Little Big Planet : la créativité numérique à l’œuvre

• Main Authors: William Robinson, Bart Simon
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: ENS Éditions 2015-06-01
• Series: Tracés
• Subjects: digital labour; materiality; creativity; Little Big Planet; video games
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/traces/6201

Critical Marxist media theory has found fertile territory in a renewed critique of game cultures. The video game industry has managed to orchestrate, monetize and survey an army of player labourers who willingly work without pay. We hope to support challenges to this work by positioning players in the video game Little Big Planet and its sequels Little Big Planet 2 and 3 as producers of their own intrinsic value. With over 4 million user-generated levels, Little Big Planet leverages players’ tacit knowledge of material objects, replacing level design with virtual material bricolage. Despite the capital gains made by Media Molecule, these players become autonomous producers. The material practice of craftwork level design in Little Big Planet affords alternative values and possibilities for player creativity that are orthogonal to the dominant systems of production in the video game industry.