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Information, Communication & Society 6:4 2003 593–607
FROM PONG TO PLANET QUAKE:
POST-INDUSTRIAL TRANSITIONS
FROM LEISURE TO WORK
Hector Postigo
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Abstract
In the closing weeks of 2002, video games were featured in various popular
American news publications and media outlets such as Wired,Entertainment
Weekly,Newsweek and Time Magazine. It is becoming increasingly apparent that
video games are no longer child’s play, but rather that they are poised to become
a major entertainment form for the twenty-first century. Social analysts and
media scholars must begin to formulate an understanding of this emerging
mass-consumer phenomenon because it will increasingly impact social and
economic structures of post-industrial societies. Part of the tremendous value
generated by the American video-game industry is tied into broad global eco-
nomic shifts that have created a space where services and ephemeral products,
such as software, can be created and cheaply distributed. The predominance
of ‘high-tech’ production, the rise of the Internet, and the cultural capital
associated with computerization all have contributed to the rise of hobbyist
software developers that currently tinker with commercial video games and
freely add to them increasing levels of sophistication. This paper sees video-
game programmer hobbyists as a source of some of the significant value that
the video-game industry generates, and understands the role of the programmer
hobbyists through the lens of theories on post-industrial work. My analysis
situates the work of hobbyists on the Internet within the context of post-
Fordism and explores some of the motivations for this unwaged work. In the
sections that follow, I will analyse the potential value of the work hobbyist do
as well as analyse its transition to paid work as some commercial software
developers experiment with incorporating these fan bases into the game design
process.
Keywords
Unwaged work, mods, modders, modifications, hackers
INTRODUCTION
In 1962, Steve Russell, then a graduate student at MIT, designed the first video
game in history. Consisting of about fifty lines of code, Space War, as the game
Information, Communication & Society
ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/1369118032000163277
HECTOR POSTIGO
was called, spread quickly from mainframe to mainframe until it routinely
began occupying computer science graduate students’spare time. Russell and
his colleagues never thought that video games like the one they had designed
would amount to much in the commercial market (Herz 1997). Yet, almost
forty years later, video game sales revenues total over $6 billion a year. Video
games are big business, and their target market has expanded to include more
than the stereotypical teenaged boy made famous in films such as War Games.
In 2000, 42 per cent of all computer gamers were between the ages of 18 and
35 years, and 32 per cent were over the age of 35. Further, 43 per cent of
these videogame players were women with an average age of 29 years (Interac-
tive Digital Software Association 2001).
1
Not only has the economic potential of video games increased, but so too
has the complexity of the games themselves. The tens of lines of programming
code of the first video games have evolved so that, today, games are played on
desktop computers and on dedicated consoles in homes, and are written by
teams of skilled designers and programmers generating millions of lines of
code. However, despite the complexity of the contemporary video game, there
are a growing number of software programmer hobbyists gathering on the
Internet re-designing and tinkering with the code of their favourite commercial
video games.
This paper sees these video-game programmer hobbyists as one significant
source of some of the significant value that the video game industry generates
and it understands the role of the programmer hobbyists through the lens of
theories on post-industrial work. In the sections that follow, I shall situate the
work of hobbyists on the Internet within the context of post-Fordism and
within what Tiziana Terranova, citing Autonomist Marxists, calls the ‘Social
Factory’: a set of social practices undertaken by Internet communities that are
commodified and sold as content on the Internet (Terranova 2000: 33). I will
explore some of the motivations for this unwaged work done by hobbyist game
developers and analyse the potential value of the work hobbyists do. Finally, I
shall analyse the transition from unpaid to paid work, which is apparent as
some commercial software developers experiment with incorporating fan com-
munities into the game design process.
BACKGROUND
Video games today range in type and target audience and are designed not
only for the personal computer (PC) but also for dedicated consoles such as
Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s GameCube. This analysis
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concerns itself with PC video games and PC gaming, primarily because hobbyist
game development is most prevalent for PC games. Modifications to elements
of console games are generally geared toward the hardware and are not directly
supported by the commercial developers of the games. By contrast, many PC
games have a significant fan base that continually makes modifications to the
games, and such actions are supported by commercial developers. Before
continuing, however, it is useful to offer a taxonomy of video games and
acquaint ourselves with the language of gaming. From there we will move on
to discussing video-game hobbyists in the context of the post-industrial society
and as a new type of labour force in the economy.
There are many genres of PC games, some of which include ‘Action Adven-
ture’,‘Driving or Simulation’,‘Strategy’and ‘Role Playing’(RPG).
2
Within
these major genres are various sub-genres. For example, a subset of the ‘Action
Adventure’genre is the ‘First Person Shooter’, and subsets of the ‘Strategy’
genre include ‘Real Time Strategy’(RTS) and ‘Turn-Based Strategy’. The goals
and designs of each game can vary considerably from genre to genre. ‘First
Person Shooter’designs are immersive and allow the player to experience the
virtual environment from the perspective of the lead character whilst RTS
games generally give the player a third-person point of view of the virtual
environment on a larger scale. Commonly, the goal of a First Person Shooter
game is to complete some short-length tasks while navigating through the
environment. Conversely, RTS games tend to be more open-ended and give
the player more time to fulfil a given task.
One characteristic of an increasing number of PC games is the possibility of
network play. Ever since the early days of PC gaming, there have been games
that take advantage of the connectivity of computer networks yet only with the
emergence of the World Wide Web has network-based play become a standard
(Herz 1997). Gamers response to early networked games has driven industry
development as interconnected gamers have recognized that playing against
other humans is much more interesting then playing against artificial
intelligence.
Along with the rise of networked play there has been a proliferation of fan
groups dedicated to various games. The PC-game industry has wisely tapped
these emerging fan bases and fostered them by hosting fan websites and provid-
ing server space where networked gaming can take place. Fans contribute large
amounts of content for these sites making them valuable resources for gamers,
which serve as, amongst other things, a ready-made ‘tech-support’group for
other gamers. Such additional resources add considerably to the value to the
developer’s game. In such a context, the video game industry can be thought of
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as consisting not only of manufacturers, distributors and professional designers/
programmers but also of the extensive fan-based support network, despite the
fact that such networks are freely available and not part of any corporation’s
ledger.
3
Hobbyist groups that develop modifications to commercial games are part
of this support network and are generally known on the Internet as ‘modders’,
and whose modifications are called ‘mods’. There are hundreds of mod groups
on the Internet producing thousands of mods for the scores of PC game titles.
4
Mods can range from relatively simple rearrangements of the physics of a
given virtual environment to total conversions. Total conversions are the most
ambitious of mods because they attempt to convert the gameplay of a given
game totally. Thus, for example, while the commercial designers of a game
might make it a ‘First Person Shooter’set in modern-day military environments,
a total conversion might re-design it to be a sword-fighting game set in feudal
Japan.
5
Modders not only produce changes to the games but also post tutorials and
how-to guides to encourage the novice hobbyist to contribute and learn the
techniques of modding. Modders often make their mods available for free
download on their websites and, while no revenue is directly generated for
such transactions for the developers of a particular modded game, the mod
contributes to keep games interesting by adding new dimensions to them. As
such, these mods can play a role in the extending the sales of the original game
or developing a devoted fan base. As one looks over the immense amount of
work that generating this content entails, one cannot help but wonder in what
other ways all of this skilled labour might be contributing to the value of the
games being modded, what motivates individuals to contribute to mods, and
what broad social forces position the work of these hobbyists for indirect or
direct exploitation.
OF MODS AND MODDERS IN THE
POST-INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY
In an attempt to answer these questions, I shall situate the work of modders
within the context of the post-industrial economy using a framework offered
by Tiziana Terranova (2000). It is my intention to show that modders are part
of Terranova’s‘social factory’, whilst at the same time demonstrating a transi-
tion from the social factory to paid workers. As part of the social factory,
hobbyists generate free goods in the partial context of leisure activities. Refer-
ring to these products of unwaged cultural labour she argues that:
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Simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited, free labour on the
Net includes the activity of building web sites, modifying software packages, reading and
participating in mailing lists and building virtual spaces.
(Terranova 2000: 1)
Unwaged labour on the Internet has been identified as an extension of an
ongoing project of cultural appropriation and commodification by Terranova as
she explores the manner in which ‘work processes have shifted from the factory
to society’. (Terranova 2000: 33). She argues that the work of content produ-
cers, volunteers, website designers and posters and all others who add content
to the World Wide Web make up a network of labour comprised of a flexible,
collective intelligence. This collective is the self-organized, principle productive
force of the digital economy, producing many services and intellectual goods
on the Internet.
Subsequently, as hobbyists’leisure work is converted from gift to commod-
ity, what results is the circumvention of the initial investment risk for the
commercial developers as the development work is transferred to the fan base
where costs are negligible. Paradoxically, the hobbyist status of game modders
works against them as it situates their work outside of the programming profes-
sion, since commercial video-game companies are able to circumvent initial
investments and maintenance costs for hired programmers and can simply
choose from the most successful of the already-developed mods. Commercial
developers only purposefully incur risk when hobbyist-developed games have
already proven themselves popular in the market of free software exchange. At
this point, commercial developers may choose from the many hobbyist groups
tinkering with commercially owned software and strike a deal to ‘clean up the
code’and ‘shrink wrap’the modified software, selling it as a new product or
as an addition to the original piece of software.
6
Ultimately, this process manages
to harness a skilled labour force for little or no initial cost and represents an
emerging form of labour exploitation on the Internet.
The social and economic changes that have occurred since the early 1970s
are important for understanding modders as an emerging form of video-game
design, because these economic and social shifts generate the context in which
social activities such as forming and supporting community, volunteering and
pursuing hobbies can be harnessed as a source of revenue.
Daniel Bell (1973), Manuel Castells (2000, 2001) and David Harvey (1990),
for example, have generally agreed that the immergence of flexible economies.
In these new economies responsive production and consumption practices are
no longer driven by large investments in fixed capital or mass consumption of
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‘invariant consumer goods’but by rapid-response production systems and the
commodification of rapidly changing products and services. Under this vision
of the economy, businesses employ their flexibility to stay ahead of their com-
petition and consumption is related to the rapid turnover of goods. Goods such
as software, computers and other technologies, whose production is driven by
rapid and continuous innovation and short market-life, have become staples of
new consumption as production patterns have shifted toward the knowledge
goods and services.
7
Flexibility, while making producers more competitive has
created great instability in work. Today, workers compete for jobs on a global
scale, and the jobs themselves have an ephemeral nature, rendering them
mobile, sporadic and temporary.
8
As Harvey points out, consumption patterns have changed and these changes
have been driven primarily by the cultural forces of the ‘fleeting qualities of
the postmodernist aesthetic that celebrates difference, ephemerality, spectacle,
fashion and the commodification of cultural forms’(Harvey 1990: 156). It is
the commodification of cultural forms and social practices and the subtle ways
in which their value is harnessed that are of concern here. Terranova (2000)
tries to understand the manner in which hidden labour produces these
commodities and to explain the complex relationship between cultural forms
and the technologies and methods of post-industrialism. (In this case modders
developing games as a hobby and having their work appropriated within the
social factory.) Given that information products and services are of such value
to the new regime of accumulation, certain kinds of content production on the
Internet are quite valuable to businesses. Businesses exploit this value on the
Internet, indirectly or directly shaping their practices and their products to
facilitate the kind of content production they find valuable. Video-game
hobbyists are uniquely positioned to have their work incorporated into the
commercial production endeavours because close ties already exist between
fans and companies developing games. As stated earlier, most of the commercial
video-game developers maintain and encourage modding and other forms of
fan support. Therefore, they have access to the work that is continuously being
carried out on various games as well as a sense of the potential value of some
of the most popular mods.
Motivations
The motives for unwaged work on the Internet are rooted in the impressive
cultural position that information technology has gained during the turn to
post-Fordism. During the 1990s, the over-heated US economy sank billions of
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dollars into dot.com-related ventures, many of which proved unsustainable or
have yet to show profits that warrant the investment. Simultaneously ‘get rich
on IT and the Internet’stories littered the mass media supporting a frenzy in
the American mind for appropriating the computer and the Internet as the new
symbol of economic, social and employment inclusion. It should not surprise
us, then, that computing and the Internet bring with them a range of expecta-
tions rooted in the economics of late capitalism and a myriad other social
factors. Early ‘Netizens’, for example, brought with them the values of the
1960s counter-culture infused with an anarcho-liberterian ideology. The Inter-
net became a means of creating community to people like Howard Rhinegold
of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link; Rhinegold 1998). To hackers, the
Internet became a place to solidify the identity they had started shaping while
working on computers as hobbyists before the rise of the Net. Exposed to large
groups of other hackers, they now found a place to show off their skills and
collaborate on more ambitious projects. In MUDs (Multi-user Domains) people
found ways of bending their real-world identities. Through collaborative and
GPL (General Public License) software such as Linux and modifications of
commercial software, people created hobbyist circles that helped further their
careers and develop their social lives.
9
One of the major themes present in many accounts of groups engaging in
the production of free goods and services on the Internet is the sense of
community they derive from the experience. The Internet has supported the
transformative proliferation of electronic communities: Listservs, forums, chat
rooms and MUDs have all contributed to an ever-increasing number of virtual
places where people can come together online and discuss the issues that
concern them. These spaces are valuable to the people who frequent them,
and various researchers have speculated as to why this is so. Online communities
provide excellent opportunities to negotiate identity because they provide a
group of people against whom the individual may try out his or her invented
personae. Studying individuals frequenting MUDs, Sherry Turkle believes that
‘in postmodern times . . . people experience identity as a set of roles that can
be mixed and matched, whose diverse demands need to be negotiated.’(Turkle
1995: 180). Rhinegold (1998), however, highlights the importance of group
identity in online communities and describes the WELL community whose
value stems from the support network that exists among the participants. For
example, he describes an instance when the community pooled its resources
to help a member in need of medical treatment in Nepal. In such a case, the
value of community does not lie in its potential for being an identity sounding
board but rather in its ability to function as a support network.
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HECTOR POSTIGO
Another theme that runs through accounts of why individuals engage in the
production of free goods and services on the Internet is the idea of a ‘Gift
Economy’. In the field of Internet research, economists Richard Barbrook and
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh have analysed the phenomenon. Barbrook sees the free
contribution of content and services to the Internet as a ‘really existing’form
of anarcho-communism, which, in part, transcends money exchange and seems
simultaneously altruistic and motivated by self interest. Individuals contribute
their services and wares knowing that they will be able to reap many times
over the amount they contribute to the collective (Barbrook 1998). In such an
economy the possibilities to generate revenue from intellectual property are
quite grim as ‘free’is the operative word in the gift economy. For the most
part, however, modders do not seem to mind that the product of their intellec-
tual property is given away. In the message boards for mod groups, those rare
individuals who try to exert some intellectual property control over their mods
are admonished for ‘missing the point’. Ghosh furthers Barbrook’s analysis by
likening this economy to a cooking pot to which a community collectively
contributes. He argues that, because the Internet brings together vastly distrib-
uted resources and nullifies production costs beyond the first copy of software
or information, the potential return for a single contribution is extensive
(Ghosh 1998a).
Joseph Sullivan’s (1999) explanation of why people embrace computerization
at home and in the work place is also useful in understanding some of the
motivating factors that bring modders onto the Internet and encourage them
to participate in the productive endeavours. Sullivan’s concept of ‘computer
capital’illustrates how people see the computer and the language of a computer
culture as a mark of distinction with which to ensure their viability on the job
and in the social structure. This analysis is confirmed by Sullivan’s empirical
studies on workplace computerization and by my own research on modders.
Some modders engage in modding to gain recognition for their work from
commercial development houses or to see if they will be able to work in the
computer industry. One modder interviewed for this study noted: ‘Ihave
always thought about a job in the gaming realm. And I knew of no better way
to see if it was for me than to try and create my own mini game’(TonToE
10
2002). The status gained by participating in a successful mod can ensure incor-
poration into the commercial software development community.
Drawing on Thomas’s idea of ‘ownership’(Thomas 1994) allows me to
broaden the understanding of why people engage in unwaged labour on the
Internet and develop the issues raised above. For the workers interviewed in
Thomas’s exploration of technological change in the work place, one of the
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most important aspects of accepting a technology and feeling good about the
production process was the idea that the worker felt a sense of ownership of
the process. For Thomas, this sense of ownership was often fostered by the
active involvement of workers in technological choice and work-process design.
Building on Thomas’s concepts of ownership of alienating labour, I want to
suggest that the unwaged work on the Internet is an attempt to transcend
alienation.
Ownership of the productive process, even when this process is not physical,
is what makes the workers in Thomas’s study non-alienated from their work,
and I believe it is the same process that compels modders to work hard for and
identify with their labour. This is evident in the level of research and planning
that some modders put into their mods. Throughout April 2002, I monitored
the development discussion board for the ‘Britain’s Finest’mod for Medal of
Honor: Allied Assault, a top-selling ‘Third Person Shooter’from Electronic Arts.
During the early phase of this mod’s development, modders took great care in
establishing historical accuracy, going so far as to assign one of the developers
the task of being team historian. Minute details such as gunfire sounds and
weapons specifications were discussed at great lengths during development. A
player without a knowledge of military history and technology would not notice
the level of detail present in the mod, but it was this care for development that
instilled in the modders a sense of ownership and pride in their work. Like
many other modder communities, this network of dedicated modders consisted
mostly of teenagers living across large geographical spans and also, like many
mods, ‘Britain’s Finest’did not see completion.
11
The discourse coming from hackers such as Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond
stresses the artisanal relationship that programmer hobbyists hold with their
work (Raymond 1999; Ghosh 1998b). Modders, for their part, often explain
that coding gives them a sense of satisfaction and pleasure in creating good
software. In the interview, one modder noted: ‘Why do I do it? . .. I guess the
simple answer is for the passion I have for doing it’(TonToE 2002). Given that
many modders and hackers work on their projects at home away from their
‘day jobs’, it appears that many are drawn to the fun and non-alienating aspects
of production on the Internet. With the reward mechanisms of community
and credit in place, the Internet becomes the perfect place for hobbyists to
produce and share their work with a wider audience.
Estimating value
Through comparisons of commercial video games and total conversion mods,
some interesting parallels can be found as well as points of contrast between
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Ta b l e 1 Comparison of time and cost expenditures between professional and
modder development.
Professional Modders
Time to completion 2–4 years 6 months to 2 years
Total expenses, not including $2–5 million None to about $10,000 if
distribution equipment included
Labour costs-salaries $1–2 million None
the development of mods and full games. Through such analysis, it is possible
to illustrate the value added to the commercial software by the work of the fan
modders. My estimates are summarized in table 1.
12
From a labour theory standpoint, it seems that modders add a considerable
amount of value to commercial games. They contribute in the region of six to
twenty-four months of additional time, developing additions to the original
code that can range from thousands to millions of lines of code, and earn no
salary for their work. Comparing salaries paid to commercial developers with
the lack of financial compensation that modders get it is possible to get a good
sense of how much value modders are actually adding to the game (table 2).
13
It appears that modders working on a mod for one year produce labour worth
about 10 per cent of a game’s total development budget –about $520,000 a
year. Whilst these figures are general estimates and there tend to be variations
in production budgets and times to release, the comparisons illustrate the value
in terms of unpaid labour that is being expended on mods.
But does this added, valuable labour translate into profits for the companies?
This is a hard question to answer directly because the sales figures for various
video games depend on more factors then simply the interest expressed by fan
developers. Further, the question of whether fan interest is an outcome of good
Ta b l e 2 Comparison of salaries between professionals and modders.
Professional Modders
Lead programmer $80,000 None
Programmer $52,000î5 programmersóNone
$260,000
Designer $45,000î4 designersóNone
$180,000
Total expense for a year $520,000 None
% of design budget for project 10%
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game design or an outcome of potential expansion by the mod community still
remains unanswered. However, some of the behaviour of commercial devel-
opers suggests that companies do perceive some value in modding. For example,
the majority of companies producing within the ‘Action Adventure’genre
include some form of level editing with their game release, or they release the
source code and scenario development kits for their games over the Internet,
thus actively encouraging fans to develop scenarios for their games. Also,
companies such as Valve Software have commercialized some total conversions
of their popular title Half-life, showing that they are successfully commercializ-
ing developments produced by their fan communities. In a market where
production costs are high and returns, on the average, are low, part of the risk
factor associated with the business can be avoided if a freely developed game
proves itself prior to commercial distribution. This model of development is
far from perfect because it does not extract all the value potential of the freely
developed game as some form of the commercialized mod always remains
freely downloadable on the Internet. Yet the attempt by companies such as
Valve Software to recognize the value of this mode of production shows that
companies are starting to exploit a potentially important development model.
Transition to paid development
The relationship between modders and commercial developers has a history
that reaches back into the early 1980s and the development of a mod for
the Apple game, Castle Wolfenstein. In the mod to Wolfenstien –called Castle
Smurfenstein –modders redesigned elements of this game away from its World
War II context and instead included elements from the then-popular Saturday
morning cartoon, The Smurfs. The relationship between modders and commer-
cial developers solidified in the development of ‘Wolfenstein 3D’and Doom
both from id Software. Wolfenstein developers at id noticed that mods were
actually extending the life of the game, and therefore, they released the source
code for their popular game Doom. This gave modders unparalleled access to
the game’s innards and allowed id to tap into a collective development power
akin to the open source movement, yet still maintaining intellectual rights over
the code (Au 2002).
One interesting development of the increasing interaction of commercial
developers and modders has been the emergence of development kits. That is,
as some modders began to have access to more elements of a game, other
modders developed programs to help in the manipulation of game code. Mod-
ders working on Doom, for example, used the modder-developed tool-kit
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‘Worldcraft’. Ultimately, commercial developers began to release development
kits with their game releases, and incorporate level editors into commercial
game releases. The use of these modder-developed development kits has also
moved upstream. According to Au (2002), the relationship between modders
and Valve Software was particularly strong, to the extent that Valve used of a
version of ‘Worldcraft’to design its immensely successful Half-life.
Valve continues this relationship with the development of its broadband
distribution network, Steam, which will allows modders to distribute their
games over the Internet for little or no unit cost. To gain access to this
service, all modders have to do is pay a license agreement and royalties for the
development engine. This is a step beyond incorporating the work of the best
modders into a commercial release as the royalty and license fee can generate
direct revenue for Valve from its modder communities. What is interesting
about this new technological set-up is that it concretizes the hobbyist position
between professional programmer and amateur. Valve benefits in that it captures
value in not having to pay amateurs for their work whilst able to gain revenues
from the royalties of successful games.
CONCLUSION
Reviewing the popular press during the last weeks of 2002, it seems that video
games are poised to capture increasing amounts of the popular consciousness.
The 25 November issue of Newsweek had the Sims Nuclear Family on its cover;
Entertainment Weekly had Lara Croft in a star-spangled top hat assuming the
classic Uncle Sam ‘I Want You!’pose; and Wired had Jason Kidd, of the
professional basketball team the New Jersey Nets, gesturing (with a ‘Can you
believe your eyes?’look on his face) at an Electronic Arts representation of his
digital self.
The study of video games is particularly important now because they are
quickly emerging as a dominant form of entertainment, rivalling television or
commercial movies in scope and economic potential. That the work being done
by hobbyists is of economic value can hardly be debated since spokespersons
for the companies themselves acknowledge that the work of hobbyists some-
times helps promote the life of games. Some may argue that hobbyists are not
really being exploited, since some are being hired by publishers outright, or
selling their mods to developers and those that are not are gaining some form
of reputation in the gift economy of the Internet. In that sense it would be
narrow-sighted for this study to suggest that money can be the only form of
compensation for the work that hobbyists do. While it is true that hobbyists
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may receive more than just money for their work, when compared with the
billions of dollars that video-game companies reap, it would seem that they
should gain more than a good reputation for their ‘keen’code.
The utilization of hobbyist-produced software on the Internet by commercial
developers is not something that has come about ex nihilo, but rather is a
consequence of very concrete changes in the global economy. Questions remain
concerning the nature of unwaged work on the Internet. Will this passionate
labour become more prevalent as video games become a more pervasive feature
of US society? Already, thousands of individuals pay a monthly service fee for
the privilege of joining massive multi-player online games like Everquest,Ultima
and The Sims Online and devote hours of their free time to build up the virtual
environments they live in. Could we not argue that their leisure is being turned
into a commodity? The irony of the situation is that they pay for participation
and that they do not share in the profits. Perhaps it is not only that regimes
of accumulation and consumption have changed to make hobby and leisure
commodifiable, but that they have always held value for human beings; they
have always been market alienable. Rather, perhaps information communication
technologies have allowed hobby and leisure to become commodities that are
massively produced and consumed, a process by which cultural forms are created
by the masses for the masses. All the while, businesses exact a toll for owning,
not the means of production (for they do not own the groups that make
culture), but rather the means of consumption: the bandwidth and server space.
It is possible to conceive of a dystopia in which some day all of us will pay a
fee for the privilege of being social. Thousands of Netizens already do it.
Hector Postigo
Department of Science and Technology Studies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th St
Troy, NY 12180
USA
E-mail: postih@rpi.edu
NOTES
1. Editorial note: these figures refer to USA gamers only.
2. These categories are generated from a review of the most popular gaming sites on the Web,
which include www.gamespot.com and www.gamespy.com, as well as from review categories
generated by major retailers such as Electronics Boutique, Circuit City and Best Buy.
3. Interestingly, this is not the only industry that seems to have benefited from the work of
hobbyist and enthusiasts. For an analysis of the role of hobbyist in the success of early
personal computing see Ceruzzi (1999); and for a similar analysis of the Japanese electronics
industry see Takahashi (2000).
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4. For an idea of the vast number of mods see, for example, http://www.q3center.com/, just
one of the many sites for Quake 3, which contains hundreds of mods for that game.
5. This is exactly what the Nihon mod of Red Storm Entertainment’sRogue Spear does.
6. Here I do not mean to imply that the commercial developers cheat the hobbyist out of fair
pay. What is clear, however, is that the initial risk that is usually incurred by developers is
avoided because developers never had to invest capital on a uncertain project. The success
of the hobbyist-modified software on the Internet serves as a type of market test for the
packaged product. Some companies rely on this success as an indicator of the packaged
software’s future commercial success.
7. It is worth noting that it is not the it is not only the change in the mode of production that
has allowed the emergence of the work of hobbyists as valuable on a mass scale but also the
emergence of information work as the most valuable form of work in post-industrial
economies (see Castells 2000, 2001; Bell 1973).
8. For development of this theme see Aronowitz and DiFazion (1994), especially chapter 1
and the introduction.
9. For a review of the above topics see: Reid (1991); Himanen (2001); Raymond (1999); and
Turkle (1995).
10. TonToE is the author of the Outlaw Mod for Half-life.
11. The progress of the ‘Britain’s Finest’mod was monitored during the month of April 2002.
Subsequently, that mod is no longer being developed. Some information on goals and
progress can still be found at: http://www.planetmedalof honor.com/features/interviews/
iv_britainsfinest.shtml (last viewed in July 2003).
12. Numbers derived from: Ahearn (2002); Scott (2001).
13. Figures taken from: Ahearn (2002); and from http://www.salary.com/salary/
layoutscripts/sall_display.asp.
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