Official URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9...

Capitalism’s relentless search for innovation and creativity, or what used to be called novelty, drives a constant search for new ideas, new sources of ideas (not just internal research and development departments but also suppliers, clients, users and others) and for new ways to appropriate these ideas. Academics have attempted to understand these trends with a range of theories focused on the changing user-producer relationship and innovation processes. The chapter cautions against taking an overly optimistic or overly negative approach to such developments. It asks us to consider what is behind the increasing tendency to encourage user productions and what do empirical examination of such productions reveal? Is what we are observing actually co-creation or is it that the professional media industries are finding new ways to encourage player production and to appropriate and extract value from this labour? Finally, are the relationships between professional game producers and game players governed and regulated in the most effective and fair manner to recognize and reward each actor? Online games provide a fertile, but diverse, ground to empirically and conceptually explore the concept of player and community production and innovation.