Play, Create, Share? Console Gaming, Player Production and Agency

Digital games have been frequently used to illustrate the new organisational frameworks that are based on persuading users to carry out tasks and assignments not traditionally associated with them. However coined, ‘user-innovation’ (von Hippel, 2005), ‘crowdsourcing’ (Howe, 2008) or ‘pro-am revolution’ (Leadbeater and Miller, 2004), contemporary examples of this phenomena always include digital games. A closer look at the recent open innovation manifestos reveals that the oft-cited examples come almost entirely from PC games while console games remain mostly non-existent in these texts. It is clear that PC and console games differ both in use and in the cultures they create (Taylor, 2007). Equally, the technological and economic backgrounds of the market sectors have their differences (Kerr, 2006).The concept of LittleBigPlanet, a console game inherently dependent on player production, challenges the neat binary of some much cited arguments about tethered appliances. The first set of research questions rises from this observation. What are the technical and economic constraints and affordances the console as a platform uses to position the productive activities of players? How do these differ from the forms of player production typical of PC gaming (see Sotamaa, 2007a; and Sotamaa, 2007b)?