Innovation and Creativity among Gaming Culture

The lines by Paul Weller captured a moment in time in the late 70’s but interestingly they also reveal something of the dynamics of 21 century mod scene. And today, I’m not talking about kids wearing smart suits and riding fancy scooters but gamer-made modifications of computer games that are celebrated as a new medium for artistic innovation and simultaneously successfully used as a marketing strategy for new retail titles. The ways modding phenomenon links together media production and consumption clearly go beyond the simple oppositions of cooptation and resistance. In a larger scale a growing number of literature has lately identified the need for a closer integration of studies of media production and consumption. In obtaining a profound picture of the meanings attached to artefacts and media texts neither processes of production nor forms of consumption should be privileged. (du Gay et. al. 1997, Deacon 2003) In case of contemporary digital media defined as “interactive” and “multilinear”, all this sounds somewhat obvious. Take virtual worlds or mobile communication, active users and user communities constantly construct new ways of interpreting, using and manipulating the media environment. In context of computer games the involvement of the player becomes a fundamental feature: the result of the game is not determined beforehand but it is highly dependent on the skills and creativity of the player.