Licensed to Play: Digital Games, Player Modifications, and Authorized Production

Unlike the music and film industries, whose economic models of the flow of cultural goods make it difficult to support consumer participation in the cycle of cultural exchange, the digital games industry evolved in part out of an ethos in which sharing the productive fun is part of the game. This chapter focuses on the intersections between this ethos of sharing and the corporate desire to maximize profit through the management of knowledge and intellectual property. Both game producers and player producers – a division that is difficult to pin down – participate in a range of productive activities that affects how we define game production. The chapter attempts to take a snapshot of this process, with special attention on the forms of knowledge production and regulation that shape the contours of these relations.