Timo Sutton

Yesterday, Blizzard announced the addition of a machinima section to it's World of Warcraft website. Upon release it has tips on making films, a resource section, and a section to house machinima that Blizzard finds exceptional.

Videogames (especially online games) have begun to officially encourage fan-created content based on their franchises. This is a surprising departure from how the United States traditionally approaches intellectual property. Game companies like Microsoft have even go so far as to allow user-generated content to be available for download onto the XBox360. Sony has also been getting into fan-generated content as early as the PS2 when it released the game Alien Hominid which was originally developed in Flash and was playable on Newgrounds.com.

As of now game companies in the U.S. still reserve the right to make a profit from their property. Countries like Japan are quite the opposite. While Japan has copyright laws similar to the U.S., game companies ignore (indeed encourage) fan-generated content (dubbed "fandom") in many different mediums. This fandom is usually sold for a profit but companies turn a blind eye towards it. Why? Because it is viewed as free advertising. Who better to spread the word about a game besides a rabid fan?

I can't help but wonder when the U.S. will catch up with the rest of the world not only in it's approach to fandom, but in it's views of videogames in general.