Flew, T. (2003) 'New Media' ISBN 0195508599
Balnaves, M., O'Regan, T., and Sternberg, J. (ed.) (2002) Mobilising the Audience, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. ISBN 070223205X
Chapter Eight
Banks, John. (2002) Gamers as Co-creators: Enlisting the Virtual Audience - A Report from the Net Face,Queensland: University of Queensland Press.
John Banks explains in this chapter how the former paradigm of one-way communication through traditional marketing is giving way to open-ended exchanges between producer and consumer. Corporations are seeking feedback from consumers and audiences via email and interactive websites to actively manage the relationship between the broader online gaming fan base and the corporation. Banks describes recent initiatives implemented in the computer game industry to engage and interact with online gamers in ways that have never been done before. Auran, a computer game development company is observed within the chapter looking particularly at the online fans that unite around game products undergoing development and retail release. Furthermore Banks also looks at the emerging fan-created content being produced through the extensions and additions to the game software. Game development companies release for download from their websites or include with the retail release software package, game editing tools to be used by skilled and creative players to produce new material for the game. Banks discusses whether this emerging marketing tool is just an attractive money making strategy the corporations or is it actually concerned with the relationship of these hard-core gaming fans. This book will help me investigate similar cases that have been employed by companies in the gaming industry, and determine how the new online gaming technology has changed media audiences.
Nightingale, V. and Ross, K. (2003) Critical Readings: Media and Audiences, London: Open University Press. ISBN 0335211666
Part 3: Interactive audiences: Fans, cultural production and new media
This book provides a central concept about the 'audience' in context to both media and cultural studies. The book integrates some of the important developments in the history of audience and media studies and investigates how these events have transformed with new technologies. Nightingale also gives an insight to why vast sums of money are persistently spent by advertisers and broadcasters on audiences or consumers ‘wants’ and ‘needs’. Part three is concerned with the issue of new media and audience interactions with them. The chapter looks into the convergence of old technologies and the development of new media enabling people to be audiences in a greater variety of context. Nightingale believes today people are able to shape and vary their media engagements in more satisfying ways. She has recognised the expression of ‘intelligent community’ and how the fans are the explorers of the productive dimensions of cyberspace. They have been among the first fans to create opportunities to meet online, talk, and share ideas, information, images and creative work, and to establish fan-created content. This book will help me gain an understanding of how audiences are developing in relation to new media technologies. It will give me the opportunity to assess the theories about what it means to be an audience for interactive media.
Neuman, W.R. (1991) The Future of the Mass Audience New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521424046
Chapter 2: The logic of electronic integration
This book provides a historical perspective on how major technological developments have influenced public communication. Neuman looks into how humans now take for granted the nature of newspapers, books, magazines and other aged entertainment technology. The main issue within the book is whether the new electronic media will lead to a fragmentation or ‘demassification’ of the mass audience. Neuman believes that people who perceive the new media as a growing diversity of unique technologies have missed the point. The key to the new media is their interconnectedness. This book is a little dated for my topic; however because of its age I am able to compare it with the recent theories about new media technologies and its affect on society. Neuman provides a comprehensive study into how information technologies change the movement of the communication process which then leads to the fragmentation of the mass audience.
Erin Tainsh 16:40, 13 Aug 2004 (EST)
Humphreys, S. (2003) Online Multi-user Games: Playing for real, Brisbane: ANZCA 2003 (Conference 9-11 July 2003) http://oltfile.qut.edu.au/download.asp?rNum=1355111&fac=CI&OLTWebSiteID=KCB336&CFID=272544&CFTOKEN=76284550
This paper provides a detailed analysis on the central meaning of computer games in the perspective that the player is what animates this medium. In this analysis the game ‘text’ is only one element of a much larger and more open text created by playing. According to Humphreys ‘gamers create content’- through the action of playing and through creating new modes of play that are often appropriated and used by the gaming development companies. Humphreys believes that researchers need to turn their attention to the applications in new media that are really interactive, and that really do exploit the ‘newness’ of the online medium. This paper is about computer games, that draw on their audiences’ inputs, that require participation and give feedback and rewards. One of the major points in this paper is that the player in a configurative role is no longer appropriate to use in models for analyses that have been commonly been used in media and communication studies. These models are based on a linear producer/consumer trajectory with producers, text and consumers each seen as single areas of analysis. With new online gaming the consumers are developing into the creator meaning all linear lines become blurred. This paper will help my studies produce a sound understanding on the structural shifts of online gaming, highlighting the ways in which players have become increasingly a part of the ‘production’ of the text.
Jenkins, H. Interactive Audiences? The 'Collective Intelligence' of Media Fans, retrieved August 10, 2004, from http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/collective%20intelligence.html
In this paper Jenkins moves beyond the traditional media audience research by investigating how three new trends have altered the way consumers relate to each other, to media texts, and to media producers. These three trends are firstly new tools and technologies that enable the consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content. The second trend is a range of subcultures that promote Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media production, a discourse that shapes how consumers have developed these technologies. Lastly economic trends favouring the horizontally integrated media conglomerates which encourages the flow of images, ideas, and narratives across multiple media channels and demand more active modes of spectatorship. Jenkins believes that rather then talking about interactive technologies, we should document the interactions that occur amongst media consumers, between media consumers and media texts, and between media consumers and media producers. This new participatory culture is the central focus of my studies and will therefore help me gain a base understanding of the subject matter. The paper goes into more detail about how the online fan community and the interactive consumer integrate. This part of the article will prove to be the most important for my future studies.
Banks, J.(2003) "Negotiating Participatory Culture in the New Media Environment: Auran and the Trainz Online Community - An (Im)possible Relation" Ezine Journal, vol.17, no.8, retrieved August 10, 2004, from http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/banks.html
This article looks directly into the making, emergence and circulation of two online games the Trainz and Auran. Banks examines the rapidly changing relationship between media consumers/fans and media producers in new media technologies and the transformation in the dynamics of cultural participation. These shifting relations are forcing people to rethink the relationships between producer, consumers and media technologies and this is exactly what Banks does when he implements a case study on Trainz. Banks considers the participatory culture network that he was engaged with as a particular configuration or patterned network of heterogeneous materials. Banks focuses on how the participatory culture network forming around Trainz is made or constructed. Banks encounter with the producers of Trainz helps me gain an inside view on how the participatory culture operates within the gaming industry. The article helps me answer who is the consumer and who is the producer.
