The development of digital games is influenced by the general development of media culture.
In social media the role of the user has quickly become part of content development, whereas in games the possibilities are still limited. Still, only a small minority of gamers actively creates content for games. The majority of players choose the role of consumer when activity is more strongly focused on fulfilling the experience, for example by drawing caricatures or writing re-views and comments. In this article I suggested that the Little Big Planet and XNA development environments anticipate the strengthening of collective creativity and multifaceted creativity as part of the game development process. Then user-generated content is not only out-of-games type content like fan creations or reviews. At the core of the player-creator role is the shift of creativity from individual performance to collaborative or group activity, from demo develop-ment and modding to collective expansion of the game world. Game culture is developing so-cially, technically and economically into an interactive experience environment where constant networking and incompleteness is accepted as part of the culture. Through the evolution of social online media, more ways and levels to participate have been offered. Over a longer period of time development will be normalized in game development, and participatory culture and content reviewing, creation and modifying will become part of the mainstream game culture.
I identified intrinsic, extrinsic and social motivational factors in game development following the differentiation done by Reichwald & Piller (2006). Both case studies strongly brought out the role of peer groups, social evaluation and gaining recognition within the community. Ad-ditionally, strengthening online identity and self-branding as a producer, pride in authorship, and altruism motivated players to take part in modifying and commenting on game content.
Value generation was linked to motivational factors and ways of increasing competence. In addition to technical knowhow, linguistic, social and tactical creativity were also at the core of the experience.
Creativity combines three processes: future foresight work of game development and the trend of collective design, value generation by collective consumer communities, and information technologies and tools which support this development (Thrift 2006). In digital game culture the value of collective creativity is not based on existing products but rather on methods, tools and alternatives the players can use to generate value (Ahonen et. al 2007).
Shared ownership is also part of the change within a broader cultural context. Terms such as Prosumer (Toffler 1970), ProAm (Leadbeater 2004, Keen 2008) and users as innovators (von Hippel 2005) highlight the change of multiple roles of a player from consumer to participant.
Perfomativity and the social and collective or participatory culture of digital games is most effective in advancing the change. Open and agile development has become a norm in game development process. A game can be under development constantly, or forever. Game culture and the experience are thus generated by social composition and game events, as well as by cultural creativity affiliated with a game happening in the game or in discussion forums or online communities. Interactive architecture of games, involvement of the gamers and possibilities for collective creativity radically change games and the cultural experience of playing. Changes highlight value generated from participatory design and game development. The game industry has a history of players who are active in participatory design and development processes. Now, user driven creativity, co-operative action within an anonymous developers’ community, social participation and intertextual influences are bringing them into the mainstream.
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