Issue 8 - Gaming Networks
Cameras, Radios, and Butterflies: the Influence and Importance
of Fan Networks for Game Studies
Laurie N. Taylor - University of Florida
Collecting and Interpreting: Walkthroughs, CliffsNotes,
& IMDB
As a new medium, video games can be analyzed under some of the
similar rubrics of other media. However, because of the fundamental
differences between video games and older media, including the requirement
of skilled user action, alterations to this categorization prove
necessary. The study of games has been approached from many aspects,
including the study of narrative in games and the study of game
play. Both of these aspects complement each other and additional
studies, such as studies of video game audiences, further complement
game studies as an emerging field. Because video games require skilled
user interaction, studying games requires game play. Game play in
turn necessitates that players and students studying video games
use additional resources to play particular games, and especially
to complete particular games or to explore the games as texts to
even a reasonable degree needed for study. Essentially, because
games are interactive or mutable texts- in the sense that game play
is open and a stable text is not available in the manner in which
it would be for most films or novels- game play and additional resources
are necessary for players and scholars. The additional resources
offer a sense of how a particular game functions for various players
and for repeated game play through its many permutations. This is
particularly important for game studies because, while games often
include stories, games are first predicated on game play. Because
the emphasis is first on game play, the gaming walkthroughs and
other resources offer a sense of the manner in which the games are
played, and a sense of how the games operate for different players.
For the many games with narratives, walkthroughs also offer plot
points and information on the narrative progression. Additional
resources for play can often be found on the official websites of
games and in official game walkthroughs, like those published by
Bradygames and Prima. However, many older and even many current
games do not have enough information available through official
sites or through official walkthroughs. For these games, fan sites
provide needed academic resources in much the same way that databases
do for scholarly studies of films and literature and in the same
way that CliffsNotes - printed books and now an online site with
notes for use in studying particular literary texts - do for students
studying literature and that the Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
does for students studying film. As Donna E. Alvermann and Margaret
C. Hagood argue, students can often benefit from producing fan works
and connecting to fan cultures (2001: 436-446). While scholarly
databases, CliffsNotes, and IMDB all differ from each other in important
ways and cannot replace the engagement with particular texts, just
as fan sites cannot replace actual game play, each of these does
often serve as a necessary complement for scholarly studies and
for pedagogical purposes.
Firstly, gaming fan sites aid academia by serving as 'museums or
archives, collecting and sharing information about the games, and
providing information that is contextualised within a gaming culture's
perception and reception of the games. Despite their intention to
archive and collect materials, these sites are often unstable; however,
the fluidity of the sites often leads to their archival on other
sites. This is akin to the function of Nintendo Power's
early Nintendo cartoons, and gaming paratextual materials like gaming
memorabilia, free games, and game websites.[1]
Fan sites often include information on the place of a particular
game in gaming history along with the importance of particular gaming
culture artifacts in shaping the game and its reception. Fan sites
also act as appendices and archives, collecting press releases,
game screenshots, hints, clues, and mentions of particular games
in different media. As Henry Jenkins demonstrates, fan communities
have relied on the internet as a means for discussion within a large,
geographically unbounded community with, 'the Web as a means of
annotation. The succession of new media technologies since the late
1970s has encouraged the emergence of a culture based on the archiving,
annotation, transformation, and recirculation of media content'
(2001: xvi-xvii). Jenkins shows that online fan communities serve
several functions. They create a culture of collection and annotation
that operates with a larger interpretive community. In doing so,
I would argue, they create resources that are archived, utilised,
and reviewed by the gaming community in such a way as to function
as a community-based peer review, especially given the forums wherein
players and fans discuss the games and the sites supporting the
games. The forums provide a format for discussion that can encourage
sites to alter their information based on commentary from readers.
The resources facilitate interpretation, and the multiplicity of
voices producing the resources eschews simplistic readings of a
single ideal text. These gaming resources- as collections, archives,
and peer reviewed resources- can be seen in the fan walkthroughs
and websites for Fatal Frame.
Game walkthroughs and fan sites are useful resources for game studies
because they provide information on game play permutations, lists
of game items, character lists, lists of in-game texts, and more.
In exploring a possible methodology for game studies, Espen Aarseth
cites walkthroughs as one of several types of game studies resources
(2003). Aarseth notes the problem that players may miss certain
critical game elements. However, fan sites and walkthroughs ease
these problems, aiding academic game studies by analyzing games,
particularly because they often do so in an academic, albeit informal,
manner. In games like Fatal Frame and Fatal Frame II:
Crimson Butterfly, the abundance of text- photographs, the
camera's background, notes, stones used in spirit radio, video clips
- all add up to an abundance of data. Each bit of data resituates
the game during game play and with game studies. Because the pieces
add to the patchwork to create a cohesive narrative world, but are
often unnecessary to the game play and game progress, the array
of pieces informs both the individual game and game studies as a
field, as games and game studies balance issues of narrative and
game play. The data is not necessary for much of game studies- as
the incompleteness of the texts is part of game studies- yet these
resources do serve other studies. While the walkthroughs themselves
are invaluable resources, the larger fan sites within which the
walkthroughs are often contextualised provide additional material
and insight for game studies. Thus, the data archived and created
by fan sites inform game studies, as do the process of creation
for fan sites and the cultures that create and foster the fan sites.
Two of the more popular and more extensive fan sites for Fatal
Frame are Beyond the Camera's Lens (http://cameraslens.com/)
and Chou (http://www.akaichou.net/chou/).
Beyond the Camera's Lens covers all of the Fatal Frame
games, including the recently released Fatal Frame III: The
Tormented (released as Rei shisei no koe in Japan,
and as Project Zero III: The Tormented in Europe). Chou
- the Japanese word for butterfly and the title of the opening song
for Fatal Frame II with its narrative and game play elements
that follow the 'crimson butterfly - focuses more closely on the
second game. In both cases, these fan sites can act as archives
and sources for research, including academic research. The emphasis
on the collection and archiving of materials can be seen clearly
with Chou, which has neither a section for fan fiction
nor a forums section for fans to discuss the games. Instead, Chou
acts as an archive of game materials that can only be edited by
fans who contact the site owner to have the material reviewed and
edited for accuracy or completeness. Chou does have one
page of fan art work. However, this is obviously not the site's
emphasis because the site has dozens of pages on various topics:
lyrics from the games; music from the games; screenshots; background
information on the characters; background information on the locations;
lists of the game memos, scrapbooks, photos, maps, and spirits;
and more. As an archive of materials, Chou aids academic
researchers and students studying games by providing material that
researchers would otherwise have difficulty accessing, like the
lyrics for Fatal Frame II's opening theme.
The lyrics for Fatal Frame II would be difficult for researchers
to find, especially in both the English and Japanese versions. However,
Chou provides both versions and provides them within the
context of a fan website where many other fans would collectively
provide comments so that the site creator can correct any errors
in the lyrics in much the same way that Open Source software is
shared and critiqued, and in much the same way as academic articles
are critiqued within the academic community. Even simply collecting
elements like the texts of each of the in-game notebooks, diaries,
and reports would prove a tedious task for game researchers because
the Fatal Frame games are available only on consoles. This
means that an academic game researcher would not be able to access
the notebooks without playing through the entire game - or downloading
game saves which are now available for some games - and finding
all of the texts, a difficult task in itself. Then the researcher
would need to type up the text from each of the notebooks, diaries,
and reports. Computer games often allow for cheats that allow players
to access all materials, so that would immediately lessen the time
demands for this sort of collection. Other games also have 'official
game walkthroughs, so the text would be accessible through those.
Official walkthroughs and guides present valuable benefits to game
scholarship; however, scholarship on other games is bereft of these.
Fan websites both satisfy the limited needs for the archive materials
while also providing additional resources on the games. Not all
of this archival research and interpretation is useful to game studies;
however, much of the material is needed for different studies of
gaming and for the overall development of different analytical communities.
While Chou offers many resources for those studying Fatal
Frame II, Beyond the Camera's Lens offers even more
resources, resembling a scholarly archive and research project in
its complexity. Like Chou, Beyond the Camera's Lens
acts first as an annotated archive of material on the Fatal
Frame games. It covers all three of the Fatal Frame
games and has little fan fiction material. Beyond the Camera's
Lens has a page for fan images; however, the page links to
only three fan fiction stories and only a handful on fan artworks.
By comparison, the dozens of pages on the Fatal Frame games
themselves are clearly the site's main emphasis. In addition to
the gaming materials that aid fans and researchers in studying and
playing the games, Beyond the Camera's Lens also offers
supplementary information on aspects of the game. This includes
information on ritual suicide in Japanese culture, since this is
a large theme in the games, and pages on the cultural influences
on the games. It also includes information on the term 'camera obscura
and the relevance of the term as it is used to label the camera
in the game. The information listed under the cultural influences
includes such information as the importance and relevance of the
butterfly symbolism in the games. Further, Beyond the Camera's
Lens includes information on the determination of the elder
twin in Japan, information that directly impacts aspects of game
play and game narrative, 'December 13th, 1874 - Meiji law passed
deeming the firstborn twin is eldest' (2003: timeline.php). On the
page about the butterfly symbolism, the web creator even includes
references to other resource materials (2003: butterfly.php). Both
Chou and Beyond the Camera's Lens provide material
that is otherwise inaccessible or difficult to find. As such, they
act as extremely useful academic and pedagogical resources for the
play and the study of the Fatal Frame games.
Beyond the Camera's Lens also hosts game walkthroughs
and hints. Gaming walkthroughs are common game paratexts that can
be consulted during, prior to, or after game play. For more strictly
action-based games, the walkthroughs often include more focused
information on how to defeat particular enemies or where certain
enhancement items can be found. For games with an abundance of embedded
media like the Fatal Frame games, the walkthroughs also
provide narrative information, information on where to find particular
notes, audio, and video files, and information on how those files
contribute to game play and to the game narrative. In cases where
the walkthroughs would be far too cluttered with all of this embedded
information, fan sites tend to emerge as a complement to the informative
aspects of the game walkthroughs. In these instances, the walkthroughs
serve as abbreviated versions of the fan sites like Beyond the
Camera's Lens because the walkthroughs provide the information
most pertinent to game play, but not to the overall gaming experience
as it is explored on the Beyond the Camera's Lens and Chou
sites.
As CliffsNotes or IMDB aid in providing, collecting, and connecting
information on books and films, fan sites provide players, students,
and academics with a sense of the games.[2]
Similarly, fan sites and walkthroughs cannot
supplant the actual gaming experience, yet fan sites and walkthroughs
do aid in making even difficult games- in terms of game play and
cultural information- more accessible for players. While CliffsNotes
and IMDB are study guides and a database, respectively, the increase
in access they provide aids in the creation of analytical communities.
Fan networks aid accessibility and then build on that accessibility
to create internal communities of review. While doing so, fan sites
and walkthroughs aid external communities- including academic communities-
in the teaching and studying of games. Further, recognizing the
importance of gaming fan sites and gaming walkthroughs acknowledges
their place in the history of gaming and in the instance of game
play. In his foreword to Interacting with Babylon 5, Jenkins
notes that the current generation of scholars have grown up with
interactive fictions like those found in the pen-and-paper role-playing
games that Kurt Lancaster mentions in his study of Babylon 5,
Interacting with Babylon 5 (2001: xix). Likewise, game studies
scholars have grown up or into using gaming walkthroughs and fan
sites in their game playing. Using these resources allows game studies
scholars to create a more fully fleshed-out study of game play with
its many peripheral components, including the importance of fan
culture, fan communities, and the archives and arguments they produce.
Fan sites may also afford other game studies scholars better sense
of the game by which to assess the scholarship when reviewing articles
on a particular game with which they have less experience. With
games like those in the Final Fantasy series, which may
each take over forty hours to complete, gaming walkthroughs and
fan sites can give a greater sense of the game so that game studies
scholars may more easily respond to game specifics of unfamiliar
games, even if only to pose questions.
Canon, Fanon: Fan Sites and Peer Review
In addition to an emphasis on the skill required to play games,
and the walkthroughs and shared knowledge resources that follow
from that, the interdisciplinary and audience driven nature of gaming
requires immediate engagement and discussion with other fields that
shape games and gaming. As Matteo Bittanti contends, 'it is necessary
to rethink the cooperative interplay between game scholars
and game designers, game journalists, game artists, and, last but
not least, game players, whose importance is systematically neglected
in the ongoing debate' (2004: para. 14). Studying players aids not
only in analyzing how the players play and use games, but also in
analyzing how players shape game studies and game design.
Bittanti's argument for an emphasis on the players is mirrored
in much of the work on fan cultures for various media. For instance,
Matt Hills demonstrates that the majority of scholarship on fan
cultures divides fans and scholars even when fans are operating
as scholars. Hills shows that studies of fan cultures position fans
both within and outside of academia, stating that most fan studies
assume that, 'Elite fans are scholars, yes, but they are still not
quite academic scholars: they are not systematic or sustained
enough, being only capable of flashes of theory' (2002: 17). Like
many fan culture scholars, Hills argues for the authority of fans
as scholars and for their skill at academic analysis. Fan cultures
themselves exist within what Jenkins has termed 'participatory culture,
and which he argues derives from the connection between several
aspects, including new tools that are available for fans to manipulate
media and fan cultures that promote media production (2002: para.
4-5). While Jenkins examines these tools more closely in relation
to fan fiction production, the same structures of participatory-culture
resonate within gaming cultures and their production of fan sites
and walkthroughs.
Within gaming's participatory cultures certain community rules
shape the creation, review, and distribution of fan materials. The
gaming materials covered in this article are the non-fiction archives
created on gaming websites, and these are essentially 'fanon. For
fan communities and studies of fan writing, 'fanon is a term that
refers to the canon of fan works within a particular fan community
as canons exist within particular academic cultures. While the term
fanon itself is generally read as a combination of 'fan-fiction
and 'canon, it also more generally combines 'fan writing and 'canon
to cover the non-fiction works created by fans like the science
of Star Trek, the geography of Twin Peaks, and
the description of the characters in the Fatal Frame games.
In order to exist as fanon the works- whether they are fiction or
non-fiction- must be accepted by the fan communities according to
the fan community's rules. Academic study on fan-produced texts
often focuses on the fictional works created to extend source texts.
Rebecca W. Black studies fictional fan creations in language learning
(2005), as do Kelly Chandler-Olcott and Donna Mahar in their analysis
of the acquisition of multiliteracies (2003). However, fan creations
are also valid texts in themselves; and, both fiction and non-fiction
fan creations operate within their internal review communities akin
to academic communities.
The participatory culture of fan sites like Chou and Beyond
the Camera's Lens becomes increasingly valuable for academic
studies when researchers note that the sites themselves are fanon,
meaning that they are effectively peer-reviewed via the members
of their participatory cultures, thus assuring the quality and accuracy
of the information. The peer review operates within the community
discussions, links from one community member site to another, explicit
webring links, and through the community interaction in the development
of particular sites. Like walkthroughs, fan sites generally list
acknowledgements and generally list corrections and the people who
submitted the corrections; thereby acknowledging the community and
the importance of community review.
Both Chou and Beyond the Camera's Lens belong
to SPECTRE, the web ring for Fatal Frame fan sites.
Other sites within the web ring focus on specific aspects of the
games, like Faces, which focuses on the dolls in the games,
and Drifting Away, which focuses on the relationship between
the two sisters in Fatal Frame II. While SPECTRE
is a webring that connects the Fatal Frame sites, it also
stipulates rules and directions for those interested in making their
own Fatal Frame fan sites. Citing the problems many people
have in finding information about Fatal Frame, SPECTRE
states that it seeks to collect the Fatal Frame sites so
that players can more easily find the sites and information and
so that site owners will easily be able to find other sites about
Fatal Frame (2003: para. 5). It continues on to list the
rules for any sites wishing to join the webring:
1. You must own a website with Fatal Frame or Fatal Frame II:
Crimson Butterfly concept.
2. You site must be original in content and design. Give proper
credits when needed to. Stolen works are inappropriate.
3. Your site must be user-friendly. Meaning no sticky caps,
long loading time, confusing navigation, flashy/pastel
layouts and hard to read context.
4. No content regarding to sex and nudity.
5. Please put up the code on your main page or webring page (where
it can be seen easily) before applying. (2003: para. 6, emphases
in original)
The rules for SPECTRE's webring members illustrate that
the fan sites are regulated by the webring as well as by the fans
reading and using the sites. The rules for SPECTRE also
parallel the typical rules in academic discourse. The first rule
is that the text must be on topic, as any academic journal would
require an article that is pertinent to the journal's theme and
to academic discussions. The second stipulates that the site must
be original, as with academia's requirements for proper attribution,
articles that add to the current discussion, and for articles that
are written by the author and not plagiarised. The third and fourth
rules state the proper format, in much the same way this article
has citations in a manner required by the Fibreculture
rules for formatting. The final rule is perhaps the most interesting
because it requires that those applying to the webring must, before
applying, acknowledge their place within the webring's community.
The writing and submission of academic articles to journals inherently,
and often transparently, assumes the writer's place within academia,
just as the webring code immediately places a site creator within
the fan community, and with the possibility of being accepted or
rejected by that particular community.
Regulation by the fans is part of a much larger process of fan
community building. As Jenkins contends, 'Fandoms were virtual communities,
'imagined and 'imagining communities, long before the introduction
of networked computers' (2002: para. 9). Matt Hills shows that fan
culture is a community and a hierarchy based on fan placement within
that community, stating, 'fan culture [functions] not simply as
a community but also as a social hierarchy where fans share
a common interest while also competing over fan knowledge, access
to the object of fandom, and status' (2001: 46). As a community
and a social hierarchy, fandoms have standards for both behavior
within the fandom and standards for fan works. As Jenkins notes,
'fandom has long maintained an ethical norm against producing erotica
about real people rather than fictional characters' (2002: para.
11). Jenkins continues to explain that newer fans have sometimes
created fan erotica, and that this causes a rift between the older
and the younger fan communities. For gaming, fan communities may
include or forbid erotica, as SPECTRE determines that its
webring of Fatal Frame fan sites forbids erotica.
For gaming sites, the community rules and social hierarchies also
establish a system of review for placement of fans within the gaming
hierarchy. Placement is determined largely by contributions- contributions
that are then reviewed by the fan community, with the reviewing
process itself as a measure of fan contributions. Illustrating connections
between fan communities and academia, Lelia Green and Carmen Guinery
argue, 'Fan communities thrive on the power of the individual fan
to project themselves and their fan identity as part of an ongoing
conversation' (1998: para. 12). They continue to state, 'fans become
famous and recognised within their own community for the quality
of their work and the generosity of their sharing with others' (1998:
para. 23). While Green and Guinery are discussing the Harry
Potter fan fiction phenomenon, these same principles also apply
for the non-fiction archives that are created with gaming fan sites.
Like Green and Guinery's analysis of the Harry Potter fan
fiction, Kristi Lee Brobeck studies one fan community where all
fan fiction is reviewed in a systematic manner:
a member can access other writers' particular knowledge about
geography, warfare, poetry, food [...]. Writers can find beta
readers, or proofreaders, to look over his/her work, as well as
post comments about one's stories and await criticism or enthusiasm
for one's works. [...] one can read stories which have been accepted
into the public realm of the archive after going through a nine-person,
self-selected reviewing pool and have been accepted by at least
five of the reviewers. (2004: para. 3)
While most gaming fan sites do not have such a systematised version
of peer review, the sites do still undergo peer evaluation and review
using forum, email, webrings, and general fan discussion. Fan sites
are generally reviewed more informally through fan networks and
fan communities; however, the larger sites do undergo a more formalised
system of review. GameFAQs, as the largest online compendium
of game walkthroughs and hints, requires that walkthrough and hint
writers be registered with the site in order to submit any information.
The major component of this registration is the writer's email address
so that GameFAQs and other players can contact the writer.
Then, GameFAQs requires that all contributors follow strict
guidelines and then have their material reviewed before the material
is posted to the site (2005: 'Contribute' ). The guidelines for
submission stipulate the 'golden rule of writing, which is, 'Provide
credit where it is due' (2005: 'Help' ). [3]
Like GameFAQs, the fan sites and fan
resources rely on the power of the fan and gaming communities to
both provide and review content.
The use of webrings and links from site to site further encourage
review by bringing more players to the sites to evaluate the sites.
Jenkins shows that fandom is often intertextual, a process encouraged
by the internet and by webrings, 'While some fans remain exclusively
committed to a single show or star, many others use individual series
as points of entry into a broader fan community, linking to an intertextual
network composed of many programs' (1992: 40). The intertextual
nature of fan communities leads to an increase in information from
multiple sources and leads to a great number of voices contributing
to any particular fan text. Like Wikipedia and other online
compendiums, the intertextual connection between these sites increases
the number of readers and thus their ability to contribute to the
sites. This also means that the skill set for any fan site is augmented
through the many voices of the fans, some who can translate Japanese
fan pages, some who can provide computer coding information on the
games, some who can provide historical information, and some who
provide information on gaming cheats or on difficult gaming maneuvers.
The linked nature of the internet allows other fans with those particular
skills to access and then evaluate the work done by other fans.
Fan sites encourage other players to play the games and to have
a relationship with both the games and gaming communities.
Accordingly, the games industry itself encourages fan sites and
fan works because, 'The games industry, which sees itself as marketing
interactive experiences rather than commodities, has been eager
to broaden consumer participation and strengthen the sense of affiliation
players feel towards their games' (Jenkins, 'Interactive Audiences?
The 'Collective Intelligence' of Media Fans, 2002: para. 21). This
drive to strengthen consumer participation leads to official game
websites that provide images fans are allowed to use, or are at
least not strictly prevented from using, in creating fan sites.
The official sites, like Fatal Frame II's official site,
retain a copyright notice, but they do not include a notice stating
that others cannot use the images. Additionally, they do provide
image galleries, desktop images, and other media files that are
available for fans in their creation of fan sites. However, the
official sites, as in the case of Fatal Frame II' s official
website, prove lacking in the quality and quantity of material that
interests fans. In examining Babylon 5, Kurt Lancaster
notes that fans, 'also create fan clubs online, which usually revolve
around particular characters and the actors who perform them. Entire
Web sites with multiple pages and links may be devoted to one character
or theme' (2001: 132). Like the Babylon 5 sites, gaming
sites often include detailed information on particular characters
or themes that augments the often inadequate official resources.
Lancaster also posits that, 'The formality of these [the official
Babylon 5] sites lacks the creativity of fan-designed Web
pages' (2001: 136). While gaming fan sites are very creative, other
aspects are highly formalised, like the format for walkthroughs
and the structure of the sites. Fans thus create their own sites
by drawing on the resources provided by the official websites, and
then supplementing those with resources created and gathered by
themselves, all of which are reviewed by the larger fan community.
Conclusion
In the creation of walkthroughs and fan sites, fans often raise
interesting questions about the particulars of a single game, about
gaming as a whole, and about game players or game communities. While
this article has directly addressed the value of walkthroughs and
fan sites as resources for game scholars studying and teaching games,
fan sites also often present academic arguments of their own, including
arguments about the value of open discussion taking place on fan
sites. As a new field, and as a field developed alongside the expansion
of the web, one of the great promises for game studies is that it
could allow for fully interdisciplinary scholarship both within
the academy and with others outside of the academy, including fans
and those in the gaming industry. Bridging the gap between different
discourse communities often proves difficult because of different
methods and different terminology. However, fan sites offer a nexus
point in that they operate by similar means as academia and to develop
similar texts. Thomas McLaughlin has argued that non-academics often
present valid theories and questions for academia:
I claim that individuals who do notcome out of a tradition
of philosophical critique are capable of raising questions about
the dominant cultural assumptions. They do so in ordinary language,
and they often suffer from the blindness that unself-conscious
language creates. But the fact that vernacular theories therefore
do not completely transcend ideologies does not make them different
in kind from academic theories. They manage in spite of their
complicity to ask fundamental questions about culture. (1996:
5)
In the same vein as McLaughlin's argument for the validity of discourse
from outside of academia proper, game studies itself could in turn
argue for the value and significance of voices from outside of academia.
The peer reviewed nature of fan sites both mirrors peer review in
academia and serves as a model for academic work. It serves as a
model for academic work because it shows how communities can create
peer reviewed texts that are resources for their own communities
while also creating texts that affect communities outside their
own. While peer review can be seen as a means of setting academic
discourse apart from other discourses- because it requires its participants
to use specific codes- the level of and criteria for exclusion is
the primary difference between traditional academia and fan sites.
The differences in exclusivity for writers also correspond to the
differences in reader exclusivity, with fan sites more easily connecting
to readers. Game walkthroughs and fan sites are an essential part
of game studies both as resources for studying games and as models
for the potential form that game studies could take in connecting
academic game studies with scholars, game players, students, and
the gaming industry.
While fandoms began prior to the use of networked computers, networked
computers have made fan cultures easier to access for both members
of the fan culture and for those outside of the fan culture; 'Internet
fan cultures are user friendly; fans don' t need to seek out and
subscribe to obscure fanzines, they don' t need to travel to meet
other fans, and they don' t have to negotiate the negative stereotype
of the nerdy Trekkie' (Sara Gwenllian-Jones, 2003: 185). This
is particularly important because it shows how fan cultures can
connect to fans, students, and academics using the same model. Academia
can utilise this model because, 'Online fanfiction has, ' as Julianne
Chatelain argues, 'a culture of relentless reviewing that is frequently
supported by customised code and tools' (2003: para. 1). Other
fan culture scholars argue from similar positions. Hills calls for
'academic commitment which is modeled on fan commitment' (2002:
184). Green et al. claim:
Academic work on popular culture pays a price for its insistence
on isolating itself from other kinds of critical discourse: We
sacrifice both the ability to understand experientially and the
ability to more fully participate in public debates about popular
culture. As the academy turns toward a reassessment of the role
of the 'public intellectual, ' we need to accept that not all
expertise resides within the academy. We, thus, urge a more open
dialogue between academic writing and other modes of criticism.
(1998: 14)
Game studies in conjunction with fan cultures has the potential
to explore new areas, to break down boundaries, and to more fully
explore the role of the public intellectual.
Game studies remains uncodified. At its current stage of development,
it parallels the early days of film studies. Film studies, Robert
Ray argues, has lost much of its impact because film criticism itself
cannot compete with the power of Hollywood's stories. In order to
do so, Ray suggests 'experimenting with the forms of criticism'
(1995: 9). For game studies, experimenting with the forms of criticism
has already begun. The same fan site discussions are being emulated
in the game studies blogs which also connect academia to players,
students, and game fans. The prevalence of academic blogs
on gaming and of academic web journals that include articles on
gaming are only part of the large transformation and expansion of
game studies taking place. Not only do blogs like Grand Text
Auto, Terra Nova, Gameology, and others use formats similar
to fan sites to study and discuss games, they also do so using language
that is both accessible to non-gamers and is presented in a format
that does not restrict access. Even when the discussions use technical
terminology and jargon, the open discussion format allows for clarification.
Like the movement of fandom publications from zines and newsletters
to online discussions, academic arguments can also move from the
more limited print journals to online journals and blogs. In turn,
game studies scholars could continue to utilise walkthroughs and
archives while academic game blogs could offer fans, game players,
and the game industry insight into game reception, representation,
and critique. However, in order for true cross-domain discussion
to occur, academia would need to support fan and fan-like endeavors,
offering some sort of publication or service rewards for scholars
who publish blogs, and offering support to archive and maintain
the often too ephemeral fan sites. Until then, game studies and
game fan cultures will continue to operate as parallel processes
with frequent, yet often unacknowledged, cross-over.
Author's Biography
Laurie N. Taylor studies games, comics, and visual rhetoric at
University of Florida. She is the author of multiple articles in
edited collections and in Game Studies, Works and Days, and Computers
and Composition Online. She also writes for The Gainesville Sun
and GamesFirst! She serves as an editor for ImageTexT and Gameology.org.
Notes
[1] For discussions of Nintendo's creation of a
fan culture, see David Sheff's Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped
an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children
(New York: Random House, 1993), and Chris Kohler's Power Up:
How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life (Indianapolis,
IN: Brady Games, 2004). [back]
[2] The value of CliffsNotes, like Wikipedia, as
pedagogical tools is contentious because these resources can be
used to avoid engaging with the original text. The particular resource,
for instance a particular CliffsNotes or particular literary text
with scholarly readings, also tend to suggest a certain way of reading
a text - often through specific theoretical approaches. [back]
[3] Along with the several lengthy pages on composing
and submitting walkthroughs, GameFAQs provides pages for
hints, cheats, and game credits submissions. As a new media form,
games often do not provide full attribution in the games themselves
or within the game paratextual materials. Thus, if a researcher
were interested in looking at all games made in connection with
a particular conceptual artist, that researcher would have difficulty
operating through the normal academic channels like the primary
texts and game journalism. However, the fan networks through sites
like GameFAQs, Moby Games, and Wikipedia provide
a partial solution because they allow fans to research and submit
this information. Thus, game studies students and researchers can
work in concert with thousands of fans who are all researching and
compiling information. Similarly, if a game studies scholar finds
information on a particular conceptual artist or game developer,
the scholar can submit that information to sites like GameFAQs
so that fans and researchers can mutually benefit. [back]
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