I’ve been following the growing gaming category recently and was surprised to note that gamers exhibit a high degree of creativity. The litmus was a story about a game company that provided tools to its users so they could develop and share graphic creatures or machinima game elements. The expectation of the company was that by the end of the first year they would hope to have 1 million consumer-generated graphics. In fact, they had a couple million in a few weeks. Wow!
I’ve always felt that consumer-generated content was a nice fad, but the really creative stuff should be left to the most artistic. Now I’m having second thoughts. Not all consumer generated ads suck. Not all second tier blogs suck. Not all neighborhood YouTube videos are boring.
Creativity and artistry should not just be the domain of the top 10%, but of everyone. And we should encourage consumer-generated art and creative. We all need to be more creative.
