Part One:
Today’s readings talk about fans and their involvement in producing game culture. Provide a short synopsis of the articles assigned for today’s class, and consider the notion of participatory culture. How is this important to our discussion? How does this fit into theories we’ve talked about in relation to audience studies?
Reading # 1:
Fantasy Baseball: A Case for Competitive Fandom
Halverson & Halverson, (2008)
Fantasy baseball as postmodern fandom.. instead of watching sports as a passive audience, the fans are able to utilize old and new media. Traditional statistics gathering with online tools, forums, and communities. Fantasy baseball has gathered extreme press and popularity over the years due to its competitive factor as a game and the inclusion of baseball fan’s love of sports stats. It has become a culture that consumes and produces things such as books, membership clubs, advice blogs, etc. The article stresses that being a fan is different than being a fantasy fan. Fantasy players must view and understand the game separately from just a favourite team. Fantasy gaming becomes a participatory culture because players control elements of the fantasy game. They take on roles as owners/managers in position to make decisions. It includes elements of community as fantasy baseball players interact with other players via forums, places, and websites. The connection that gamers make to trade stats and offer tips becomes completely incorporated with Web 2.0. Also, fantasy baseball gamers are able to have control over rules of the game, for example some make hitting home runs easier in order to make the game more exciting.
Reading # 2:
Computer Game Modding, Intermediality and Participatory Culture
Sotamaa
Sotamaa looks at “new types of authorship, new distribution models and new relationships between producers and consumers.” He makes an interesting point that games cannot simply just be called readable texts because they cannot only be read or watched but they must be played, which signals the importance of gamers/players from the beginning. Game modding refers to gamer created designs or modifications for already popular games on the market. Gaming innovation by players need not only be technological, and can also instruct gaming norms & practices.
Gaming mods are not just fun little creations, sometimes entirely new games are created and sold due to the community of gamers working on them. The relationship is complicated between gamers and corporate game owners. Gamers as a participatory culture have been accepted now as a part of participatory production. Importantly, “a participant is never fully independent in her actions but operates only through collaboration and negotiation.” (Sotmaa, 15). Therefore there is still a complex power struggle between gamers and game owners, where game owners want to maintain some form of control over their product while still allowing and profiting off of gamer made mods.
Reading # 3:
Postigo, 2007
Postigo’s article is similar to Sotamaa’s as it discusses the relationship between game modders and corporate gaming companies. Importantly, the reading asks of the power balance/imbalance between the two parties. Are games more commercially profitable because of independent mods or because they were already a popular game, they attracted more modders? Either way, the mod phenomenon definitely pushes the shelf life of any game. Postigo concludes by noting that both parties benefit from the relationship of fan-modders and gaming companies... but that this relationship must maintain itself to be fair and embraced. Therefore, both must continue to benefit (association/popularity/references/money) The reading also touches upon participatory culture/production where game modders get together to form a community with a similar interest. When interests are not in favour for the modders, this community can band together to stand up to the gaming companies, if necessary.
Participatory Culture:
These readings clearly give examples of popular modes of participatory culture in our society. All readings reference Henry Jenkin’s work on participatory culture.
“Jenkins suggests that these trends are altering ‘the way media consumers relate to each other,
to media texts, and to media producers’.” (Sotamaa, 1)
All three readings concluded that neither the players/modders were independent or totally reliable on the game/gaming company. Importantly, gaming cannot be ignored! It is not just a phenomenon on YouTube, Facebook, or Flickr but participatory culture is an important part of gaming in our lives. These readings also work against theories that place the audience as a passive blob absorbing all of the mass media without hesitation. Who knew?!
Part Two:
Find another serious game that is the same theme/topic as the one you’ve chosen. Give the name of the game and a link; how is this game different or the same? How does it compare or contrast? Is one better or more effective (in terms of perhaps game play, game mechanics or raising social awareness) than the other?
Sponsored by Chevron (wtf)
Industrial city where YOU choose how to meet energy demands. Higher scores gained by low impact on economy, environment, & security. Hovering over various energy sources available gives information: benefits & restrictions. After each round (15 years) there are various unexpected energy crisis that randomly effect your scoring.
The game is generally the same topic as Climate Challenge, but Energyville comes with more of a focus on energy generation/resources while Climate Challenge is overall more of a ‘well-rounded’ attempt to focus on global warming and emissions. Both games are strategy based and call upon the player to use their knowledge of resources, and environmental issues to make decisions that are environmentally friendly. Climate Challenge is ultimately more complex, but it is also marketed to a slightly older age group (18+ rather than 14+).
I argue that Climate Challenge is the better game, but that also may be due to my age (20). A weakness of Energyville is that the environmental information is limited, and the games seems too restrictive for choices by the player each level. Also, its kind of confusing placing the energy sources on the city. That makes it hard to keep track of how much of that resource you are using... it might be easier with meters you can raise and lower, or just with +1/-1 buttons as opposed to the drag and drop. Although, at the end you can compare your city to the top ranked cities, and view what they chose to play with. This increases Energyville’s value as a serious game because you can then learn from your mistakes. Climate Challenge is more effective because it allows itself to be a complex game. The points ranking system takes in more factors than that in Energyville. In effect, Energyville is almost too simple to learn from. It tells you the stats, but doesn’t incorporate them into the game play nearly as much as Climate Challenge does. Instead, you read them separately and most after you have completed playing. The target age group for Energyville is high school kids, who are learning calculus and chemistry, which makes me think that they need to be given more credit. I would lower the age specifications for Energyville to about 8+. Climate Challenge also makes global negotiations and political action into account using a public opinion factor that effects your score as president. Overall, I would say that Climate challenge beats out Energyville in terms of game play, game mechanics, and raising social awareness.
No comments:
Post a Comment