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John Banks, "Negotiating Cultural Participation in the New Media Environment: A Progressive Opportunity?" My PhD research, an ethnographic engagement with the relations among online gamer fans and game development companies, led me to take up a position as Online Community Development manager with the industry participant (Auran, a local game development company). This role provided a significant opportunity for both researching and participating in the shifting relations between media producers and consumers within the new media environment. The rapidly changing relationship between media consumers/fans and producers that is facilitated by new media technologies is often described as participatory culture. In the PC game industry for example, the fostering of dialogue and feedback relations by game developers with gamer fans throughout the design and production process is now called 'Participatory Design' and is quickly becoming an accepted if not integral part of a game development project. Gamers' activity in producing content for games is also now increasingly considered to be an important contributing factor to the commercial success of a game title. As fans and consumers, gamers are very much involved in the process of deploying new media technologies to appropriate, transform, create and re-circulate media content. Gamers demand and expect that game developers will facilitate and support their participation in the creation, distribution and circulation of games. The development and publishing companies on the other hand are currently struggling with the need to enlist gamers' participatory involvement in their game projects whilst simultaneously maintaining economic control over 'their' content and product. Is there a progressive opportunity emerging in the space of this tension that defines cultural participation in the new media environment? Can academic research contribute to the negotiation of relationships forming in this space? In this paper I will briefly discuss my progress in navigating these emerging relationships between academia, gamer fans and industry. Biography: John Banks is currently completing a PhD (ethnographic study of relations among a game development company and online gamer fans) in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. Since 2000 he has been employed in the position of Online Community Development Manager with Auran, a Brisbane based game development company. John is about to take up a management position with the Brisbane City Council (ourbrisbane.com), again in the field of online community development. Publications include "Gamers as Co-Creators: Enlisting the Virtual Audience - A Report from the Net Face". Mobilising the Audience. Eds. Mark Balnaves, Tom O'Regan and Jason Sternberg. UQP, 2002. |
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