User Generated Content Is Not Sweatshop Labor
Mr. Will Wright? Can we have a bathroom break now?
N’Gai Croal, videogame and internet writer for Newsweek magazine, has determined that since Youtube, Spore, Little Big Planet, and Wikipedia are almost completely dependent on user generated content, this makes Web (and Game) 2.0 something like the 21st century equivalent of textile mills or coal mines. Sweatshop labor– really? Hyperbolic much?
N’Gai’s been on the mark before– his “Who’s Being Naive?” column is required reading if you want to begin to understand the complex and weirdly Hollywood relationship between game publishers and journalists– but I can’t help but feel he’s being a bit alarmist in talking about these modern-day online “sweatshops”.
One quick point is that there are real sweatshops still in existence, and the conditions can’t be better than the average Wikipedia editor’s computer den. Those textile mills and coal mines may not be common in America anymore, but in the impoverished nations of the world, a day job creating Youtube clips probably sounds pretty sweet.
But another point N’Gai is missing is that Youtube and Spore don’t solicit their users’ content through economic pressures or necessities. Nobody is born into a poor family of laborers who toil over the perfect level in Little Big Planet.
The key question N’Gai asks is, “is it really entertaining to update a Wikipedia entry?”, and this is a question that he answers incorrectly. His assumption is that it’s not, and therefore people are being used as cheap labor.
But actually, it’s a lot of fun to update a Wikipedia entry. Thousands of volunteer editors wouldn’t do it for free if it wasn’t. And yes, that alone justifies the effort. Tooling around with the Spore creature creator is a blast, and that doesn’t make everyone into some unofficial EA employee.
The really smart game developers are learning to harness the interest people bring to a collaborative project to create something that is equal parts product and popular movement.
There’s a straight line to be drawn through to viral marketing as well– people will distribute their own advertising materials just because it’s seen as fun or cool on its own. This doesn’t turn your average person into a Madison Avenue advertising executive, so spending an evening creating a custom level in Unreal Tournament 3 doesn’t make them into unpaid computer programmers either.
As the tools to make such creations possible become easier to use, and that line between professional and amateur development is blurred, we’re not becoming sweatshop laborers. We’re just becoming smarter consumers.
Source: Newsweek
