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Playing Fans:
Fans are everywhere: from Fifty Shades of Grey to Veronica Mars, from Comic-Con to sitcom, from niche to Geek Chic, fans are becoming the most visible and important audience of the twenty-first century. For years the media industries ignored fans and fan activities, but now they’re paying attention and a lot of money to develop a whole new wave of products intended to harness the power of fandom. What impact do such corporate media efforts have on fan practice and fan identities? And are the media industries actually responding to fans as fans want them to?
In Playing Fans, Paul Booth argues that the more attention entertainment businesses pay to fans, the more mainstream fans have become popularized. But such mainstreaming ignores important creative fan work and tries to channel fandom into activities lucrative for the companies. Offering a new approach to the longstanding debate about the balance between manipulation and subversion in popular culture, the author argues that we can understand the current moment best through the concepts of pastiche and parody. This sophisticated alternative to conceiving of fans as either dupes of the media industry or rebels against it takes the discussion of “transformative” and “affirmative” fandom in a productive new direction.
With nuanced analyses of the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, the representations of fans in TV shows like Community and films like Fanboys, SuperWhoLock fans’ use of gifs, and the similarities in discussions of slash fandom and pornographic parody films, this book reveals how fans borrow media techniques and media industries mimic fan activities. Just as the entertainment industry needs fans to succeed, so too do fans need—and desire—the media, and they represent their love through gif fics, crowdfunding, and digital cosplay. Everyone who wants to understand how consumers are making themselves at home in the brave new world being built by the contemporary media should read this book.
Reviews:
“Playing Fans is a thoughtful and important book which will provoke debate and which will, crucially, move analysis on in relation to ‘transformative’ fandom.”—Matt Hills, Aberystwyth University
“Playing Fans offers close analysis of several intriguing case studies that demonstrate how fans and producers meet in complex and conflict-ridden ways…. Booth’s focus on spaces and productions where professional and amateur creation meet and overlap makes an especially important intervention.”—Alexis Lothian, University of Maryland, College Park
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Game Play:
The 21st century has seen a board game renaissance. At a time when streaming television finds millions of viewers, video games garner billions of dollars, and social media grows ever more intense, little has been written about the rising popularity of board games. And yet board games are one of our fastest growing hobbies, with sales increasing every year. Today's board games are more than just your average rainy-day mainstay. Once associated solely with geek subcultures, complex and strategic board games are increasingly dominating the playful media environment.
The popularity of these complex board games mirrors the rise of more complex cult media products. In Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games, Paul Booth examines complex board games based on book, TV, and film franchises, including Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, The Hunger Games and the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. How does a game represent a cult world? How can narratives cross media platforms? By investigating the relationship between these media products and their board game versions, Booth illustrates the connections between cult media, gameplay, and narrative in a digital media environment.
Reviews:
Having chosen a Cylon Leader character, Booth commandeers a fine act of infiltration, working licensed board games' way into the Galactica of media studies, showing exactly how and why it matters - both by itself and as an outgrowth of other media properties - as successfully as an unchecked centurion edging down the boarding party track on its way to certain victory. Highly recommended. (Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts)
Licensed board games based on popular media franchises have long been considered bereft of creative output, if they were considered at all. Paul Booth challenges that assumption by delving deeply and respectfully into that world, arguing for more nuanced considerations of board games as paratextual adaptations of their respective universes. Bringing together studies of fandom, media universes and games, Game Play offers a sustained and rewarding examination of contemporary licensed board games. (Mia Consalvo, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design, Concordia University, Canada)
Paul Booth's Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games is a ground-breaking piece of work. Demonstrating a keen eye for detail, critical analysis and genuine affection for the art of play Booth has produced a much-needed book that shines light on an often overlooked area of popular culture. With chapters on major franchise board games like Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings and those based on acclaimed weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft Game Play offers us new ways of understanding the joys and social practices of board game culture. Fans and scholars alike will want to read this - and then go break out the dice! (Lincoln Geraghty, Reader in Popular Media Cultures, University of Portsmouth, UK)
