COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING 2.0: A FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING FORUM-BASED ROLE-PLAYING GAMES Csenge Virág Zalka A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2017 Committee: Kristine Blair, Committee Co-Chair Lisa M. Gruenhagen Graduate Faculty Representative Radhika Gajjala, Committee Co-Chair Jeremy Wallach ii ABSTRACT Kristine Blair and Radhika Gajjala, Committee Co-Chairs Forum-based role-playing games are a rich, yet barely researched subset of text- based digital gaming. They are a form of storytelling where narratives are created through acts of play by multiple people in an online space, combining collaboration and improvisation. This dissertation acts as a pilot study for exploring these games in their full complexity at the intersection of play, narrative, and fandom. Building on theories of interactivity, digital storytelling, and fan fiction studies, it highlights forum games’ most unique features, and proves that they are is in no way liminal or secondary to more popular forms of role-playing. The research is based on data drawn from a large sample of forums of various genres. One hundred sites were explored through close textual analysis in order to outline their most common features. The second phase of the project consisted of nine months of participant observation on select forums, in order to gain a better understanding of how their rules and practices influence the emergent narratives. Participants from various sites contributed their own interpretations of forum gaming through a series of ethnographic interviews. This did not only allow agency to the observed communities to voice their thoughts and explain their practices, but also spoke directly to the key research question of why people are drawn to forum gaming. The main drawing power of forum games is their focus on creative, collaborative writing. Players interested in writing with others in a playful setting, and engaging with their favorite popular culture texts through composition, are drawn to these sites because of the narrative freedom they offer compared to other gaming platforms. In addition, their narratives born from play are consciously, intentionally, and enthusiastically multimodal. Multimodality offers a wide iii range of creative opportunities for telling stories in a digital space, and it also has connections to older, oral forms of communal storytelling. This study creates a framework for theorizing forum-based role-playing games as a distinct style of gaming, worthy of scholarly attention. It also opens up new opportunities for future research, as well as applications including ESL education, collaborative writing, literary studies, and graphic design. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to my two wonderful chairs and mentors, Dr. Kristine Blair and Dr. Radhika Gajjala, for helping me along from the first spark of the idea to the completion of this dissertation, educating and encouraging me every step of the way. I am also deeply grateful to the members of my committee, Dr. Jeremy Wallach and Dr. Lisa Gruenhagen, for working with me on shaping this study. Next to the official members of my dissertation committee, I would like to thank Dr. Susana Peña for her valuable insight, mentorship, and detailed feedback at the early stages of the manuscript, and her guidance in the world of academic writing. I am also grateful to Dr. Gi Woong Yun, in whose New Media Research seminar the idea of this project was initially born. In addition, I deeply thank Rebekah Patterson for her invaluable help along the way, and my Ph.D. cohort for their support, encouragement, and feedback. I could not have done it without you. Finally, I would hereby like to thank the many amazing people from the role-playing sites I observed for their enthusiastic participation, thoughtful insight, and encouragement during the course of my research. I extend special gratitude to the administrators and moderators of The Hunger Games RPG, Bellefonte Academy, Aeterna Roma, Live to Rise, and All of Me, who welcomed me to their sites with open arms, guided and tutored me, and generously provided an abundance of information for this study. You made the long months of research an exciting and unforgettable experience. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………..... 1 A General Outline of Forum-Based Role-Playing ..................................................... 3 Summary of Chapters ................................................................................................ 5 CHAPTER 1. STORIES AT THE CROSSROADS: THEORIZING FORUM GAMES … 8 Forum-based Role-playing and Other Related Platforms .......................................... 9 Theoretical Frameworks: Play, Fandom, Narrative ................................................... 18 The theory of play, and the theory of interactivity ........................................ 18 Narratology and digital storytelling ............................................................... 24 Play versus narrative? .................................................................................... 34 Fandom and fan fiction .................................................................................. 37 Transmedia Storytelling and Multimodal Composition ............................................ 42 CHAPTER 2. FIELDWORK IN IMAGINED SPACES: METHODOLOGY, METHODS, AND SAMPLE SELECTION……………………………………………………………….. 54 Digital Ethnography in Virtual Worlds…………………………………………. ..... 55 Large-scale Coding………………………………………………………………… 61 Sample selection and research ....................................................................... 62 The sample ..................................................................................................... 63 Coding, second coding, monthly re-coding ................................................... 64 Participant Observation .............................................................................................. 65 Site selection criteria ...................................................................................... 66 List and introduction of participant observation sites .................................... 68 vi General guidelines of interaction ................................................................... 72 Interviews…… ........................................................................................................... 76 Recruitment of interview subjects ................................................................. 76 Questions........................................................................................................ 77 Key Research Questions of the Project ...................................................................... 79 CHAPTER 3. THREAD BY THREAD, POST BY POST: SHAPING LANGUAGE AND NARRATIVE IN FORUM GAMES….... ........................................………………………. 82 Improvisation and Collaboration…………………………………………………. .. 83 Regulating Language and Narrative………………………………………………… 96 Regulating Language and Narrative through Player Behavior .................................. 107 Developing Language and Writing Skills .................................................................. 114 From Language to Multimodality .............................................................................. 121 CHAPTER 4. BEYOND WORDS: MULTIMODALITY IN FORUM-BASED ROLE-PLAYING…... ........................................................................................................... 124 Images – The Visual Mode ........................................................................................ 126 Face claims, playbys, avatars ......................................................................... 127 Character post templates ................................................................................ 136 Site looks ........................................................................................................ 140 Satellite sites .................................................................................................. 142 Music and Sound – The Aural Mode ......................................................................... 145 Character voices, character sounds ................................................................ 146 Site playlists ................................................................................................... 151 Movement – The Gestural Mode ............................................................................... 152 vii Profile gifs ...................................................................................................... 152 Fan videos ...................................................................................................... 153 OOC gifs ........................................................................................................ 156 Layout – The Spatial Mode ........................................................................................ 157 Site layout ...................................................................................................... 157 In-post layout ................................................................................................. 164 Numbers and Coding – The Numeric Mode .............................................................. 168 Character stats and fighting systems .............................................................. 168 Site