Play, Performance, and Participation: Boundary Negotiation and Critical Role Robyn Hope A Thesis in The Department Of Communication Studies Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Media Studies) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada November 2017 © Robyn Hope, 2017 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Robyn Hope Entitled: Play, Performance, and Participation: Boundary Negotiation on Critical Role and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Media Studies) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final Examining Committee: Owen Chapman______________ Chair Chair’s Name Bart Simon_________________ Examiner Examiner’s Name Matt Soar___________________ Examiner Examiner’s Name Mia Consalvo______________ Supervisor Supervisor’s Name Approved by _____________________________________________________ Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director _____________ 2017 ________________________________________________ Dean of Faculty iii Abstract Play, Performance and Participation: Boundary Negotiation on Critical Role Robyn Hope Critical Role is a livestreamed spectacle of play, in which eight professional voice actors come together once a week for a session of the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. This show first launched in 2015, and, after one hundred and fifteen episodes spanning nearly four hundred and fifty hours of content, reached the conclusion of its first major narrative arc in October 2017. In this time, the show has attracted a dedicated fanbase of thousands. These fans, known as “Critters”, not only produce creative fanworks, but also undertake massive projects of archiving, timekeeping, transcribing and curating Critical Role. The main project of this thesis is to argue that Critical Role facilitates an ecosystem of ideas, where ideas change hands quickly and fluidly – and, in doing so, it has caused familiar boundaries between author and audience to blur or even collapse. In some cases, this blurring allows for incredible collaborations between fans and performers; at its most challenging, the collapse of familiar author-audience dynamics creates unfamiliar conflicts with no obvious solution. Using Erving Goffman’s model of interactional frame analysis, this thesis will isolate different areas of challenge, collapse, and change. First, it will demonstrate how the dynamics of traditional tabletop roleplaying transform when the roleplayers are put before an audience. The Critical Role cast must negotiate double identities as both players and performers. This thesis will then transition to the behaviour of the audience. The act of watching Critical Role requires a keen understanding of the different frames at work inside the show, and fans have done a considerable amount of work to help each other understand these frames. Finally, this thesis will establish the concept of the fan frame. Both Critters and cast members consider themselves fans in some way. While familiarity with fan culture helps these two groups understand each other, it also creates conflict when the values of fans do not line up with the demands of online content production. iv Acknowledgements To: Mia Consalvo, because a Master’s student could hardly ask for a wiser mentor – or one better at demonstrating how to keep a cool head during such a stressful process; My friends at the mLab – Marilyn, Ryan, Andrei, Marc, Sarah – who helped build my ideas, and who suffered many whinging Facebook messages about how lonely I was while writing this summer; My family, Jean, Bill, and Erin, (and my adopted siblings, Brandon, Jenn E.) who handled just as many whinging text messages and delivered some top-quality pep talks; The holy quadrangle of quantitative authority, the operators of CritRoleStats and all their volunteers, whose work is the backbone of this thesis; The workaholics of Critical Role Transcripts, who saved me hours and hours of research; Rachel Romero, whose enthusiasm was as helpful as her information; The attendees of Spectating Play 2017, particularly Nick Taylor, Tanja Sivhonen, and Jaakko Stenros, whose advice and questions transformed this thesis for the better; My interviewees and Critters, too many to name, who supported my ideas both creative and critical; And to Matt, Liam, Laura, Ashley, Travis, Sam, Taliesin and Marisha, for the world you share with us every Thursday; Thank you! v Table of Contents List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One……………………………………………………………………………………..23 Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………………………….54 Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………………...87 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………..122 References………………………………………………………………………………………131 vi List of Figures: Figure 1. The Critical Role stream layout, Episode 16……………………………………...…..34 Figure 2. The Critical Role stream layout, Episode 83……………………………………….....34 Figure 3. Travis Willingham in the second Critical Role opening………………….…………...46 Figure 4. Matthew Mercer in the second Critical Role opening………………………………...46 Figure 5. The Critical Role cast joining hands, Episode 102……………………………………51 Figure 6. CritRoleStats commentary on Critical Role Episode 102……………………………..67 Figure 7. Matthew Mercer as the blindfolded dungeon master, by Kit Buss…...……………….71 Figure 8. Percy’s resurrection roll, Episode 69………………………………………………….76 Figure 9. Sam Riegel in the Critical Role opening credits………………..……………………..79 Figure 10. Liam, Laura, Ashley and Travis celebrate a victory in Critical Role Episode 52…...90 Figure 11. Sam, Taliesin and Marisha reading a letter in Critical Role Episode 69…………….90 Figure 12. Art of Percy and Vex by shalizeh7...………………………………………………..102 Figure 13. The Geek and Sundry Twitch chat celebrating a fan-made enemy………………....105 Figure 14. Commercials for Coca-Cola and Slayer’s Cake aprons.............................................108 1 Introduction On June 8, 2017, the online video series Critical Role celebrated its one hundredth episode. As it had ninety-nine times before, on nearly every Thursday since March 12th of 2015, the cast and their fans – the online masses of self-identified “Critters” – would gather on Twitch.tv to watch, in the words of host Matthew Mercer, “a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons and Dragons.” Celebrations began early in the day, largely coordinated through Twitter. The official Critical Role account held a merchandise giveaway, including shirts and dice boxes. The fan-run statistics blog CritRoleStats collaborated with Geek and Sundry, the production company that owns Critical Role, to produce an infographic on the show’s various feats. The show’s runtime has reached thirteen full days– which, according to the infographic, makes it longer than The Simpsons or Grey’s Anatomy. These 100 episodes have amassed 68 million views (just under three times the population of Australia, notes the infographic – and nearly twice the population of Canada, I noticed). Crew members shared photos of the Critical Role set in its early days. Fan artists created celebratory pieces throughout the week leading up to the hundredth episode, which eventually filled a gallery on the Geek and Sundry website. The cast members joined in the Twitter celebrations, teasing surprises for the show that night and thanking fans for following them over two years. Geek and Sundry announced that Critical Role would be turned into a podcast. Critical Role is perhaps one of the most successful examples of a new entertainment phenomenon in which tabletop roleplaying games are recorded and broadcast for an online audience. Still in its youth, the formal characteristics of this genre vary: some tabletop games, like Critical Role, are livestreamed, while others are pre-recorded; some incorporate video, some are exclusively audio-based, and still others include illustrative animations. In gaining this technological foothold, tabletop roleplay series have also found their audience. As such, over the past two years, Critical Role has single-handedly grown the subscription base of its parent production company, Geek and Sundry, to over thirty thousand subscribers1 – though, as the CritRoleStats infographic and other articles suggest, the actual audience for the show is much 1 Some Critical Role episodes display a subscriber count in the top left-hand corner. Episode 5 is the first one to do so, claiming 1465 subscriptions. The final count at the end of Episode 99 is 35,749. This number is tracked in real time, so the number of subscriptions may fluctuate throughout an episode. 2 larger.2 The Geek and Sundry website itself boasts views “in the hundreds of thousands” (“Critical Role Celebrates Their 100th Episode Tonight”). The show has also attracted an intensely dedicated fanbase, populated by artists, craftsman, statisticians, and a number of curious academics including myself. Their voluntary work has slowly become part and parcel of the Critical Role fan experience. As a fan of Critical Role and a student of media and game studies, I was instantly curious about how Critical Role had grabbed my attention and the attention of so many others. I also wanted to know how the show had sparked such a lively community – one the Critters themselves characterize as passionate, productive, and generous, but one no less prone