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Video Game Fans as Textual Poachers
By Bobby Bokista - 01.01.05
EarthBound: about the game
Starmen.net was founded as EarthBound.net in 1999. On the website's information page, it is described by its two original webmasters as being created to provide "a large, central EarthBound site to help raise the level of quality of EarthBound-related content on the Internet." It switched to the name Starmen.net in 2000 because of a conflict of interest between the two founders and another webmaster. Founders reidman and Tomato, as they are known on the website11, aspired to make an outlet for creativity and discussion. Though Jenkins was writing about television, the way the "subculture cuts across traditional geographic and generational boundaries and is defined through its particular styles of consumption and forms of cultural preference," can be applied to video games fans as well.12 The founders understood that "the net
provides the ideal basis for the kinds of multi-authored and collaborative fantasies which are the core of fan cultural production."13
Their earliest designs of the website are extremely similar to those of today. An October 30th, 1999 archive of the website features the same content that is prominent currently on the site. Tomato and reidman urged readers to submit content such as fan fiction, fan art, comics, flukes (altered screen images from the game), theories concerning elements of the story, and to talk to each other on the forum. News posts on the front page detailing the changes to the site and links to new fan submissions functioned as a way to display the interactivity of the website. News posts like EBounding's "Get your weekly, healthy dose of people's comments regarding EarthBound
[and] be sure to send in YOUR comments and questions too!" encouraged participation in order to improve the community. "Ok guys. As you know, the HFF99 [Halloween Fun Fest 1999] section will be taken down soon. But don't worry! Your stuff will not be leaving [deleted] too," wrote MoldySpore on the same day.14 By identifying the reading public as a "your," the staffers, as they are called, hoped to foster the sense of a singular audience, each with equal stake in the progression of the website. They also hoped to foster an audience willing to participate in textual poaching in order to provide content for the website.
11People often go by fake names called handles on websites. reidman and Tomato are both examples of this. Names found in the discussion of fan fiction and art are also handles.
12 Jenkins. Textual Poachers
13 "The Poachers and the Stormtroopers: Cultural Convergence in the Digital Age." Henry Jenkins. Talk presented at the University of Michigan, Spring 1998. Transcript from http://www.strangelove.com/slideshows/articles/The_Poachers_and_the_Stormtroopers.htm
14 Archive.org, November 11, 1999.
Home
Introduction
Studying as a Fan
Textual Poaching
EarthBound
Forming a Community
What Poachers Make
The Perfect Poach / Conclusion
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