The borders of user created content
SusanC has a comment on a Terra Nova thread in which she observes,
So the main criterion for being considered is that there is some kind of creative expression involved. I’m OK with that, although it opens the door for arguments about exactly how much creative input is needed to qualify. Text chat, instant messages, and blog postings (like this one) clearly can be used for creative expression: so maybe these are within the paper’s scope, provided that they are sufficiently creative.
— comment on Terra Nova: New Paper on UGC.
It is an interesting problem, actually. There is hardly a site these days of any sort on the Net that does not support some form of user-generated content. But by unspoken convention, we seem to not consider chat and other basic synchronous social interaction to be the same sort of user created content that uploaded models and textures are.
I think the reason is interesting and subtle, and marks out a distinction between “extending the possibility space” and, well, “not.” So here go 1700 words…
The ability to chat in real-time has been part and parcel of MUDs (and by extension virtual worlds of many stripes) since the very beginning. It was just one of many capabilities provided to the ordinary user of the system (e.g., a user without admin privileges of any sort). This pattern has remained — most virtual worlds do not make a user “earn” the ability to chat (though I have seen muds that did so, in order to prevent spamming by guests or recently banned users).
So you could engage in this form of undeniably creative expression right off the bat. What you couldn’t do was extend the world; that, you had to earn. You couldn’t just rewrite the server. You needed permission to do that. In essence, virtual worlds were born as authored objects; the chat that users engaged in was simply part of the authored environment.
A similar pattern was true in the early computer games. They were clearly authored objects. Even when users could contribute something, it was generally after there was a strong sense of authorship to the work. As we got to user-created content in videogames, we started using terms such as “modding” — from to modify (as opposed to “create”!) or “mapmaking” or “level design.” In pen and paper, where user-contributed content was absolutely fundamental to moment-to-moment play even in the rules, we still speak of “modules” and of “core rules.” And even in the (influential) world of genre fandom, we speak of “fanfic” as being of a different order than the original work. The framework is clearly something authored, and extensions, new creations, and so on, are accretions on that basic framework.
In virtual world terms, the commonest architecture, going back a long ways, has two data repositories. One may be conveniently though perhaps inaccurately termed the static database — it is the state of the designed environment, the source of the template from which the running world is created. The other is the runtime or persistence database, which tracks data expected to change. (Handy diagram and explanation of this here, though really, you should read everything in Chapter Six).
When we speak of UGC or UCC these days, we have many sorts of systems to choose from. We have frameworks which provide a nearly 100% “user created” experience, such as IRC, that we simply don’t think to use that term with. We have systems like Flickr, which are designed as repositories of user creations.We have blogging, and Facebook, and Wikipedia. Yet we do think of say, my posts versus your comments as being from different sorts of “user,” just as Flickr doesn’t let users rewrite the copy on its websites.
And we have virtual worlds, now dating back to around 1988-89, The Playground, and TinyMUD, which do not gate the addition of new framework elements, but instead permit the user to extend the system via the simple expedient of not having a static source database, but instead putting everything in the runtime database.
What is the framework? Well, it’s systemic aspects of the simulation, of course. It could be thought of as content that appears to originate with the server, the system, the authored object, rather than from another user, at least on first blush. It may seem an odd distinction, in these days when the line is so blurred, but another way to think of it is that it is any runtime or static database-sourced element in the environment, as opposed to ephemera.
This line used to be much clearer than it is now, and thus this whole post may seem to be splitting hairs. But it seems to me that the common usage of the term “user created content” is primarily driven by past culture. In mud and then MMORPG culture, the technical architectures and administrative practices have drawn a line based primarily on persistence of the creation and how it is displayed to the user — and I am not entirely sure that a similar bias doesn’t exist for many other applications and systems as well. And thus, we may think of a user’s textual description of themselves in a mud as maybe being user-created content, and certainly of their carefully laid out plot of land in Second Life as being UGC, but not their chat or even their forum posts.
That said, it does close us off from intriguing concepts such as looking at videogame playthroughs as being a form of content or creative expression, or post-facto storytelling as a form of authored narrative.
We also wrestle, these days, with the question of atomicity. There’s an unspoken bias, I think, towards considering highly atomic creation (say, new code, new art, new text) as being somehow “more user created” than less atomic creation (say, rearranging art to lay out your Habbo Hotel room, collaging, attaching existing behaviors to objects, or making a game with Mockingbird. In today’s remix culture, this is an important discussion to be had — after all, as I have observed before,
The number one use of user-created content in virtual spaces is the screenshot. And that is user content creation. It is shared more widely, distributed, commented on, annotated. That’s actually where the action is, things that have a far lower barrier to entry. The interesting areas of user-content creation .are in mashup and remix, like they are everywhere else, screenshot comments, WoW dance videos, dancing itself, stuff like that. That’s where a lot of the action is, because that’s where the barrier is low.
Part of the reason may be that less atomic creation is creativity bounded to some large degree by the parts provided. Put another way, there’s a sameness to everything made with Legos, because the blocks enable a grosser level of creation and also hinder the finer level. As a result, we eagerly pass around stuff that pushes at the boundaries (like say, Tetris clones made in LittleBigPlanet), and we also chunk up and dimiss stuff that is clearly assembled from pieces that we are long familiar with — it’s a similar issue to what we run into with procedural content, basically pattern recognition rendering things boring.
It’s a mistake to consider less atomic creation to somehow be less important or less empowering than more atomic creation. But there is also something to the notion that there is a phase transition of sorts that happens when users are allowed to make highly specific changes to the framework. When users can make Lego blocks, you end up with a very different set of Legos over time.
It may be that what we need, as we think about the boundaries of user created content, is more precise terms. It isn’t hard to think of a systemic hierarchy wherein we speak of services classified into tiers, such as
- user expression permitted (chat!)
- user-assembled content (arrange Legos all you want!)
- user-customized content (paint the blocks! — parametric changes)
- user-created content (make new blocks! Still within the framework)
- user-modifiable framework (add a Lincoln Logs system!)
In fact — it’s quite possible for a system to provide the high end but not the low end, or skip one in the middle. It is also possible to attempt to create an ecology whereby higher tiers are in service to lower tiers.
All of this harkens back to Marc Andreessen’s wonderful essay on types of platform. The word “platform” is also one that has gotten both loosey-goosey (everything is a platform these days) and in some sense, tarred with negativity, because in a stricter sense it sounds technoelitist (“it means something you can program!”). In Marc’s terms, you’d have to be at least at tier 4 to be considered a platform. And he breaks even tier five into three sorts of platforms (access APIs, plugin APIs, and runtime environments).
Of course, there’s a point there at which you start saying “are these folks users anymore?” Perhaps they are in a developer program, for example. Are Facebook apps UGC? If not, why not?
In the end, the thing that seems clear to me is that the lines between user and developer are blurring, and that this may in fact be a historical imperative. Consider a world where the framework was built by hobbyists in the first place, and is open to modification, and is a runtime environment, and allows non-admin users to customize and create Lego blocks… if this happens to be common enterprise software, is it UGC? Because I am describing the LAMP stack — Linux, Apache, Perl/Python, MySQL — that today powers much of the Web.
Marc observes that the power of what he calls Level 3 platforms lies in the new sorts of applications that they enable — uses that you basically did not foresee that are made possible by the lowered costs and decreased complexity. The way the Web works enabled LAMP which enabled blogging, which enabled all sorts of communities, and an awful lot of classic UGC, and an even larger amount of commentary, mashup, and annotation, and overall some rather splendiferous creativity and plenty of unforeseen things. And at every tier there were users, just users of a different layer of the onion. In some sense, I by writing here am both developer and user creating content, and every Russian nested doll can lay claim to participating in UGC.
16 Responses to “The borders of user created content”
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If I follow you right, it seems to me that at the root of the discussion is the fact that the term “User created/generated content” has become far too all-encompassing now that more and more people are becoming technologically literate.
I have to admit that i’m confused with the difference between “created” and “generated”. Is there even a difference? I would be inclined to say that “created” is broader than “generated” and can encompass peripheral stuff as well (screenshots, machinima and such).
Also, since the lines between user and developer are blurring, as you say, it might be time to start looking for a new way to call this weird new thing we clumsily call UCC. Seeing as soon it will be hard to draw the line between users and devs, the “user” word is only relative to the medium in which we are creating. To bring it back to the paper, the word “user” is where most legal issues come from, since it entails notions of . Also, since “content” carries the idea of being “contained” in something, but it seems to me that nowadays, what “contents” really want is to escape their container and be mashed up and remixed pretty much everywhere. Seeing this, “content” seems rather clumsy.
A more suitable term might be found if we build it around the “creative expression” term of the equation, focusing less around the place of the creator in the food chain or on the nature of the production.
Once this conceptual shift is done, it will be easier to realize that, for example, Sony has little to no rights to “own” what LittleBigPlanet players express through their creations.
The executives at “my” company are pushing for user created content within their applications (mostly enterprise software). But, when asked what sort of features they want to see, they are at a loss. They are not sure if forums and sharing articles are enough, but they don’t know where they want to go from there…
They recognize, to some degree, the power of empowering users. Giving the general user to the ability to “take control” of their working environment, but we would maintain control of the workflow. It, for my part, is an interesting problem to be part of. “Less tech-savvy” decision-makers know the future lies with user-created content, but they don’t want to (fully) relinquish the “power” they have over the users (controlling the platform, workflow, and (to a lesser degree) content.
I like how you have broken User Content into tiers. I have never really thought about it in such succinct terms. Most of us know that video games (tend) to pave the way for more traditional software (if only by pushing the technology). I am facinated by the fact that I am now seeing it creaping its way into more traditional software.
I am not sure how these “movements” will affect user in the (near) future, but it makes me wonder if people (as a whole) are meandering towards collective ownership…
@William.McGuire
What you are describing sounds a lot like what I’ve been doing for the last four years. We were building a data warehouse, and rather than build the entire thing statically, we made the entire thing dynamic and driven entirely by end user controls. We coded the interfaces for getting data but they defined the specific sources and where to put the gathered data, we coded a template driven system that allowed them to define how data that was gathered could be further massaged and placed into other tables (they even had a meta data driven table management section where they could define, modify and manage their own tables), and then we gave them a reporting engine. The report engine was in actuality just a way for them to write the SQL to get the data they wanted without ever showing them the SQL. They selected and joined tables, defined the relations through the UI, defined summation rows, and even had fields and check boxes that become the CSS that would drive the layout and look of the outputted report (even a place to go to an Advanced window and directly input CSS if they wanted to override our chosen options). People designated as managers would review the designed reports and if approved would place them in the menu tree defining how the report was accessed and assign security levels defining who could access the report.
It all works beautifully… and because it does we coded ourselves right out of a job. They trimmed the dev team down to a single support programmer and let the rest of us go.
One of the first things that emerged when personal computers began communicating with each other was ASCII art — people using the tools available to them in unanticipated ways as a medium of expression. Consider what people did with dropped objects in UO before the introduction of item decay, creating huge images, or how some of those same people, after item decay, created art from the arrangement of objects on the floor of a house or in a container held by a vendor.
No matter what level of granularity you extend to users, there will be creative souls among your user base that will take it and push it as hard as they can into the next tier. No persistance? They’ll make macros and offline templates to regenerate their art. Limits on customization? They’ll hack “true black” dye tubs to move the limits. And let’s not forget the users who manage to change the core framework of a game or virtual world (for better or worse) by simple expedient of catching the attention of a sympathetic designer.
In terms of the Lego metaphor, there’s always one kid who will smash up his Legos with a rock and use the fragments to make a mosaic.
I don’t think the lines between user and developer are starting to blur; I think they’ve never been as sharp as we pretended. And I think it would be a fine place to end up if the only line between user and paid developer was desire and talent, rather than diplomas, networking skills, and geographic serendipity.
On a side note: City of Heroes’ next big update is the system to allow players to create and publish new missions. As far as I know, this is the most sophisticated example in the MMO space of allowing users to generate playable content for other players. It’ll bear watching.
My point there was that the kid smashing Legos has been having to work with lower tiers. These days, the higher tiers are more and more available.
What bilge.
If your platform supports a decent high level language for objects with defined interfaces and event patterns with scripting for extensibility, user-generated art means user-generated worlds, avatars, materials, sounds and behaviors. What you in this industry won’t accept and can’t accept because your greed won’t let you is the basis in standards required for that. Well, here is the news flash: when Google and Disney shuttered those ‘platforms’ and servers, your customers woke up to the fact of your self-serving greed.
You can write all the words around this you like, but the truth is, a crack is appearing in the Web 2.0 virtual worlds industry that Second Life “pioneered” and Worlds is suing over. Your greed left your flanks exposed and you are now eating your young and each other.
Meanwhile, the furries are coming out at night and eating your eggs. If it is even half-true the Chinese programmers replicated Lively in a month, that is a market shattering event, and anyone who doesn’t get it or understand how it was done, who is still pontificating the meaning of user generated content is too dumb to live through the apocalyse.
Wake up, Raph. The change is at your doorstep.
Whoa, len. Which part of the post is bilge? Standards seems to me to be a whole other topic. Standards exist at developer-only levels, at user levels, at every level. This seems to be a more a response to the Newlively post than this one.
Similarly, your initial “if” (“If your platform supports a decent high level language…”) isn’t even remotely the case in many apps (this post is not about VWs alone!), but it is certainly something that is a growing trend.
I agree that replicating Lively in a month is impressive and important. But Lively was also no great shakes, replicating the basics of it is not hard, and I think it could have been done very quickly in many ways. On Metaplace we replicated the substance of Club Penguin (not the content — analogous to what Newlively has done) in a matter of days. So where does that leave us? That yes, X3D/VRML is a great platform. Nobody said otherwise. Is it upending the industry yet? Not yet. May it? Certainly.
You’re defending X3D/VRML against an attack that has not been made. Nothing in the post is arguing against standards at all. It doesn’t even come up, because it isn’t germane to the topic. Everything I wrote can be done with standards, or without them. And they can be done with or without formal standards as well. (Using the common usage of standard here — “whatever most people use”. Lots of the web is built on informal standards).
I’m not 100% sure I understand all the implications of the argument here, but IMHO, to the extent that UGC replaces professionally designed content, UGC becomes professionally designed content. Just because someone bought a screwdriver doesn’t mean they’re qualified to be an architect. Who gets paid for what is perhaps a more dicey question.
code is just data. most of these so called ‘developers’ are really just content creators working in userland, churning out usermode apps, and rather poorly at that.
In terms of the Lego metaphor, there’s always one kid who will smash up his Legos with a rock and use the fragments to make a mosaic.
Isn’t that what machinima really is? Or pasting ASCII art in chatrooms? A subversion of the fundament to force it into a different medium? If a user-produced piece of Thing doesn’t fit well, at least in spirit, into what it was made for, do we consider it UGC?
Oh chat can definitely be used for creative expression…
My friend Brad and I have been doing made-up-on-the-spot “text adventures” for the last few weeks now, then posting them for others to enjoy. I consider it a form of performance art in chat… and maybe some “on-the-fly collaborative game design” as well, if you want to get fancy about it. 🙂
http://bradshaytextadventure.blogspot.com
Lets remember that “90% of everything is crap” and that ‘professionals’ do not have a monopoly on the remaining 10%. I’ve been somewhat more hopeful in the past year, having seen a number of games offer limited ‘dev tool’ usage to create semi-persistent content.
Its encouraging to see the reigns loosen a bit on the idea of giving players a shovel and a pail :9.
Users treat boundries as damage and route around them. If they can’t do it within the context of the virtual world, they expand the context. What’s a pirate server except a user or group of users that has decided to skip directly to tier 5 of Raph’s hierarchy? And isn’t an armchair designer whispering ideas in a developer’s ear on a message board a less efficient but more acceptable form of the same principle?
I think it’s central to the nature of players/users. We are, by definition almost, the people who aren’t content to sit back and be passively entertained. We want to be active participants. And a large percentage of us don’t want to just listen to the stories or participate in the stories. We want to MAKE the stories.
I think many designers are sympathetic to this, because it’s the exact thing that motivates them. They push at the barriers from above to help empower users, even while the users are pushing at the barriers from below.
And meanwhile, the bean counters and lawyers see Pandora’s box starting to split at the seams…
I’ve always thought very broadly about user created content. Really, it includes everything the user brings that other people can enjoy. That is to say you start making user content for an MMO when you pick your name.
[…] Auch Raph Koster schreibt in seinem Blog einen schönen Artikel über User Generated Content in virtuellen Welten. […]
“Users treat boundries as damage and route around them. If they can’t do it within the context of the virtual world, they expand the context. What’s a pirate server except a user or group of users that has decided to skip directly…”
And that’s the point really. No gets to define what user means, much less what user content means. The web glorifies piracy, calls it by many names, but essentially, it is a boundaryless fire zone of expression and there is nothing except sloth and incompetence that makes a difference.
It isn’t the fixed form nature of copyright that causes it to be inadequate: it is the scaling complexity of the forms (how much work will you do to learn to code), the antiquated points systems for shreddin’ the natch, and the auditability of collections. The adaptive response is to change from unit pricing to services pricing. There is no way to control copying so copy distribution becomes nearly irrelevant or at least, much more sensitive to control costs (how much money will you spend to enforce it and how do enforcement means affect the marketability). Meanwhile, in a related dimension, the same technologies are slowly creating new opportunities for collboration and content generation, but are not necessarily being applied to the control processes themselves. For example, why would one want to submit a cassette or printed sheet music to register a copyright and pay a fee the is exorbitant with respect to volume of submissions? Why would one use a points system based on unit sales to divvy profits?
I give you the newLively example because that IS user-generated content at another level and the game is not to capture the castle, but to capture a market segment. In this case, one left abandoned, but at the same time, an attempt that shows how weak the market actually is with respect to the overlapping topics of IP and user-generated content. Nothing based on secret sauce has much past the first few cycles to recommend it to a venture capitalist. The IP is fast becoming a yawner.
IOW, to the original question, on the web it is ALL user-generated content from one hierarchy to the next level. As you said, “the lines between user and developer are blurring, and that this may in fact be a historical imperative”. It isn’t a historical imperative; it is a technological imperative. DRM followed the culture of the money. Content followed the culture of the technology. Complexity of content type and talent are the wildcards.
But the effects are staggering in what they are doing to the economic business models.