Comments on: Changing the conversation, not just the games http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2013/03/12/changing-the-conversation-not-just-the-games/ Responses to Media and Culture Fri, 12 Feb 2016 19:35:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 By: Sam Ford http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2013/03/12/changing-the-conversation-not-just-the-games/comment-page-1/#comment-398982 Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:30:57 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=18964#comment-398982 Thanks, A.J., for the reference to our book. I’d argue as well that the conventional wisdoms of “target demographics” are at play here. In “Spreadable Media,” for instance, we draw on some of my research into gay male soap opera fans as a “surplus audience” these shows have had a hard time figuring out how to reach out to, as well as women over the age of 49, who have aged out of the advertisers’ target demographic yet form the base support for these shows, often as matriarchs of multigenerational viewing structures. The problem, though, is that the questions of how to value those viewers and understand them doesn’t fit within the systems of value in the industry, so these viewers end up being the people the industry doesn’t have time to think about (or, in the case of older viewers in some soaps’ cases, often seem to be seen as “value-subtract,” because they dilute their focus on the “target demo”).

]]> By: AJ Christian http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2013/03/12/changing-the-conversation-not-just-the-games/comment-page-1/#comment-397212 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:30:26 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=18964#comment-397212 Fantastic work as usual, Adrienne. These issues are not restricted to gaming. Conglomerate television makes similar justifications for its own representational deficiencies. Sure, TV has the New Normal and characters on Glee, Modern Family and Happy Endings, among others, but, just as indie games are innovating, so is indie TV.

Compare the rich diversity of genres, ages, races, genders in indie TV to mainstream TV — http://tvisual.org/gaylesbian-web-series — and television’s representational shortcomings become much clearer.

The problem here isn’t merely one of visibility, but of value. By incorporating indie production into structures of development, mainstream industries won’t just provide work for a broader base of producers and diversify its narratives, it will also find new markets, expand fan bases and potentially lower the failure rates of new franchises. Ghettoizing these constituencies limits the medium, its fans and its markets. Corporations miss this because they assume value created outside its crusty structures is less because it’s not as seamlessly monetized. But as Jenkins’ Spreadable Media argues, they are missing a lot of powerful value creation.

Or to re-quote you here: “If the industry wants to rethink representation, perhaps they should start by looking at work by people that have done so already.”

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