The Internet is a mass-democratizing force that has transformed hegemonically-controlled, formerly private industries into participant-reliant, open-sourced communes. As Wired’s sage Chris Anderson sums up, “The Internet democratized publishing, broadcasting, and communications, and the consequence was a massive increase in the range of both the participation and participants in everything digital – the long tail of bits”.
Anderson’s article, “Atoms Are the New Bits” (Feb 2010), anticipates a new industrial revolution that lies just on our doorsteps. Thanks to the increasingly open availability of the tools of mechanical preproduction, says the Wired EIC, the power of entrepreneureal invention lies within suprisingly close grasping distance.
The next industrial revolution starts, of course, on our laptops and in our social networks. Like today’s bedroom game developers, paperback writers and musicians, tomorrow’s great engineering will be done from the creative comforts of our computers. Creating your own action figure, MP3 player, gadget, or even car, is now quite possible for someone with entrepreneureal ambition.
Simply patent a product, design it using a free tool like Google’s SketchUp, crank out a prototype on a $1000 MakerBot 3D printer and then outsource production to a factory in China (or the US, if your purse strings are looser and ethical standards tighter).
Naturally, it’s not as simple as the product being made for you without intense personal effort, fresh ideas and signficant know-how about engineering and design – but the simplicity of creating a professionally competitive product from the comfort of your laptop truly is awe-inspiring.
What the article really represents for me, though, is a rallying call for the laptop creativity that has been possible for years now.
Granted, I’ll never make my own car – I don’t even have a driver’s license yet, for peat’s sake – but I’m more than capable of trying my hand at more artisically diverse areas of amateruism. Being brutally honest, I think the only thing that’s stopped me from designing my own videogame, recording my own album or just plain writing my first novel is a lack of ambition and a surplus of laziness. What’s your excuse?
While free tools like Blender and the aforementioned Google SketchUp enable us to design technological prototypes – if we have sufficient knowledge of the science and art of preproduction – tools for the creation of music, websites or videogames (Audacity, WordPress and Adventure Game Studio, to respectively name a paltry few) offer enough tutorialising to be mastered by a person with only marginal knowledge of the technical eccentricities of each medium.
I suppose the only other factor holding me back – aside from the previously discussed lack of general resolve – is the sense that I won’t be able to accomplish either A) Something beyond amateur quality or B) Something that hasn’t already, in essence, been done before.
It’s this latter point that has my mind at its most brainstormy. Beyond focusing on the democratized nature of new creative tools, “Atoms Are the New Bits” also focuses further on the democracy of the idea process itself. Rather than just restricting the creative process to a single individual – the bedroom developer – the Internet makes it possible to connect with other like-minded inventors – or just interested parties – in order to crowd-source the creation of an artistic product into a collective effort.
Inevitably, point of anxiety “A” (the fear of creating something of merely amater quality) becomes greatly reduced if quality control can be enhanced through democratic evaluation and teamwork.
The independent videogame development community has done this for years – as evidenced in the mod community (Counter-Strike, anyone?) and in various titles produced by virtual studios. By virtual, I refer to bedroom developers that collaborate online from different physical locations, putting together a team-made product without actually sharing an office.
But there are still key differences between many solo bedroom developers, and virtual studios.
Zombie Cow Studios’ Dan Marshall, who put out the brilliant point-and-clicker Time, Gentlemen Please! last year, used the amateur-friendly free software suite Adventure Game Studio to put together his polished gem.
Meanwhile, virtual studios tend to use tools designed more for those with significant know-how about game development. The previously virtual Unknown Worlds could only put together Natural Selection, the critically acclaimed original Half-Life‘s multiplayer mod, with team members formally educated in coding, 3D design, artwork and sound engineering.
I think that there’s a gap here that’s just waiting to be filled. Solo bedroom developers could work with other enthusiasts – or just straight-up fans – to put together crowd-sourced games. Sure, to some extent, this is already being done – case in point, Toronto’s Artsy Games Incubator.
But what about involving an entire community in the creation of a game – and not just those with an interest in games development, however amateur? Why not find more ways to involve consumers in the creation of their gaming products?
Why design a game all by yourself, when you could enlist the help of your friends?
With the incredible network capabilities afforded by social media, this is truly possible today. And your friends don’t even need to care about videogames.
Threadless allows anyone to put their own art on t-shirts, to be sold cheaply on their website, creating a democratic environment for fashion. Joe Average, who never dreamed of making his own t-shirt – nor thought that he wanted to – can now participate in an activity that was previously closed off to him.
Videogames, today’s fastest growing popular medium, are just waiting for such mass-enabling of involvement.
The creative elements of a game could be crowd-sourced in a similiar way. As Threadless (or car company Local Motors, profiled in the Wired piece) has proved, democratic involvement through the Internet is a great way to let potential consumers do your work for you. Cynics might call this opportunistic slavery. I think of it more politically – why wouldn’t game-purchasers want to tell you exactly what they want to get out of a product?
Game developers could ask for character design submissions for a game’s principal avatars. They could crowd-source sound effects, or voice acting, by asking for audio submissions from the community.
Working in the opposite direction, a game’s assets could be shared online – textures, skins, etc – and then a game could be comprised solely of user-created levels.
All that any of this takes is a forum… but a more interactive, user-friendly website that caters to separate game elements could surely be devised too; something that allows for more than just discussion, but active participation in the creative process.
Naturally, some of this is starting to sound a lot like Little Big Planet. But I’m thinking of something alltogether more appealing to the average gaming fan – the one who wants to participate in a few creative parts of game development, but not get their hands dirty. Face it, if you’re a LBP owner, chances are you haven’t actually had the patience to put together a quality level in your own time (perhaps that’s just me). But wouldn’t you love to give your ideas to the person who does?
