This document summarizes a 1-year empirical study of user-generated content funded by the National Science Foundation. The study included online surveys of 411 video game players and 46 industry professionals, as well as content analysis of 3,300 pieces of UGC across various platforms. Key findings include: 1) The majority of gamers create and enjoy UGC but only half share it online, 2) Motivations for UGC differ based on demographics, 3) Most UGC is original rather than referencing existing works, and 4) More flexible creative tools correlate with higher copyright issues in UGC while constrained tools produce less referential works.

1. The Player-Authors Project:
(An Empirical Sketch of the UGC Elephant
in Copyright’s Parlor)
Prof. Lastowka

2. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 2
A 1-year empirical investigation of UGC funded by the NSF
• Started Sept. 1, 2012
• Report submitted Nov 30, 2013
– About 160 pages
• Download PDF at:
– http://playerauthors.rutgers.edu
– Or SSRN
• “Principal Investigator” = me
– About 10 law students worked
on the project
– Assisted by 1 graduate
student from Rutgers School
of Communication,
Nadav Lipkin

3. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 3
Motivations
• Many people have written about UGC
– 100’s of articles in law reviews and elsewhere, many books
– Here’s B-F in my bibliography…

4. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 4
Motivations
• Divergent policy evaluations of UGC
– Pro: productive, democratic, diverse, authentic collaborative
– Con: piratical, poor quality, parasitic, exploitative
• Divergent characterizations of the general nature of UGC.
– Industry story: UGC is primarily piracy
• Braverman & Southwick (2009) state: “The threat is that a good
percentage of the most heavily-viewed user-posted content is
infringing.”
– Remix story: UGC is primarily amateur parody, mashup, remix
• Lessig (2008); Jenkins (2006)
– Wikipedia: UGC is primarily altruistic (original) peer-production:
• Bruns (2008) and Benkler (2006)
• But where is the data? Who is right?
• What are the dominant practices on UGC platforms?
• Are Braverman & Southwick right that piracy = popularity?

5. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 5
Project Design: Two Components
• 1. Online surveys:
– Group One: 411 video game players
• Demographics
• Nature of UGC practices
• Motivations for UGC practices
– Group Two: 46 video game industry professionals
• Demographics
• Perceptions of UGC’s value
• 2. Content analysis:
– Random sampling of UGC production in thirty content populations.
– Coding for:
•
•
•
•
Copyright Implications
Other IP implications
Popularity and related metrics
Other (ad hoc) characteristics

6. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 6
Methodology: Choice of Platforms
• EAGER Grant philosophy = exploratory work
• Our approach:
– Sample a wide variety of UGC platforms
– Go for broad and thin rather than thick description of specific cultures
• N=100 (creates 10% margin of error with 95% confidence)
• A “rough cut” approach (much better than no data!)
• Our choice of sample platforms:
–
–
–
–
2D artwork: DeviantART, Sketch Club
Photo Sharing: Flickr, Photobucket
3D Printing: Thingiverse
Games: Avatars, Objects, Maps, Modifications, Machinima
• Spore, The Sims, Second Life, LittleBIGPlanet, Minecraft, ModNation,
Civ 5, Garry's Mod, Skyrim
– Fan Fiction Sites

7. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 7
UGC = 3D Printing & Fan Fiction. But why video games?
• UGC in video games is a massively and understudied
phenomenon
• Videogames, as an early form of digital & interactive media,
have a long history of UGC “amateur” production practices
• Minecraft
– Minecraft = Linux + the Matrix
– Minecraft = generativity (like the command line for 1980’s PC hobbyists)

8. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 8
RESULTS

9. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 9
Survey Findings Overview
• The majority of video game players create and enjoy UGC
– But only about half of players shared UGC online

10. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 10
Survey Findings Overview
• Motivations differ substantially according to:
– age, education, and gender
– generally, older and more educated players skew toward intrinsic
factors, whereas younger players skew toward instrumental motivations

11. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 11
Survey Findings Overview
• Gaming platforms appeal to different demographics:
– Wii players are generally younger
– Xbox players are more likely to be in the 25-44 age range.
– Older gamers are more likely to use PCs and mobile

12. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 12
Survey Findings Overview
• Gaming platforms matter a great deal
– The PC is the platform best fit for UGC in gaming.
– The PS3 has a creativity edge over the Xbox 360 and Wii

13. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 13
Survey Findings Overview
• Industry professionals disagree about UGC
– Some love it and value it highly, others hate it
• Most professionals do not appreciate the value of UGC to
players

14. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 14
Platform Samples (3,300 or so items to code)

15. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 15
Platform Sample Findings
• The copyright implications of UGC populations vary from
platform to platform.
– While almost all UGC practices raise some copyright issues, referential
practices on popular platforms vary widely, even within specific genres
of UGC.

16. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 16
Platform Sample Findings
• Avatar platforms had a broad range of IP implications
• E.g. Compare:
– Minecraft = 35% referential, Spore = 4% referential
– Hypothesis: These are communities with norms regarding remixing

17. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 17
Platform Sample Findings
• Most UGC was “original” and not referential
– Populations varied, but on almost all UGC sites, “referential” creativity
was less common than “non-referential” creativity.
– Hypothesis based on data: UGC practices should be understood as
primarily generative of original works of authorship rather than primarily
a form piracy or the creation of derivative works.

18. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 18
Platform Sample Findings
• Piracy and popularity is a bit tricky.
– Within total populations of UGC, we generally observed no statistically
significant correlation between popularity of individual items and their
referential or non-referential status.
– In other words, making a picture of Harry Potter, as opposed to a nonreferential picture, would not result in any more views.

19. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 19
Platform Sample Findings
• However…
– There was a significant power law distribution in UGC popularity
– 20 percent of UGC generally accounted for 80 percent of views and
downloads. (Below = ModNations avatars)

20. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 20
Platform Sample Findings
• An item from the “cream of the crop” (top 1-5%
popularity) was more likely to be referential than a
randomly sampled item from the total population
– See e.g. ModNations for a pronounced divergence
• Popular = 86% ref., General = 33% ref.

21. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 21
Platform Sample Findings
• A surprisingly small fraction of the UGC surveyed
constituted “remix” creativity
– Scholarship on UGC often celebrates parodies, but the majority of fan
works did not criticize the referenced original
– Generally, less than 5% of referential works were clearly critical or
parodic with respect to the work referenced

22. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 22
Platform Sample Findings
• Great power comes with greater infringement possibility
• Simple and less flexible UGC tool sets seem to correlate with
a decrease in copyright issues. Conversely, more flexible
tools and “denser” forms of authorial production correlated
with higher levels of copyright issues.
– When the public is given limited or constrained authorial powers in a
narrow authorial medium (e.g. reconfiguring creature parts in Spore),
the effect seems to be a reduced capacity for referential creativity
• Spore avatars = 4% ref
– When the authorial mode involves audiovisual work with a variety of
components (e.g. machinima), copyright concerns seem to rise
substantially.
• Warcraft machinima = 76% ref

23. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 23
Many other random findings, e.g. this about HP FanFic

24. Rutgers School of Law – Professor Lastowka - Slide 24
Thanks & thanks to the NSF for their generous assistance
• Full Summary Report at:
– http://player-authors.rutgers.edu
– Or SSRN