Community Fallout fans analyzed. Conclusion: Not so evil?

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Fallout 3

Fallout fans, those evil and hatred filled zealots who need to catch a disease and die, have been analyzed in-depth by some guy for his masters thesis. He wanted to look at the relationship between developers and fans and how company's deal with their audience. <a href="http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/guest-post-industry-groks-geeks-producers-fans-and-an-era-of-sudden-interactivity/">Here's a snip from part 1</a>:
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<blockquote>So how do producers and fans of media texts relate in this era of sudden interactivity?
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That was what I wanted to understand as I began to examine how a specific group of digital-game fans engaged with producers and each other during a period of tension over the next installment of the game series. Fans of the digital-game series Fallout were active in voicing concern for the upcoming title Fallout 3 (set to release this fall), and did so on the forums of the game’s production studio, Bethesda Softworks. The heart of the tension was that Bethesda wasn’t the developer of Fallout 1 & 2, and was making drastic gameplay and narrative changes to Fallout 3. Analyzing forum interactions made for great study, since I had never seen research document regular producer/fan interaction so deeply, never mind the bombastic beauty of the forum’s confrontations. I’ve never seen such eloquent flames.
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A few things impressed me. One of the first things I noticed was that even in a marketplace where geek is in, the producers still seemed to hold all the cards. It was Bethesda’s game. It was Bethesda’s site. It was their vision of Fallout that, whether valid or invalid, would hit the shelves. Fans, recognizing a lack of official ownership or control, acted as lobbyists and watchdogs, attempting to indirectly influence the integrity of Fallout 3 through pleas and petitions spread across thousands of forum posts. Bethesda employees, fittingly, treated fans like outsiders in their responses. Whether cordial or hostile (and different producers interacted in different ways at different times), the undertone was clear: we are the organization, you are the public. We’ll let you suggest, but we will decide. The text is ours.</blockquote>
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... <a href="http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/guest-post-knowledge-communities-information-interpretation-and-the-currency-of-the-era/">and here's a snip from part 2</a>:
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<blockquote>So there’s another counter-intuitive truth of the era. The interaction I found on the Fallout 3 forum was not too drastically different than the interaction I find in my fantasy football league — communities built on information and interpretation. These two categories of knowledge were first proposed by Nancy Baym in 2000. They fit in snug with Lévy’s propositions about knowledge communities and were all over the Fallout 3 forum. Most of the intense debates over the quality of Fallout 3 centered on the offer of information (such as a link to a screenshot or a quote from a producer) and the interpretation of that information. And in cases where there was no credible information to be proposed, speculation was a sufficient replacement. Even in the most heated moments of confrontation, information was a cardinal value. With very few exceptions, all the debates on the Fallout 3 forum were about knowledge.</blockquote>
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Well, look on the bright side. At least it's not another study of BioShock.
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Spotted @ <a href="http://www.nma-fallout.com">No Mutants Allowed</a>

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

This was actually posted earlier on DACK, your pretty slow on the take.

 

[NiM82]

Pretty fail subject for a masters imho, I hope he didn't read too much into Sorrow's girlfriend beating posts

analyzed in-depth but some guy for his master

Typos, horrible things.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Pretty fail subject for a masters imho

Quite the contrary...I think it's a decent idea. The whole idea of a thesis is to state, motivate and defend an argument of some sort. I think he chose well, with something small, recent, full of primary sources, and above all, actually possible to conclude something. Sure, he didn't pick something about one of the "bigs" like racial issues, economic determinism, feminism, consciousness, relativism vs. universalism, or the like, but while those types of papers rot away proving nothing other than the person who wrote them could bullshit half-way decently, this man's paper is seeing some decent discussion. Hell, depending on how Fallout 3 blows over, his paper might go further. Who knows?

 

[NiM82]

Pretty fail subject for a masters imho

Quite the contrary...I think it's a decent idea. The whole idea of a thesis is to state, motivate and defend an argument of some sort. I think he chose well, with something small, recent, full of primary sources, and above all, actually possible to conclude something. Sure, he didn't pick something about one of the "bigs" like racial issues, economic determinism, feminism, consciousness, relativism vs. universalism, or the like, but while those types of papers rot away proving nothing other than the person who wrote them could bullshit half-way decently, this man's paper is seeing some decent discussion. Hell, depending on how Fallout 3 blows over, his paper might go further. Who knows?

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't see forums as viable sources. They're not even representative of their own member base half the time, a few very vocal members can alter the perception of an entire forum. Take Rosh, you could pretty much pin all the bad press NMA has got over the ages on him alone. I'm sure the same is true on the Beth forums (which I don't really frequent), with people either sucking up to Summer, BN (when he isn't banned), devs, shills, or whoever. You could probably write a thesis or three on these behaviour trends alone, if you really wanted to.

It's simply too flakey a subject, with too many variables imo. Did he read every single post there? The popular threads? Or just the posts that matched his arguments? Being dynamic, forum evidence is highly exploitable, threads vanish, people edit posts, and norty students can bullshit to their hearts desire. Did he contact fans directly, conduct interviews, etc? Not saying I disagree with everything he puts forward, just that as a research topic, for a thesis, it isn't very sound. A lot of generalisations at play and too much stating of the obvious.

The conclusion is also largely pointless, developers/publishers will do what they do. Oblivion sold like hot cakes, with them blatantly ignoring the fans, making his comment about greater cooperation fairly moot. Some developers already do work closely with their fanbase, VD takes on-board a lot of advice for AoD, StarDock listen a great deal to their customers, even EA allowed fans to develop an officially sanctioned re-balance patch for CnC3. He'd have been better off looking at such projects if he wanted to explore fan-developer interaction, or even the modding scene where fans frequently get a lot of say with regards to SDK improvements and so forth.

 

[Trash]

Sheek, you clueless child. Go find out what a master thesis actually is before sprouting a clueless dumb opinion just for the sake of it. I know it's all those raging hormones that make you act stupid, but for christ sakes, at least write something informed for once.

 

[dagorkan]

Sheek, you clueless child. Go find out what a master thesis actually is before sprouting a clueless dumb opinion just for the sake of it. I know it's all those raging hormones that make you act stupid, but for christ sakes, at least write something informed for once.

You stupid faggot... you really are obsessed with me aren't you?

 

[Trash]

You're a dull child that annoyed me countless times.

Sheek, you really showed that you've got no idea what a master thesis entails. Even after the post above it clearly explained. That's clueless and annoying. As soon as I ignore you for a few days you start using quotes of me with silly "lollipopz" comments. That's just begging for it. You're just one of those people that ask for it Sheek. Live with it.

 

[dagorkan]

Re: You're a dull child that annoyed me countless times.

Sheek, you really showed that you've got no idea what a master thesis entails. Even after the post above it clearly explained. That's clueless and annoying. As soon as I ignore you for a few days you start using quotes of me with silly "lollipopz" comments. That's just begging for it. You're just one of those people that ask for it Sheek. Live with it.

I know the term gets thrown around a lot around here but you are a genuine moron.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

analyzed in-depth but some guy for his master

Typos, horrible things.

I avoid them whenever I can.

 

[Trash]

Re: You're a dull child that annoyed me countless times.

I know the term gets thrown around a lot around here but you are a genuine moron.

Says the anal, boring dumbfuck that takes himself and this forum way too seriously.


Anyway, back on topic. Seems the guy that wrote the thesis has quite a few interesting points but misses others. Though the subject is on fallout he doesn't really delves into the reasons for old time fans to be such rabid bitter fucktards. It could've spiced his thesis up no end, I tell ya.

 

[dagorkan]

You're the rabid bitter fucktard, dumbass. Are you drunk again? What's your excuse?

 

[Trash]

Yup, it's true. I'm an anger bitter fucktard in regards to fallout. Most codexers and dac people are. Wouldn't it be fun if he would've studied the reasons why?

 

[denizsi]

I read and.. what was the point he tried to make again? It lacks an overall focus and seems to be terribly limited in its scope, in where it feeds source material from and how it uses that material. It reads like a pseudo-thesis at best. I'm surprised a teacher is promoting/condoning such a "masters thesis". It is telling something about the proficiency of him/her as a teacher, no?

Then again, that kind of attitude might be normal for any "educator" who isn't keeping up with times to keep himself/herself in touch with the realities of evolving sub-cultures, and subconsciously covering behind liberalism to hide such shortcomings by being open to all different perspectives without critical evaluation due to lack of knowledge on subject.

This mumbo-jumbo just reminded me of the PACE's last retarded declaration. It's depressing that studies and declarations published by the leading political entities are so low, they are on usually on the same level with such pseudo thesis such as this one.

 

[Trash]

Well, it seems that not everything has been published online. What I've been reading so far seem to be a numbers of posts of that student explaining the thoughts behind the thesis.

 

[dagorkan]

Amusing that denizsi just said what you were pretending I'd said and you answer so politely. You're so full of shit you don't realize it.

 

[Trash]

You wrote a long rambling post about why the subject of the thesis wouldn't work. He said that for a thesis it lacked focus and sources. There is a difference Sheek. You done acting stupid now?

 

[dagorkan]

You wrote a long rambling post about why the subject of the thesis wouldn't work. He said that for a thesis it lacked focus and sources. There is a difference Sheek. You done acting stupid now?

I can't believe it... do you ever actually read threads before launching into your rambling, incoherent rants? How much have you had to drink this morning?

 

[Trash]

I see that you're still not done being stupid.

 

[denizsi]

Well, it seems that not everything has been published online. What I've been reading so far seem to be a numbers of posts of that student explaining the thoughts behind the thesis.

I thought that if two different excerpts from the same thesis are so similar, non-revealing, limited in information and still with several repeats, well either the thesis is just bad, or it's an extremely bad choice of excerpts. No final judgments should be made until one can see the complete work of course, but experience tells me that it's the former.

Amusing that denizsi just said what you were pretending I'd said and you answer so politely

High charisma bonus, or a successful intimidate roll.

 

[dagorkan]

Or maybe there's a CN Gnomish Illusionist playing tricks on us.

 

[Trash]

I'm still not convinced that these are actual excerpts though. More like stuff he posted while working on the actual thesis. I still hope he has some more on why this particular fanbase can be so fanatic about the game though.

 

[Helton]

Is Sheek NiM? Was a post deleted? Or is Trash pwning himself?

 

[denizsi]

analyzed in-depth but some guy for his master

Typos, horrible things.

I avoid them whenever I can.

I heard the reductors guild is recruiting..

I still hope he has some more on why this particular fanbase can be so fanatic about the game though.

You mean Fallout fanbase are significantly more fanatic? I don't see any significance to their(our?) fanaticism. There is an equally fanatic fanbase for even the most mundane shit out there. I think all that matters to make a noteworthy mention of either fanbase is the object of fanaticism and the owner of the object. So I believe Fallout 3 and the "fanaticism" of fans are making such a noise mostly because it's Bethesda, who previously made Oblivion, the "masterpiece of gaming". If it was somebody else, another studio, fans would most probably still be equally fanatic, but minus the audiance and the spotlight.

Think of radical muslims. They want heads roll all the time, they scream like juvenile spoiled little bitches day and night, calling for Jihad or whatever the shit. They are just fucking nuts. However, you only see them under spotlight when there are cartoons published here and there, or some other similarly non-issue stuff critical of religion happens.

Note: not drawing a parallel between fallout fans and radical muslims themselves

 

[Gnidrologist]

I am relatively evil though.