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Diggy Holes and Jaffa Cakes: The rise of the elite fan-producer in video-gaming

culture

Esther MacCallum-Stewart, University of Surrey

Abstract

Online communities have developed rapidly in the last few years, and key to this is their

growing visibility outside the game itself. Fan conventions, cosplay, videos on YouTube

and gamer ‘chic’ are becoming increasingly prevalent parts of mainstream culture. This

article investigates the growth of these groups through a discussion of ‘fan-producers’:

gamers who make videos, machinima and webcasts. Specifically, it examines the role of

the group The Yogscast, and the game Minecraft, in developing the relationship between

game and fan. It also argues that the self-supporting nature of the gaming community has,

despite some notable issues, started to change the ways in which gaming is perceived and

developed. The player now takes an active role in the development and dissemination of

many games – especially indie titles such as Minecraft – and this in turn is changing the

ways in which the game text is interpreted.

Keywords

online communities

social networks

fan studies

videogames

game studies

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Internet studies

Introduction: ‘Someone a fan made’

Lewis Brindley: What I will do; is on the Yogpod, I will just play that audio so

everyone can listen. So; this is the new Yogs theme:

Yohimitsu: I’m downloading it, just hang on. So you’re seriously using someone

a fan made?

B: (correcting him) A Fan Mail. Yeah! (laughs)

Y: ‘cos like, real artists will never use something a fan says to do.

B: I know, I know. ‘Cos most fans are like totally completely nuts and VERY

weird, like most of our fan base...

Y: (laughs)

Play music.

(Brindley and Lane 2009)

T. L. Taylor and Emma Witkowski argue that examining player behaviour is crucial in

order to examine ‘[the] transitional state we are in with regard to both game and geek

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culture’ (2010: 7). Players, and the changes in their behaviour, are becoming increasingly

important markers of the growing sophistication of gaming and gamer culture. Scholars

such as H. Thornham (2011), T. L. Taylor (2006, 2008), C. Artemesia Pearce (2009), M.

Consalvo (2007) and R. Kozinets (2009) have all indicated different approaches to

gamers, all of which consider their behaviour in some part away from the game itself,

positioning them in a broader theoretical and cultural context. This article examines the

player activity and community development that has arisen around key celebrities within

the gaming industry. I will examine the role of players in creating and sustaining these

communities, and also more closely discuss how these spokespeople and celebrities are

usually generated by the community itself, rather than created by media corporations.

Interrogating the ways in which these communities form, their behaviour and their role-

models, is a useful way to examine how online gaming groups form dynamic

communities. It also problematizes the understanding of online gamers, in that these

groups are creating new modes of expression and activity, engendered by their close

relationships with the ideologies of gaming itself, which are not yet understood outside

the gaming sphere. This article will contextualize this argument via two interconnected

examples. Minecraft (2009–) is frequently hailed as a success story for community

empowerment, and developer Mojang is keen to stress that endorsement and publicity of

their game has arisen entirely from community development, not marketing. Whether this

is true or not, a huge populace exists around Minecraft; a game with no tutorial, an

infamously precipitous learning curve, and few ludic objectives. The game has a huge,

extremely proactive following of fans whose ethos to ‘build, mine and create’ extends far

beyond play within the world.

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At the same time, the rise of Minecraft has coincided with a grassroots movement in

which gamers are starting to promote themselves through web or livecasting. This has

become an extremely popular way for gamers to keep up with news, watch each other

play, review and discuss games, and coalesce into more esoteric groups. Specifically, I

will look at the rise of the Yogscast, a trio of webcasters whose humorous series Shadow

of Israphel (videos available from the YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/BlueXephos) catapulted them into the gaming spotlight.

By the end of 2011, they had gone from relative insignificance to becoming the most

subscribed YouTube channel in the United Kingdom, and in early 2013, each daily video

released receives up to a million hits. This is partly as a result of the charismatic,

entertaining nature of the three main presenters, but is also indicative of a gaming

community desperate to find spokespeople able to represent them in articulate, visible

ways.

The growth of the Yogscast, and of Minecraft, can both be seen as symptomatic of wider

trends in gaming. They point to a community that lacks cohesion, and yet yearns for

form. They also demonstrate the proactive nature of gaming fans (or fan-producers), who

are willing to elevate members of their own community due to perceived merit. By taking

into account fan studies, most notably those by Henry Jenkins (1992, 2006, 2013) and

Matt Hills (2002, 2006), as well as a more immediate study of the fan-texts produced by

these players, it is possible to reformulate an understanding of the game text and to

examine how players manipulate and change it for positive ends. This manipulation

begins with modders, hackers and pro-gamers, but more recently has expanded to include

those who re-interpret the narrative of the game text in a fannish way for example

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through role-play, machinima, cosplay and the creation of adventure story maps or quests

for games that hitherto did not contain any. By ‘positive ends’, I mean for the player’s

own sense of cultural capital; thereby eschewing previous discussions of fan texts in

games that tend to see them as either politically motivated (or contained), or financially

driven by either the gamer or the games company who allow their dissemination (see e.g.

several of the chapters in Lowood et al. 2011, most notably that by Schott and Yeatman).

Overall, the article argues for a re-evaluation of player behaviour alongside the game,

and sees this behaviour as symptomatic of how player culture is not only developing

incrementally, but is increasingly being absorbed into more mainstream leisure pursuits.

This development has huge implications for the ways that games are played and

consumed by their users.

Finally, this article takes into account comments by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de

Peuter, in Games of Empire (2009), in which they argue that the corpus of research

surrounding Game Studies has allowed it to enter a stage whereby we should be

examining games in a more temperate and mature manner, given the wealth of research

already available to us. Blanket statements such as ‘games are violent’, ‘games are

educational’, as well as the polarity of debates like ‘narratology vs ludology’ can now be

abandoned in favour of more nuanced examples that take into account the complexity of

games and game play. Investigating the equally complicated ways in which players

understand and reform games seems an excellent way to demonstrate this.

‘Screw the Nether’: The changing face of gaming culture

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As mainstream culture increasingly becomes network culture, as computer games

continue to make their way into everyday life, and as shared cultural experience is

at least in part formed through remixes and memes we find online, the border

between an otherwise marginal game/geek subculture and mainstream culture is

increasingly blurred. (Taylor and Witkowski 2010)

To all the ass-hat jocks who beat me up in school

Now I’m the one that’s cool, I’m the one that’s cool.

To all the prom queen bitches thinking they still rule,

Now I’m the one that’s cool; I’m the one that’s cool.

(Day and Whedon 2012)

In ‘This is how we play it: What a mega-LAN can teach about games’ (2010), T. L.

Taylor and Emma Witkowski call into question the relationship between game

spectatorship and player. They argue that it is disingenuous to see these stances as

oppositional, as the player-spectator cycles through a number of positions as they watch

and take part in games. This paper aims to address one of these areas by examining the

activity of fan-producers outside of the game text, in their rising capacity as gaming

celebrities and spokespeople for the gaming community at large. It also aims to provide

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an argument for why such players are becoming an important part of the gaming

landscape. Celebrity gamers and developers are increasingly having an influence over

how games are viewed by others, and the modes through which they are consumed. This

echoes Bourdieu’s concept of cultural and symbolic capital, in that these groups act as

new gatekeepers and paratexts to inform cultural reception.

Although considerable work exists on the behaviour of players in and around games, this

cross-pollination; in which the player takes an active part in the game and then

demonstrates it to others, is a relatively new phenomenon. However, it would be incorrect

to state that this is through neglect – more that gaming has become such a complex

cultural activity that numerous possibilities for study exist. Unleashed into a more

permissive environment in which geek chic is increasingly part of mainstream culture,

gaming culture has become much more diverse. As an example, Garry Crawford’s recent

book Gamers (2011) devotes an entire chapter to exterior play, yet still only (!) has time

to acknowledge cosplay, server communities, mods and hacks, textual productivity,

walkthroughs, fan fiction, player guides and art in his chapter. He acknowledges that:

a consideration of such practices is important in video game studies as it expands

the study of games beyond the screen and recognises that videogaming is so much

more than simply the interaction of one or two individuals with a video game

machine. (2011: 120)

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This belief is shared by many of the scholars currently researching player behaviour or

social gaming topics. In the Machinima Reader (2011), authors Henry Lowood and

Micheal Nitsche argue that player activity is developing so quickly that cohesive studies

are very difficult to gather, and acknowledge that their book should be regarded as a

useful springboard for future research. In the same volume, G. Schott and B. Yeatman

start to develop this, although they see the relationship between gamer and the resultant

fan text primarily as a fiscal, rather one-sided relationship:

Developers have enabled fans and players to absorb and translate game-

playing practises into another form of cultural activity, namely, the

production of machinima works that combine emergent digital authorship

with cultural appropriation in a manner that seamlessly and effectively

integrates and absorbs other texts. (Schott and Yeatman 2011: 312)

One of the core reasons for this lack of writing is the rapidity with which gamers produce

new texts. As Jenkins argues, gamers are natural early adopters of transmedial technology

(Jenkins 1992), and therefore use a hugely diverse series of tools and methods to express

ideas about gaming. Previous scholarship often keeps research within the confines of

obvious structures such as guilds or clans, as this allows clear research findings to be

discussed about each group. When scholarship does move beyond these arenas, clearly

delineated sites and social groups such as forums (Whiteman 2009) migrating gamers

(Pearce 2009) or households (Thornham 2012) provide useful loci in order to ground

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research observations, whereas deviant practices such as cheating (Consalvo 2007), gold-

farming (Taylor 2006; Mortensen 2008) or theorycraft (Karlsen 2011) help identify

unacceptable or different modes of play. ‘Gamers’ as a whole are recognized as a group

too diverse to classify. Taylor (2012) is one of the only researchers at present examining

gamers in a wider context (of the e-sports community).

Although generalizing about the game player is a dangerous thing to do, several notable

changes in the ways that gamers understand the games that they play have become visible

recently. Research of YouTube viewing habits by gamers has shown that over 90 per cent

watch some form of online video to inform their understanding of games (Mills 2012).

At the same time, the gamer is emerging as a consumer capable of manipulating products

that they deem unsatisfactory; for example, new endings for Mass Effect 3 (BioWare

2012) were produced when the original ones were considered such poor quality by

players. Many development companies now release games in a ‘beta’ phase whereby

players can give feedback about play prior to release. Although this technique can be

slightly disingenuous, with AAA companies releasing beta versions of games in virtually

complete iterations in order to generate hype, the indie community thrives on this

reciprocal relationship. Both beta testing and crowdfunding on sites such as Indiegogo

and Kickstarter have allowed Indie gaming to become a more dominant force in the

gaming arena. As a result, gamers expect to be a proactive force within the gaming world

as well as simply consumers of its products, and are looking to their own communities in

order to evaluate their relative worth. This is demonstrated by both the popularity of

Minecraft, which epitomizes the rags to riches evolution of an indie gaming title through

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its community input, and through the rise of YouTube celebrities who vocalize the

gamer’s desires and provide role models for them to emulate.

‘Form this Way’: How we play

Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for

intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality – that is,

finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol – this

disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death,

writing begins. (Barthes 1967)

Cos baby tonight, the Creeper’s gonna steal all your stuff again.

Cos baby tonight; grab you pick, shovels and bolts again.

And run run until it’s done done; until the sun comes up in the morn.

Cos baby tonight, the Creeper’s gonna steal all your stuff again.

(CaptainSparklez 2011)

‘Lewis, we’re going to save the world’.

(Lane, in Brindley and Lane 2011)

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Games encourage players to be heroes; to perform extraordinary deeds and win against

apparently insurmountable odds. Others encourage them to create or slowly obtain

elements that demonstrate a huge engagement with a particular style of play; elements

that players are proud of. However, for some, there is little joy in being a hero, or in

building something amazing without being able to share with others. Achievements and

finishing points intentionally provide the player with tangible rewards for completion or

other objectives. Feeling heroic, or being put in a situation that appears to endorse

heroism, is not always enough, and as has been argued elsewhere, the risk (or lack of it)

in games, as well as the genuinely heroic moment, is much rarer in games than we might

be led to believe (Conway and Stewart, conversation, UTM 2012). In single player games

however, visibly demonstrating this prowess – even if others are present elsewhere, for

example on Skype or team chat – is difficult. As a result, players are moving away from

the text itself in order to chronicle these events.

The location of the player is a useful concept to interrogate as it stands for two things.

First, gamers are not usually in direct contact with each other, so much so that studies

often discuss the novelty (or difficulty) of interviewing test subjects face to face (Taylor

2008; Pearce 2009; Brown 2012). Despite this, games are profoundly social – and

sociality is used in many games and games platforms to retain players. The DLC platform

Steam, for example, allows players to see each other when they log on and off, to chat

whilst in game both textually and verbally, and to compare each other’s’ playtime and

achievements. The focus here is on encouraging the player to believe that they are

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playing within a communal sphere – even when they might be taking part in a single

player experience. Similarly, many MMOs rely on creating long-standing communities

with strong friendship ties to each other, a technique that often keeps them playing for

longer than they might otherwise do as content becomes old and repetitive.

Initially, this chronicling took the form of walkthroughs, posts on forums and later,

machinima. However, recording or otherwise doctoring the game text became

increasingly easy through player developed tools such as FRAPS and Audacity, which

capture video and commentary by the player as the game is played. A walkthrough is

after all, much more easily explained if the viewer can actually see what the author is

doing. Coincidentally, in April 2012, YouTube changed the way in which users could

become partners, making it much easier to accomplish. Partnership allows both YouTube

and the creator of each video to gain financially from page views, as well as providing a

‘channel’ that acts as a hub for all the author’s videos, and allows subscription from

viewers. It also permits the downloading of longer videos, an important element for

recordings such as walkthroughs which may last the length of an encounter or level rather

than the previously prescribed maximum of eleven minutes. Before launching into an

investigation of the two case studies and discussing how they link with these changes, it

is worth examining how, and why play has evolved to such a hands-on process.

It is not the intention of this paper to reformulate ideas of play, as this is far too

complicated a theoretical can of worms to unleash. Instead, a recognition that play does

take place within most games is assumed, as is the understanding that this play may not

necessarily be that which was intended by the developer. R. Barthes’ Death of the Author

(1967) provides a useful concept here, as the game is reformed by the understanding (and

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sometimes literal reconfiguration) of the reader who plays it, rather than carrying out its

original function. Alternative play practices might include experimentation, modification

and various forms of feedback to others; actions that place the player in a more active

role that may change the original text. What is also important here is that the player

usually provides a secondary narrative over the original one; their walkthrough

commentary explains and changes the intent or direction of the game, for example, and

sometimes the chatter recorded over the game footage simply does not match that of the

game itself. It is this re-imagination of the text that helped to make the Yogscast stand out

amongst their peers.

One assumption mentioned before is that most gaming is social; and this includes single

player games. This might seem an odd assertion until one considers how play takes place

within these games, and the secondary functions that are mapped over them. Players and

developers often render their gaming experiences communal, from sharing achievements

and friending each other on Facebook and Steam, to chatting on Skype. Gaming

platforms have made socialization an intrinsic part of their structure. Hubs such as Home,

X-Box Live and Pictochat allow players to meet, form groups and play together, with

other games automatically grouping people together in order to play. Even when playing

alone, we are constantly reminded that we are in fact ‘together’, through chat channels

suddenly lighting up with other people’s achievements, to the blip of a pop-up that shows

me someone has come online in Steam. Lastly, we can also consider the ways that we

might be spectating someone else’s game – many MoBAs, for example, now allow

players to remotely view matches in progress – as a social activity, albeit one where we

are sometimes an invisible participant.

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This socialization is reflected by player behaviour – research into device usage shows

that we often have up to four different devices active at any one time; i.e. we are playing,

chatting, checking our mail, watching television screens and in all probability, working

simultaneously (Mills 2012). As I write this article, I have Steam open, I am listening to a

Yogscast video ‘with one ear’, and my flatmate sits across from me, talking to guild

teammates on Skype; all of these are entirely natural actions and occur on a daily basis.

Our relationships with games are dynamic; we are used to negotiating multiple screens

and permutations during play, often shifting rapidly between them. This is supported by

the growing number of games that are played through these non-dedicated devices; for

example games on Facebook or apps on our phones. These permutations are becoming so

embedded in our technology that we often scarcely notice that we have moved between

platforms, or sometimes, that we are still playing.

The integration of gaming across these multiple platforms, as well as its pervasiveness

across a variety of media means that not only are gamers intensely transmedial in their

play habits, but that play has transformed these media. Their differing communicative

styles have a reciprocal relationship as the player has become used to giving feedback in

a number of ways on their play activities. The development of the gaming genre to

include such commercial aspects as Gamification, networking, ubiquity and affordability

have a lot to answer for here, as play becomes work and vice versa, and their integration

into many otherwise unrelated products means that play becomes a feedback loop in and

of itself. Robert Jones describes this process as transformative play:

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Because transformative play insists that cultural production is an ongoing organic

process that ebbs and flows between producers and consumers, it presents a new

theoretical approach to fans that requires further exploration. (Hellekson and

Busse in Jones 2006: 278)

Therefore, changes in the way that the player understands the text as a dynamic process

means that there is a movement towards the player as producer. Whilst not every player

will produce texts of merit, if indeed they produce anything, their relationship with the

text encourages them to feel that this is a naturalized part of the play experience.

Minecraft: ‘Created by a single man...’

The free movement of play alters the more rigid structure in which it takes shape.

The play doesn’t just occupy the interstices of the system, but actually transforms

the space as a whole. (Salen 2002)

My best friend told me a year ago,

He’d found an awesome game

I bought a code and when I logged on,

It was a giant world made up of blocks.

I turned my render distance up to ‘Far’.

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He said ‘Let’s go build an epic base!’

Roof over head with a wooden door.

That’s when I stood up and said:

‘I’m so in love with this game, don’t care if I sound lame’

I load up Minecraft, all the blocks just form this way.

(Littlewood 2011)

Over seven million people have bought Minecraft, outselling most AAA titles. On 28

May 2012, over two years after its first release, 92,048 people registered accounts, and

11,707 people bought the game outright (Minecraft front page 2012). Minecraft, a

sandbox adventure game by Mojang Specifications (2009–) is often cited as the paragon

of indie gaming, reflecting the huge power of the community and the ability of small,

home-grown titles to triumph over the AAA industry. Markus Persson, the game’s only

designer, left a job in the gaming industry in order to develop the game, using player

feedback and suggestions to correct issues and add new content. His presence at the

centre of the design process as a buffoonlike, shy geek sometimes capable of outspoken

rants on Twitter gained approval from the gaming community at large. The potential of

Minecraft as a game with a blank tableau, where players could mine, create and build

(and try not to get blown up) captured the imagination of gamers; and the willingness of

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Persson (or Notch, as he was now more commonly known) to allow modifications and

listen to fan input meant that Minecraft gained huge approbation from a community

longing to be listened to.

Alex Leavitt argues that Minecraft is possibly one of the oddest hits ever (2011). It is a

game with no learning curve or tutorial, and no fixed narrative beyond that provided by

the rural, semi-fantasy world and a day/night cycle. The game has no apparent objectives,

no quests or NPCs, and no clear end point (all of these aspects were added in humorous,

and entirely flippant ways later in the game’s development). Communication is

rudimentary, limited to a general chat channel, and players had to host their own servers

in order to play.

However some elements of the game immediately made it stand out from other titles.

Unlike many other virtual worlds, Minecraft does not rely on microtransactional

payments in order to succeed, and Persson promised buyers that they would only ever be

expected to buy the game once – from then on, every update would be free. Minecraft is

first and foremost, a sandbox building game, where everything can be destroyed and

rebuilt. The building materials are entirely formed from cubic ‘blocks’, meaning that

visualizing finished objects is much easier than manipulation of the complex modelling

‘prims’ of Second Life. Equally, each material has a relatively straightforward usage;

wood can be made into sticks and planks, for example, and scales in an obvious manner;

diamond is the hardest substance available, gravel cannot be attached to other stone as it

‘just falls down’, and so on and so forth. However it was the inclusion of the diurnal

cycle and the fact that hostile monsters come out at night, which changed the game from

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a simple building simulation to something more complex. These monsters chase the

player, and the explosive Creeper is also capable of destroying anything beside it when it

detonates. Thus, the tension between the destructive potential of monsters and

protectivism for the player’s creations provided a point of ludic antagonism from a game

which had hitherto been largely formed of paeidic experimentation. In order to survive,

the player must build a shelter, and preferably light it with torches before nightfall,

ensuring that the player offsets their daytime activities with those that protect them from

harm at night.

From the start, Notch encouraged the player to feel as if they were an active agent in the

text; beginning when he launched the game through the on TIGSource.com website for

indie developers, and sustained by his continual updates and work through Twitter.

Minecraft remained in beta for over a year, but it was an open beta in which Notch

listened to suggestions and encouraged players to get involved. In this way he retained

his persona as a ‘geek of the people’, sustained a loyal fan base, and got his game

playtested. This was aided by his sometimes outspoken and rather ill-chosen diatribes

against big name companies, including challenging Bethesda to a Quake III match when

they sued him over use of the word ‘Scrolls’, and the fact that he paid the community

back for their support, contributing large amounts of money to the Humble Indie

movement. The low price point and experimental nature of Minecraft in its first year also

influenced movements such as Kickstarter, by proving that Indie developers had both

integrity and skill. Notch was also accepting of other developments. He allowed players

to make their own wiki and guides, lacking both the funds and the inclination to do so

himself. He also gave the modding community relatively free reign with the game,

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sometimes adopting their changes, and at other times allowing vastly complex alterations

to the game to simply exist alongside it.

The elevation of Minecraft and Notch is symptomatic of the search for icons in gaming.

This article goes on to specifically discuss the rise of The Yogscast within this

framework, but it is also worth noting that celebrities such as Will Wheaton, Felicia Day,

Total Biscuit, Captain Sparklez and Jenna Marbles are all members of the gaming

community and Internet stars who have been ‘adopted’ by the community, and who have

become elevated through a combination of self-promotion and fan activity. YouTube,

iTunes and blogging all rely on user ‘upvotes’ that push them up the charts and spread

popularity through word-of-mouth to become popular; thus the relationship between fan

and fannish celebrity has become more reliant on positive mass endorsement to succeed.

Within this formation, Notch was visible, and identifiable as a hero – he was the gaming

maverick who could, who refused to forget his roots. His self-promotion through Twitter

and on various forums spoke more directly to fans than other mavericks in the gaming

field had done previously; Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier and Will Wright are all known as

similar gaming icons, but they do not have as close a relationship to their user base. The

image of the genius inventor, alone in his (gaming) lab therefore became much closer, as

the willing test subjects happily threw themselves at the electric current (as an aside, it is

worth noting the gendered bias of this construction, of both inventor and player, but there

is not time here to investigate this fully). As a result, the community that grew up around

Minecraft plays an essential part in the development of contemporary gamer culture.

Minecraft is very much created by fans – in particular by players who recorded their

achievements and changed the game for their own ends. Some simply built huge

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creations on their servers; other designed adventure maps or games such as Spleef

(Greenslimy et al. 2009) where opponents try to knock the ground from under their

opponents’ feet, and some made long, rambling stories about their adventures. Hundreds

of them recorded these exploits, and it is to one of these stories in particular that this

article now turns.

‘Lewis, we’re going to save the world’: The rise of the fan-producer

Big Name Fans is one of the fan-cultural or subcultural terms for fans who

have attained a wide degree of recognition in the community, and so who

are known to others via subcultural mediation without personally knowing

all those other subcultural participants. (Hills 2006: 9)

… when people go onto YouTube, and they’re like ‘oh God, we’re never

going to kill Mu’ru; I’ll go onto YouTube and see if there are any good

guides out there’. Then they go on, and they find me talking about sausages

on a stick, with absolutely no help; nothing whatsoever! (laughs). There was

some sort of delicious sadistic joy about misleading them into thinking they

were watching a proper guide. (Lane, interview).

Gaming is a decentralized activity. For players, finding spokespeople is difficult, largely

because gaming does not have a cohesive communication hub. Instead they are split and

split again (between games, between genres, between platforms, between servers, guilds

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and so on ad infinitum). Finding spokespeople is also difficult because players are used to

judging people on their relative merits as players. Chris Rojek discusses this at some

depth in Celebrity (2001), where he makes a useful distinction between the Achieved

Celebrity: in this case the meritorious player full of cultural capital, and the Attributed

Celebrity: a player or non-gamer thrust into this position who possesses none and often

becomes someone whom players are very quick to spot and vociferously discredit. In

some cases the latter has become an extremely contentious area of debate in gaming, for

example the gender war that has erupted around the ‘Fake Gamer Girl’ stereotype. This

debate, where female players and fans are derided for their perceived lack of authenticity

is partially a result of large gaming companies employing rather good-looking, but

ultimately poorly informed women to advertise their games, and from a core of gamers

who wish to preserve stereotypical views of gaming as belonging to male, white,

heterosexual gamers. This debate aside, perceptions of the Achieved Celebrity and

Attributed Celebrity are disrupted by the obvious caveat that most gaming icons are of

course fictional. Lara Croft may be a sex symbol, but her imaginary status means she has

no live ‘presence’, cannot turn up for premieres of her own games (unless she is an

actress in a costume pretending to be her), and does not have spontaneous merit (I

couldn’t ask her what her favourite game was or how to beat the boss in Cataclysm, for

example). However, all cultures have a need for spokespeople; of which celebrity is a

bastardized form. Gamers therefore have a real problem: finding these icons is difficult,

culturally they have an unfortunate tendency to obfuscate their own understandings of

authenticity, and there is no centralized media port from which these celebrities can arise.

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Although I said earlier that we like to be heroes in our games, there is another facet that

we experience over and over again. Everyone who has played games has probably been

blown up, drowned, accidentally fallen off a high cliff, missed a jump and plunged to

their death, been burned alive, eviscerated by aliens, got stuck in a corner, stood in the

fire, been eaten by a dragon or simply been overwhelmed when least expected. In short,

whilst we like being good at games, we are also very accustomed to failing at them and

the destruction of our avatars, cities and friends is an inevitable part of gaming. We rarely

complete a game on the first attempt, and dying is commonplace. Sometimes, much to

our chagrin, this is neither dignified nor heroic. However, we do take pleasure in these

events, especially when we see others suffering the same gristly fates as ourselves and

realize that actually, although playing games and succeeding is rewarding, failing and

dying, especially when it is others who are doing the dying, is often much, much funnier.

The Yogscast (initially two friends called Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley) were a

podcasting duo who had made a few videos of walkthroughs and World of Warcraft.

Although both were experienced gamers and were members of a high end WoW raiding

guild, neither really considered themselves expert gamers. Wishing to distinguish

themselves from the mass of webcasters suddenly making similar shows, they decided

instead to record themselves playing and chatting, eschewing technique for a more

familiar, friendly approach. After receiving an alpha invitation for Minecraft, they waited

until the game allowed multiple people on one server and began to record a how-to guide,

demonstrating the fundamental aspects of the game through trial and error.

However, all was not what it seemed. After several episodes, strange occurrences on their

server started to give the two pause for thought. Booby traps appeared in their house,

23

mysterious trees suddenly grew outside, and they began to receive sinister messages

suggesting that they were not alone. It quickly became apparent that someone had

invaded their server and was interfering with their exploits in strange, and not entirely

friendly ways. As the two explain:

We’d been playing these custom maps, and the thing is that they don’t have

active NPCs, and there was no easy way to make that. (Brindley, Interview)

...things were getting a bit boring. With a Minecraft walkthrough it starts off

quite interesting because you’re in a race to get shelter and to set yourself

up, but then once that’s done, then you’re not really in an awful lot of

danger ... things were in danger of getting a bit stale. (Lane, Interview)

Shadow of Israphel, as the series became known, rapidly began to gather viewers

intrigued by the storyline, amused by the exploits of avatars Honeydew and Xephos, and

enchanted by the irreverent tone of the two presenters. The series, released ‘just around

tea-time’ on a daily basis, started to attract over one million viewers per episode. As it

gathered momentum, the two presenters started to record other videos; walkthroughs of

different Minecraft adventure maps, catastrophic playthroughs of games such as Portal 2

and Dead Island, and live recordings of their exploits at gaming conventions in order to

supplement the series and provide extra content. A year and a half later, they employed

24

over twenty people full time, had a presentation roster of nearly ten webcasters, and were

in the top twenty most subscribed channels on YouTube, having received over one billion

individual views on their main site. The Yogscast had become one of the most obvious

focal points in the gaming community, and its members had become high profile

celebrities within this sub-culture.

A quick analysis of the Yogscast’s success is necessary in order to understand the

importance of this new formation, and the reason why the group became so popular. The

direct mode of address used in the videos suggests an intimate environment where the

perceived ability (or lack of it) of the two hosts becomes a unifying element. The viewer

is privy both to moments of surprise and failure, sharing them with the two, but also able

to regard them from a distance and potentially anticipate these. The obvious friendship

between Brindley and Lane, and their engagement with a gaming ‘buddylect’ (Ensllin

2012) suggests both inclusion and a familiarity with games that acts as a form of cultural

capital. Spill cries (Conway 2013), over-excitement and delight or malaise with the game

help the audience identify with the typical joys and disappointments of gaming, albeit in

an exaggerated form. Most of the videos rely on the spontaneous nature of play, and a

naturalistic reaction to this by the participants. This is extremely carnivalesque in form,

so the viewer can revel in the excess of gaming conundrums such as the ludicrous nature

of bugs that allows avatars to squat obscenely over dead people, laugh cathartically when

Simon vindictively drops Lewis in the acid during a particularly trying level of Portal 2,

or simply enjoy the ridiculous tension of both players being chased by an old lady

wielding a piece of bacon.

25

Despite their professed poor technique, it is obvious that both presenters have long-

standing experience with gaming and its associated tropes, and this is used to extended

effect within the videos. The relaxed conversations that take place during the gaming

experience are both familiar and emulative, with the two appearing to epitomize the

typical gamer: slightly socially inept, yet keenly aware of this. Their representations of

self support this – Brindley is neurotic and fussy, Lane self-conscious, lovelorn and

falsely bombastic.

Cornel Sandvoss sees the reciprocal behaviour in these texts, whereby the fan-player-

producer manipulates the text as a performative act, as symptomatic of emergent fan

practices:

Conceptualising fans as performers, rather than recipients of media texts

thus offers an alternative explanation of the intense emotional pleasures and

rewards of fandom. As the fabric of our lives is constituted through constant

and staged performances (Goffman 1959/1990), the self becomes a

performed, and hence symbolic, object. In this sense fandom is not an

articulation of inner needs or drives, but is itself constitutive of the self.

Being a fan in this sense reflects and constructs the self. (Sandvoss 2005:

48, original emphasis)

26

Sandvoss’ argument is useful, because it positions fans as performers who form an

identity through the text. This implies a subtle manipulation by the fan, who becomes

more engaged with their own creative practises. Game players fit well into this

construction since through play, they are already used to understanding the game as a

performed text, and have an understanding of their self as a player/avatar who occupies

various differing positions. The gaming fan exists in a liminal space in which they are

self-aware of this positioning and able to respond creatively to it (MacCallum-Stewart

2011).

Fan-producers such as the Yogscast epitomize these issues most clearly. Their ability to

represent themselves as typical gamers, even though they are nothing of the sort, is

integrated into their performance during each webcast. Indeed, their discursive

positioning of ‘normal’ behaviour in game culture is the performance. This is recognized

by fans who identify with the perceived normality of the presenters, whilst at the same

time wishing they could be as wry or generous when the opportunity demands. Because

the webcasts appear largely unedited, and simply comprise a segment of gameplay with

commentary over the top of it, viewers are encouraged to believe in a naturalist,

welcoming environment where the two hosts appear as friends and guides. It is easy to

see why they have become so popular, since this non-threatening approach endears them

to the many gaming fans who want to be entertained and to experience kinship through

the journey of discovery that playing a game can often be.

Conclusion

‘You can make anything you want to. You can make any game you want’

27

(Lewis Brindley, 2011)

The growth of people like Notch and the Yogscast, apparently unlikely heroes with huge

fan followings within the gaming sphere, is symptomatic of a trend in gaming whereby

the player yearns for authentic forms of representation that give them iconic, grassroots

idols to follow and to some extent, to dictate to them correct or aspirational forms of

behaviour. These Big Name Fans, who also produce and manage the creation of new

gaming texts, give new meanings to the genre as they reinscribe them from positions

beyond the game, and encourage their fans to do the same. The Yogscast now play

adventure maps on Minecraft that are often custom made for them, and Notch has a long-

standing relationship with players that encourages them to contribute meaningfully to the

game. Their actions are part of a growing trend in gaming whereby the game becomes an

accessory to multiple other arenas of performance, including those described in this

chapter.

These celebrities demonstrate the growing complexities of gaming culture. For gamers, it

is not simply the games themselves, but the growing body of narratives that surround

them; narratives the player feels that they can interact with in order to effect meaningful

change. The ordinariness of the people discussed is what makes them popular, yet they

are (self)represented as folk-heroes, especially when considering their reliance on

narratological stereotypes such as the positioning of Notch as a lone genius, Simon Lane

as a bumbling fool, and Wil Wheaton as the clever wise man or helper. The normality of

these people; their mistakes, angry outbursts and rants against bad behaviour or errors in

games also serves as a catalyst for other fan-producers. Thousands of videos on YouTube

emulating the Yogscast exist alongside an equally diverse number of mods and creative

28

builds within Minecraft. The rise of such groups, of Notch and of YouTube channels such

as Geek and Sundry (which reviews, discusses and satirizes geek culture) has given

gamers a proactive voice; encouraging the idea that the ‘humble’ gamer has power in an

industry that is increasingly listening, or having to listen to, the demands of its

consumers. These actions are potentially changing the face of gaming, and are certainly

reforming the ways they are consumed as transmedial texts.

It is however important to sound a note of caution against these behaviours. Dyer-

Witheford and De Peuter discuss how in the past, games have been regarded with a

critical focus that inappropriately eulogizes their positive or negative qualities in order to

make a point. This is not helpful for developing critical understandings of games as

complex texts. Minecraft has certainly suffered from this, with a rush to the colours

extolling its virtues. This led to several misapprehensions as rather standardized tropes

about ‘good’ games were applied. Claims that the game is highly educational (an

irritating justification for the merits of games at the best of times) were quickly applied in

order to justify Minecraft’s merit (Casey Chan’s ‘Could Minecraft actually be the

ultimate educational tool?’ (2013) provides a wonderful example of good, and bad

versions of this). Mods and adventure maps are sometimes discussed as though they were

an extraordinary part of the game invented by educationalists, rather than a commonplace

element created by fan-producers (Duncan 2011), and some writing makes basic

misunderstandings about the game; for example J. Potts and J. Banks (2010) imply that

the game is a single player experience, something that is almost the antithesis of most

Minecraft play. As Diane Carr (Oliver and Carr 2009) and Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen

(Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2008) point out independently of each other, calling a game

29

‘educational’ is both bland and inappropriate – if gamers are simply being educated in the

modes and mechanisms of a specific game, what are they actually learning?

Similarly, it is unwise to idolize the positions of Notch, Lane and Brindley as paragons of

the community. All three rely on an intimate, authentic portrayal of the self to other

gamers, which is excessively codified within the genre of gaming, and often collapses

under close scrutiny. A prime example of this comes from a series of antagonistic tweets

sent by Notch after the second Minecon convention, in which he accused the Yogscast of

poor behaviour. Regardless of whether this actually happened, the act exposed both sides

as ‘only human’, and on Notch’s side as lacking in good Public Relations management,

causing immense distress amongst fans who found it difficult to reconcile the fact that the

cosy, familiar demeanour of both groups bore little relationship to their private selves.

It is also important to recognize that whilst gaming communities have passionately

adopted these groups, they are sometimes ineffective in their role as spokespeople. As

ever, luck and circumstance have also played a large part in their early successes.

Overall, although these groups are symptomatic of the growing maturity of gaming as a

multimedia genre, they also expose the fact that considerable development is still

required both in understanding them in their own right, and integrating them with more

established media bodies.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Simon Lane, Lewis Brindley and Hannah Rutherford of The Yogscast in

the making of this article, and for the comments and conversations with Ashley O’Toole-

Brown, Gavin Stewart and Steven Conway, which helped give it critical focus.

30

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Contributor details

Esther MacCallum-Stewart is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Arts at the University of

Surrey. Her work examines the relationships between players and games, and the ways in

which they interpret gaming narratives. She has written widely on player behaviour,

gaming fans, online communities, representation and diversity in games. Her forthcoming

publication – Playing with Affections: The Game Love Reader, is an edited collection

35

(with Jessica Enevold, University of Lund), which examines the complex representations

of love in, around, and for games.

Contact:

Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart

Department of Digital Arts.

University of Surrey

Guildford, United Kingdom.

GU2 7XH

E-mail: neveah@gmail.com