get off my Capitalism mmk? 
Just so there is no confusion many days later.
Game developers do develop content that you can engage in. The biggest MMORPG example would be a instance dungeon with a series of challenging encounters with loot as a reward.
Why we as players can create content, it’s because CCP game devs have given us tools that allow us to create our own content. The biggest example there would be Citadels. These are like lego blocks where you can put them up as a player and generate content (i.e.: challenges) for other players. While it’s true that CCP made the game system behind Citadels much like they make a NPC boss asset that goes in a dungeon. It is you that is placing that asset in the game, which is creating the actual final content for others.
If a game developer gave you the power to create your own levels in a game, you as the player are creating content for others. CCP has systems as an open world game that allow us to do this. Hence why the term exists.
P.S
I actually hate it when people refer to everything as content, but it does not make it wrong.
There are two fundamentally different approaches to MMOs. Basically that are not even the same type of game, but get mixed up anyway.
One is the WOW type MMO which is called a theme-park MMO, because like in a themepark it is full of PvE content you can engage in solo or in a group and it has it’s main attractions, the big dungeon instances. All the content is provided by the developer. They have to add content faster than the people can consume it, otherwise they get bored, which leads to a lot of cookie cutter quests (go kill this dragon and then bring it’s balls to that wizard, etc.)
The other type and this is what EVE is, a sandbox MMO. The sandbox is not filled with premade content by the developer, but with tools to build and destroy. The “content” is the goals that you have, to build your little empire in your little corner of New Eden, always in competition with other players, or to conquer, and destroy.
It seems that CCP recently started to shift away from that concept. The abyssal space stuff is clearly theme park content, but compared to ANY theme park MMO content it is just laughably primitive and boring. I really wonder what they are thinking when they do this stuff. Who do they think is their audience interested in this stuff?
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I hate you break this to you, but there are plenty of similarities when comparing WoW or EVE Online. They are both MMORPG’s with similar approaches to making the game. Just one has more focus on other game systems than the other such as the systems that makes EVE more of a sandbox than WoW.
Missions for example is no different than a dungeon in a traditional MMORPG outside of the fact it’s not instanced. It’s still a encounter that was pieced together a very linear way. Missions have existed in this game forever. Abyssal space along with DED spaces and so forth are just further iteration to the very generic approach of content creation that almost EVERY game developer takes. Nothing wrong with this and it should exist BECAUSE the biggest issue with EVE Online for most new players is finding things to do when they log in. Linear content like this helps with that and it SHOULD NOT go away.
That being said, providing the players with tools to create content is always great, but also very dangerous. We do have enough here to claim the game as a sandbox game. Don’t see this going away anytime soon.
No they are two completely different games as I explained above. Maybe read it again
Edited my comment a bit for clarity. 
Is music a form of content? When someone plays the guitar, is the guitar the content because it is a “thing” or is the music they are creating the content?
When people play the game, they create the content in the exact same way.
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Both, the guitar is content of the shop/band assets/mopey teenager’s bedroom, but can be used as a tool to create other content. Also multiple guitarists can use the same tool to create radically different content.
Additionally, give that guitar to a homicidal psychopath and the content created with it takes a huge sideways leap.
You’re double wrong.
“Content” means the state in which you are content, happy so to say. Lot of things we do can make us create such content.
“Content” also refers to one part of the “Form/Content” relation. For EVE, “form” would be everything that is not (meant to be) changeable by players, from the servers to the client to the rules, so basically everything that helps forming the container. Here, “content” is everything that is changeable (by players) within the container (form). In many games the “goal” is pre-determined and so the “content” of the game is limited to ways of reaching that goal and thereby could often seem as if the two were the same. In EVE for the lack of pre-determined “goals”, it may be confusing for you that everything players do within the form is content.
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This is my point entirely. Content is either what is put there by the Devs (i.e. instances, planets, gates, etc), or what the players have created with tools the Devs have given them to create (i.e. ships, stations).
Content is the persistent entities in the game, NOT the actions that players perform. That definition is just ludicrous.
Don’t confuse assets with content. Planets, gates, stations, and etc are all assets. This is what artist, animators, etc develop as assets of the game to be placed in the game to become a persistent piece of the game world. It doesn’t matter if this happens in a level design tool the game developer uses to make the final game level or give us the in-game tools to make it so.
By this definition, are player-created entities “assets”?
It’s hard to explain and I understand it seems confusing. But, by using these assets, you are essentially adding on to the level of the game. It would be similar to you taking a existing level of a game and adding a house to it. Players could go into that house and explore it and engage in NPC’s that came with the house. This is adding additional content to the game. It’s expanding on the gameplay to provide more playtime for the end user to consume.
When players take these assets, they are expanding on the game. Creating more and more content for other players to immerse themselves in. The issue is, the content is just reusing existing assets that have already been used. It’s like making a dungeon with 1 NPC copied and pasted 10,000 times across the entire dungeon. Not exactly fun and becomes stale quickly. Thus, running into 1,000 dungeons with the same NPC’s doesn’t exactly feel fresh no matter where the NPC’s are placed or how they act. It doesn’t feel like actual game content because you experienced it already. This is pretty much where you are at with EVE in the content usage.
I appreciate the time you took to explain your theories, but you didn’t answer my question.
I’m going to assume from the explanation that the answer is “No”. I’m not that sure we don’t agree on this.
Do you define player actions as “content”? If a player goes around looking for miners to gank, is it reasonable for him to say “I tried to get content last night, but they all docked up when I jumped into the system”?
Thought I did somewhat. We do not create the assets from scratch. What we are doing is reusing existing assets and rebranding them, with the exception of say RNG stuff like the new Abysmal stuff. At the end of the day, it’s all assets to be used to create additional content.
In that, when it comes to DLC. I don’t consider skins or outfits as content. It’s just assets. This is not something I can sink time into or consume like additional pages in a book. It’s just a new book cover.
Absolutely. Players are what I consider dynamic content. It doesn’t matter if you are about to engage a big boss NPC or a big boss PC. They are both encounters and part of the content. They are what’s adding more words to a page of the book you are reading. This is exactly what drives EVE Online. Without the players, the content would feel empty like blank pages in a book.
Yes. In both senses of the word - technical and economic.
–Pleased Gadgets are everyone’s asset
I somewhat agree. I would say that assets are the actual digital entities used in various places in the game. When they are deployed in-game, they become content. So, the artwork that represents a Plasma planet is the asset. Moon IX in Dodixie is content. What we actually DO with Moon IX, that is gameplay. That is not content. I believe you are confused between the two things.
You’re not wrong, but neither are you right.
For example, mining is gameplay, the consumption of the content made available by the game. In my eyes, and probably that of many others, the player driven content, as we like to call it, is what comes from that gameplay.
The interactions and relationships that result from it, providing content in the form of minerals for others to consume and create new assets with is content, the conversations and direct interactions with other players are content; some is provided by the game; some by others.
Not all content is tangible, not all of it is in game either.
That seems to be a not completely uncommon view, and what I am railing against.
Quick rule of thumb, if it’s in the game when it boots, it’s content. If it’s how you interact with those things, it’s gameplay.
How do you classify interactions with others, especially on the larger scale; diplomacy, power projection, coalitions, etc?
Are they merely gameplay as intended, or are they player driven content?