Theory

In The Sims 3, each gamer shows their authorship to something through their creativity of a design on an object, a sim that they created, a picture album they put together of the sims most important moments, or a video that they created to tell a story about their sims. Every Sims 3 gamer has the option to upload their creation onto The Sims 3 website to share with all the other Sims gamers out there. My question is how far does the authorship go when a design is added to a previous made object? What if someone wanted to use a certain picture from another person's album for a personal reason without asking, would that be overstepping a boundary?

Maxis, the company who created The Sims franchise, designed this game to allow each gamer to have endless possibilities. Each gamer plays The Sims 3 for their own reasons. Some want to build the houses, others want to create families and live their lives on The Sims, while more just enjoy creating their own designs to objects that Maxis has placed in the game for them. My theory is that the design itself is able to be recreated on any Maxis created object and is allowed to be claimed as one's own design on The Sims 3 web page, but if you create your very own object in itself, such as a certain car that is not in The Sims 3 game, then you are not allowed to upload it onto the site due to the fact that it was not Maxis made. Any Maxis made object seems to be able to be uploaded onto The Sims 3 site with many different creative designs thought up by gamers. Any object created by the gamers themselves are not original Maxis items, and seem to not be allowed to be uploaded onto The Sims 3 website. This is why so many fan sites are created, so that the gamers who have created their own objects can show them off on their own websites, and allow other gamers who want their objects to download them for free, or possibly for a price.