatshops in Mexico developing gaming assets and selling them profitably on eBay). It is also a very common activity - and one which is a voluntary form of play as work, much along the same lines as free and open source software development.

And intuitively, such projects would be expected to be impossible and unworkable - but still they quite evidently succeed, as the FOSS success stories have shown. A 'weird balance' has to be struck, and is often struck, therefore, between proprietary and voluntary contributors. Corporate intuition about how to deal with communities of users as co-creators is all too often counterproductive, however; the corporations may have to learn lessons from history in how governments have needed to relax their restrictions on citizens' rights as societies became more vibrant.

In his contribution, Stuart addresses the national policy aspects of the creative content question. National innovation policy continues to undervalue the creative content industries and to under-recognise the co-creation phenomena that are so obvious especially in the games development field. This is despite the obvious economic contribution of the creative industries - there is a significant gap between innovation and R&D thinking in governmental policy, and economic realities.

Computer games are an important element in a creative industries and R&D environment (and Stuart presents a graph describing the historic eras of games development). Innovation in games development makes a valuable contribution to new thinking, not least also in the collective IP field - innovation in games can be described as anthropological rather than simply technical, and breaks the barriers between proprietary and non-proprietary, amateur and professional contributors.

Sal Humphreys now returns to the question of multiuser online games, where users fundamentally create community rather than property - games publishers, in other words, also become community managers, whether they intend to or not. This constitutes a shift, if incomplete at this point, from a publication model to a services model - from a model formulated around property to one built around community. Social networks are becoming part of the business plans of games development companies, as social networking retains players within game products even once they have mastered the skills to 'win' the game - winning no longer is the main driver of game involvement.

This 'stickyness' of games means that even in the case of poor customer service by games companies players often remain with online environments, because the significant level of social investment in the game means that switching costs to another game platform are perhaps forbiddingly high. There is a need for a heightened accountability of games providers in such cases, beyond what terms of use or EULAs currently exist - highly involved players depend on the game for access to their social community.