The involvement of free labours in the gaming industry became more evident in the digital information age. Traditionally, website developers would design the layouts of the website as well as create the content of the site. The new genres of internet communication, also known as Web 2.0, become increasingly reliant to user-generated content (Benkler, 2006: 60 and Tenenbaum, 2006: 48). In other words, developers are outsourcing content creation to the users. Developers of Web 2.0 are solely responsible for creating and maintaining the space and system for the content (Benkler, 2006: 60). Known for being innovative, the gaming industry adapted the concept of Web 2.0 in the form of Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) (Benkler, 2006: 74). In MMOGs, game developers created an online environment and the parameters of the environment. Instead of following a fixed storyline, game players have the freedom to create their own stories through the course of actions they performed in the game (Humphreys, 2005: 39). In addition, MMOGs allow game players to interact with other game players from all over the globe. Some of the more sophisticated MMOGs allow the players to create items and even alter the environment of the game (Benkler, 2006: 75). When players create items and additional elements for the game, the players are performing voluntary labour for the game.
Gaming corporation’s methods in utilizing paid and unpaid labour leads to the criticism that gaming corporations have failed in rewarding their labours appropriately (Klein, 2003: 201, 211). Players of MMOGs contributed hours of free labours and in most cases, they actually have to pay subscription fees to be able to access the online gaming environment (Humphreys, 2005: 40). Moreover, players have no right over the online content that they have created. In the case of Everquest, for instance, some players spent hours of labour in levelling up a character and creating items in the game. Some players have traded the characters and items in the game outside the gaming environment using real currency (Humphreys, 2005: 44). In the terms and conditions of the game, Sony as the game developer retained full intellectual property rights over every content in the game. Sony had clearly stated its stance in opposing the trades occurring outside the gaming environment. This leads to the question of whether a continuous access to an online gaming environment is an equivalent reward to game player’s hours of voluntary labour, considering that the game players actually had to pay subscription fees to perform the voluntary labour (Humphreys, 2005: 47).
