Shenja van der Graaf

Modonomics: Participation and Competition in Contention

This paper considers user participation in 3D development practices, known as mod development, in the commercial setting of the 3D software industry. This study is designed to learn more about the increasing importance attributed to user participation in this context with the aim of highlighting interdependencies developing between the firm, users, and technologies directing our attention to the exploration of the boundaries of participation and competition. For this purpose, this study draws on several prominent instances where 3D software developer firms facilitate or invite users to participate in development practices. The results of interviews conducted with employees of Valve Inc. and Linden Lab, and an online survey with their respective user base are used as evidence.

The Imperative of Code: Labor, Regulation and Legitimacy

This chapter analyzes digital platforms that are marked by a transition from a user-based to market-based entity. By focusing on a migration between digital organizations, user labor practices and regulation, we investigate the trajectories of ‘community and monetization’ emerging with the platformization of the Internet, in order to uncover a growing constitutional legitimacy gap in multi-sided business models. We therefore attempt to unravel the delicate balance between regulation and co-regulation of digital platforms. Co-regulation entails taking into account the interests of multiple actors, incorporating different incentives for (user) participation across the ‘value chain’, which are said to increase transparency, pluralism, trust and respect for privacy. Based on legal cases surrounding Facebook, we make a case for a co-regulatory framework.

Imaginaries of Ownership: The Logic of Participation in the Moral Economy of 3D Software Design

This article is designed to learn more about the increasing importance attributed to the logic of user participation and sharing (associated with the neoliberal Web 2.0) within and across institutional and platform boundaries. It aims to yield insight into the boundaries of a digital ethics in this context. For this purpose, the study draws on a prominent instance of 3D/games software culture where interdependencies can be seen to develop between institutions, users, and ICTs directing our attention to the exploration of ‘ownership’, thereby highlighting the boundaries of participation and competition. Drawing out the dynamics of ownership is an useful stratagem to yield insight into the mechanisms of production and cooperation. By interrogating the (organization of) social imaginaries involved as a means to draw out how different actors understand and make sense of these cross-border dynamics, it yields a perspective of ownership vis-à-vis the logic of participation, emphasizing – rather than legal conceptions per se – the make-up of negotiations and renegotiations guided by a distributed morality in software development between and across various institutional and platform boundaries.

Viral Experiences: Do You Trust Your Friends?

This chapter signals the implications of a shift in production and distribution practices of online advertising in an age of computer network-facilitated participation. It explores online entertainment forms such as games and films that are increasingly being used as an integral part of online advertising strategies to promote goods and services to potential consumers. These advertainments as they are often referred to, exemplify the linkage of commercial goals with cultural texts through creating engaging experiences, initiated by commercial corporations for reasons of promotion and profit, enabled by computer networks, and given form by various members of the public.

Commodify! And Beyond

This chapter summarizes the key insights and arguments and draws out the wider implications for the study of the production of complex digital platforms across firm boundaries. The chapter also offers an outlook on what to focus on next by concentrating on the issue of public value. Particular attention is given to the role and responsibilities of the government and those of platform providers.

Second Life Between Participation and Competition

This chapter relates the findings of previous chapters to dialectics of community and commerce. It offers a reflection on opportunities for user participation created through labour of platform design across firm boundaries and the tensions associated with commercialization and community dynamics. This points to a more collaborative set-up that is at the same time a more competitive one. The relationship between the organization of within-firm resources and external resources suggests the likelihood for multiple centres of development-related activity, competition and compensation to occur, where the developer firm and mod developers, throughout the course of development life, rub shoulders in different formations. This highlights the significance of platform boundaries rather than firm boundaries.

Participation and Platformization at Play

This chapter provides the theoretical and conceptual foundations of this book. Theories focusing on user participation, user-driven innovation and communities of practice are discussed and applied to modification practices in the setting of commercial digital innovation platforms. The roles of users in knowledge production and development practices using firm-provided toolkits are illuminated, as they aid product and platform development efforts across firm boundaries.

Of Toolkits, Engines and Interfaces

This chapter presents the empirical findings with respect to the design space. The design space is the area for user participation in mod development practices. The analysis examines the characteristics of the Second Life platform yielding insight into the functionalities of the design space associated with the firm-provided toolkit that enables and facilitates user participation.

Learning and the Imperative of Production in Mod Development

This chapter presents an empirical analysis of knowledge contributions made by users and employees of Linden Lab. The analysis yields insight into user participation on the firm-hosted platform by linking the design capabilities and design space to various communication practices. The findings demonstrate that Second Life is a site where various contributions by both users and the developer firm generate ideas about discovering, developing and refining creative practices associated with firm learning that contribute to ongoing platform development. The analysis highlights roles of mentorship and mastery of various communication systems as important ways to embed newcomers in the firm’s cross-border labour processes and also to assist in career advancement opportunities.

Designing for Mod Development

The introduction identifies and describes the key issues, topics and challenges of the ‘participatory turn’ associated with the claimed democratization of the Internet. It assesses online interactions, work or play, for profit or not, that are largely happening on corporate platforms. Several key concepts and models, such as ‘convergence culture’ and ‘culture of connectivity’, are applied to capture the dynamics and logic of user participation on such platforms, uncovering common assumptions rooted in implied conjectures about technology and creativity, producers and users, commerce and community. The main goal is to raise critical awareness about claims made and mechanisms at work. The chapter sets the stage for discussing user participation in the games/3D-software industry and implications with regard to the transformative potential of mod communities.