Community and Commerce

Todays lecture was from John Banks, about the idea of Commerce and Communities, and also Participatory Culture in the New Media Environment.

In simple terms? :> It was about fan created content in online communities, and how companies can then ask to include that content in their updates for the games. The company which John works for, Auran, had some problems with their fan produced content when the game first became available.

These problems were largely because, as John states in the readings, there were some problems between fans who wanted to be able to sell the content they were creating, as an add-on or similar, and those fans who were working "for the good of the game", and making their content available for free. I tend to side with the fans who wanted to make the content for free. This is simply because these fans had not been contracted by Auran to make Trainz content, and also because by reducing that commercial element, it ensures a quality of content, and a purity of sorts, since only people who are truly interested in the game/programme will make content, not just people looking to make money.

We also discussed this issue in our first online chat, which was pretty interesting. We discussed the issue of moderators and self moderation too, but I will discuss that next week, as next weeks lecture is on this subject.

Added links to Auran and Trainz.