Emergent authorship: the next interactive revolution

Abstract

Since the invention of the Gutenberg Press, the infrastructure of content creation has been built on an industrial model, which has culminated in the current broadcast media narrative hegemony. This model of ‘‘mass media’’ is based on the notion that there is a centralized producer who distributes a large quantity of identical content ‘‘products’’ to a large, mass audience. This structure is built in a foundation of two fundamental principles: ‘‘authorship’’ and ‘‘ownership’’. Authorship is a measure of the value of content, and ownership determines the recipient of that value. Ironically, these are almost never the same entity, although in very rare cases, the author receives some small percentage of the value he/she creates. In this context, content is controlled by a small and elite minority. Not unlike the so-called ‘‘Dark Ages’’ of Europe, when virtually all content was owned, controlled and held under close guard by the Catholic Church, today’s content hegemony has absolute power over what is made and distributed. This system is very reliant on the dynamic of a producer/consumer relationship. Until now, the entertainment and media ‘‘industries’’, in general, have worked on this model. The computer and the Internet pose some very real challenges to this system because, unlike the media hegemony, which is centralized and controlled, the Internet is a highly decentralized, uncontrolled, peerto-peer environment. As such, it creates a physical infrastructure that poses a real and present threat to the media hegemony. A great example is Napster, the Internet music trading software that allowed users to freely share their private music files with others on the system. This decentralized, open system, although it was never used to generate a profit on anyone’s part (including Napster’s) was percieved as a huge threat to the hegemonistic copyright/ownership equation, above. As a result, the music industry used its considerable legal infrastructure to eventually shut it down. The result has been an explosion in copycat software. Now there are more ‘‘napsters’’ than there were before, and the situation becomes even harder to control. The story of Napster is a sort of modern-day David and Goliath story. Or perhaps, more aptly, it can be described as a Trojan Horse. Like the old video game Centipede, where each time you shoot the vile creature, he splits into half and becomes two Centipedes, the revolution started by Napster has not become a groundswell. This is only the beginning. In the following pages, we will look specifically at two new entertainment genres, which are generally being described as hybrid narrative/games. They are revolutionary because they not only represent the emergence of new forms that are unique to the computer medium (although, as we will see, they both have their roots in non-computer forms), they also reframe the producer/ consumer relationship. Both genres challenge fundamental notions of authorship and create a new consumer–producer hybrid, inviting the player to become a co-author in the narrative. I believe that these forms will challenge the narrative hegemony, and fundamentally change the way we both experience and create narrative content.