Sunday, October 18, 2009

What Lies Beneath

Hiya, today I would be taking a closer look at a website to understand its underlying assumptions. The website I picked is: Moddb (www.moddb.com) a popular modding database site. I would be drawing from two papers: namely, the Guba & Lincoln(1984) and Creswell (2007); picking its description and use of critical theory to critique the website. Special attention would be paid towards the notion of power and the ideology which the website works around.

Moddb is argueable one of the largest and most popular modding sites available. The "about" section quite clearly describes the origins of the website. Due to the sheer number of mods available, this becomes a good site to observe the interaction around modding.

Of course one area immediately evident is how ModDB sustains itself through advertising. In effort it uses content from modders (free) to commodify eyeballs from audiences. It claims to have 2 millions visitors each month, with 320,000 developers. In the press kit, ModDB appeals for commercial game advertisors. It offers companies "a one stop shop" providing tutorials and other related resources for game modders. Further it promises to "kick start" a mod community for the games. Once again, the commercial ties which moddb has - which on the surface appears to favor modders - prompt important questions.

The "mod of the year" challenge (MOTY) also prompt some interesting questions. Amidst the many mods available, surely ModDB would need a way to sieve the bad from the good. Ratings do part of the job, but MOTY challenges really seperate the best from the "cream of the crop". Think about it: if you were a modder and challenging for the MOTY, would you not devote signifiicant time and energy into the process, possibly more than otherwise? The commercial links MOTY has is again displayed in the press kit. It writes, "we empower our community to play, watch and nominate their favorite innovate games and mods. Your brands sit in-front of real people where interaction occurs and not on an obscure hidden subsite... Involvement in a naturally viral user created contest event."

I guess this really shows that there is a commercial reason behind these MOTY events - and the burden on modders is two-fold. First they are recreating a part of this 'viral event' for free, the second is that they devote much time to getting this MOTY award without awareness of this.

Of course this poses only one view towards how ModDB operate, but food for thought nonetheless..

Posted by Ren at 5:21 AM

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