The Sims as Resource: A Virtual Ethnography Evaluating the Concept of Digital Information Culture in the Gaming World
Creators: name: Price, Ludovica
Publisher: name: unknown
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Library science
subject: Fans (Persons)
subject: Subculture
subject: Information science

description: This study looks into the life of a virtual gaming community, CTO Sims – a small slice of a
wider community that engages in what Bruns (2006) has termed produsage, remediating
videogame assets and content from a PC game, The Sims (2000) into custom or user-generated
content – a practice also called 'modding'. Through a virtual ethnographic methodology, this
study explores the digital library at the heart of CTO Sims, and the participatory culture (Jenkins,
1992; 2006) which has grown up around it. This paper presents a narrative of an online
videogaming produsage community, and through a process of immersion uncovers and probes
into the everyday practices of commodification and produsage as they take place in the virtual
field. The study begins to develop a theory of information culture by observing and exploring the
CTO Sims community, its members, and their roles in knowledge and information economies.
It is concluded that digital information cultures within online gaming communities form
around the collaborative creation and exchange of digital cultural artefacts, in heterarchical
networks that develop their own unique organisational and classification conventions. Moreover,
these communities form support networks for members, acting as repositories for shared
knowledge, skills and experiences. Freedom of communication acts as a tool for the generation of
social and knowledge capital, and enables the growth of strong ties of affiliation between
members. Further research is encouraged in private, offline produsage spaces, and into the
individual motivations that drive regular users to become produsers.
description: This study looks into the life of a virtual gaming community, CTO Sims – a small slice of a wider community that engages in what Bruns (2006) has termed produsage, remediating videogame assets and content from a PC game, The Sims (2000) into custom or user-generated content – a practice also called 'modding'. Through a virtual ethnographic methodology, this study explores the digital library at the heart of CTO Sims, and the participatory culture (Jenkins, 1992; 2006) which has grown up around it. This paper presents a narrative of an online videogaming produsage community, and through a process of immersion uncovers and probes into the everyday practices of commodification and produsage as they take place in the virtual field. The study begins to develop a theory of information culture by observing and exploring the CTO Sims community, its members, and their roles in knowledge and information economies. It is concluded that digital information cultures within online gaming communities form around the collaborative creation and exchange of digital cultural artefacts, in heterarchical networks that develop their own unique organisational and classification conventions. Moreover, these communities form support networks for members, acting as repositories for shared knowledge, skills and experiences. Freedom of communication acts as a tool for the generation of social and knowledge capital, and enables the growth of strong ties of affiliation between members. Further research is encouraged in private, offline produsage spaces, and into the individual motivations that drive regular users to become produsers.