Sicart gives some focus to Game Designers in Chapter 7. As someone with lots of experience talking with , and teaching, developers and designers of all skill levels, I take issue with his notion that designers do not deserve to say they have authorship over the things they create.
Creation is a very personal act. Art, music, poetry, games — all of them come from the creativity and mind of one person, or a group of people. It is fair to argue that the interpretation of these works is not up to the creator; poetry gets interpreted in many ways, sometimes directly conflicting with the interpretation of the author. However, it would do the author an injustice to remove that authority over their own work. People take into account the motives and livelihoods of creators when interpreting work. If a AAA quality game came from one person in their garage (see Lost Soul Aside), we would interpret it differently than if it came from a large corporation.
Sicart argues that designers only set the stage for users to play upon. I don’t disagree, but I don’t see how this entirely relates to how authorship is “troublesome to [him]…impl[ying] authorship, a privileged communication model, an implied authority or reference.” To call authorship over a creative work “privileged”, and suggesting that the authority of the creator holds no bearing over its interpretation and further use is upsetting to me, especially as someone who actively facilitates the creation and development of games.
sorry for the lateness of this post, I was running and participating in SGDC’s 9th Game Jam