Editor Games: Digital Construction Kits at the Beginning and End of a Participatory Gaming Culture

Digital Games are a genuine part of convergence culture because their structure can become the subject of participatory practices. This generates special needs on the side of the computer game industry to manage and steer the relationship to its customers. The article focuses on this relationship between the game industry and its customers and outlines it as a form of cooperation. A short archeology of so-called editor games serves as a starting point. Editor games refers to a specific software genre, in which the users are offered design possibilities within a relatively confined framework. The article continues by elaborating the limits and possibilities of co-creative practices afforded by these software programs in order to trace the changing material conditions of a participatory computer game culture as a whole. It shows that editor games act as mediators within a precarious relationship between the media industry and the consumers. The aim of this approach is to explore the role of editor games in initiating and maintaining cooperative relationships between the computer game industry and its customers.