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/u/Busy_Basil_5067
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The term "co-creator" has become one of the biggest problems in how we credit work today. On the surface, it looks like a way to acknowledge a partnership, but in reality, it’s just a corporate way of watering down someone’s contribution. By slapping that "co-" prefix onto someone’s title, it implies that there is a "main" owner and a secondary assistant. It’s like calling one person the "Builder" and the other a "Co-Builder" just because one of them bought the land first. We should stop using it entirely and just call the people involved exactly what they are: the Creators.
I see this play out a lot in comics, where "co-creator" was used for decades to minimize legendary artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. By labeling them as "co-creators", the industry tricked people into thinking the visual design and world-building were just "extra" parts of a verbal idea. But an idea without the actual work isn't a creation, it's just a wish. If two people build a character together, and that character wouldn't exist without either one of them, then they are both the Creators. Using "co-" just makes it easier for the person with the louder voice or the better marketing team to hog the spotlight and the royalties.
This is an issue that goes far beyond just one field. In movies and TV, the problem is built into the way credits are shared. You often see a producer or an executive listed alongside the actual writer or director, as if their contribution to the business was the same thing as building the world itself. Marketing then runs with 'co-creator' in headlines and interviews to make it look like the person in the suit was just as responsible for the soul of the show as the person who actually wrote the show. It’s a way for someone who just secured the rights or managed the production to claim the 'artist' label, while the person actually doing the labor is treated as an equal to someone who barely stepped foot in the room. It turns the act of creation into something that can be bought or negotiated, rather than something that is actually made.
In gaming, it’s even more problematic, the industry loves to slap the "co-creator" label on technical architects and systems designers to keep them a step below a director or studio head who hasn't touched a line of code in years. You can have a "vision" for a game, but if someone else is the one actually designing the core mechanics, programming the physics, and building the level architecture that makes the game playable, they aren't "co-anything." They are the reason the game exists in the first place.
TL;DR: The term is designed to be vague, it masks who actually did the heavy lifting and who just held the contract or the "vision." We need to stop treating partnership like it’s a subtraction of status. If they made it together, they’re all Creators, no prefixes required.
submitted by /u/Busy_Basil_5067
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I see this play out a lot in comics, where "co-creator" was used for decades to minimize legendary artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. By labeling them as "co-creators", the industry tricked people into thinking the visual design and world-building were just "extra" parts of a verbal idea. But an idea without the actual work isn't a creation, it's just a wish. If two people build a character together, and that character wouldn't exist without either one of them, then they are both the Creators. Using "co-" just makes it easier for the person with the louder voice or the better marketing team to hog the spotlight and the royalties.
This is an issue that goes far beyond just one field. In movies and TV, the problem is built into the way credits are shared. You often see a producer or an executive listed alongside the actual writer or director, as if their contribution to the business was the same thing as building the world itself. Marketing then runs with 'co-creator' in headlines and interviews to make it look like the person in the suit was just as responsible for the soul of the show as the person who actually wrote the show. It’s a way for someone who just secured the rights or managed the production to claim the 'artist' label, while the person actually doing the labor is treated as an equal to someone who barely stepped foot in the room. It turns the act of creation into something that can be bought or negotiated, rather than something that is actually made.
In gaming, it’s even more problematic, the industry loves to slap the "co-creator" label on technical architects and systems designers to keep them a step below a director or studio head who hasn't touched a line of code in years. You can have a "vision" for a game, but if someone else is the one actually designing the core mechanics, programming the physics, and building the level architecture that makes the game playable, they aren't "co-anything." They are the reason the game exists in the first place.
TL;DR: The term is designed to be vague, it masks who actually did the heavy lifting and who just held the contract or the "vision." We need to stop treating partnership like it’s a subtraction of status. If they made it together, they’re all Creators, no prefixes required.
submitted by /u/Busy_Basil_5067
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...