textual looting: modding as a popular cultural practice julian r. kücklichuniversity of ulster
overview
• what is modding?• a brief history of modding• modding and popular culture• modding and new media
overview
• what is modding?• a brief history of modding• modding and popular culture• modding and new media
what is modding?
• modification of digital games on the representational or gameplay level
• ranges from subtle changes (torch in doom 3) to total conversions (counterstrike)
• modding can also be used for political purposes (escape from woomera)
doom 3 duct tape mod
counterstrike
half-life
counterstrike
counterstrike
escape from woomera
overview
• what is modding?• a brief history of modding• modding and popular culture• modding and new media
a brief history of modding
• castle smurfenstein (1983)• doom (1993) – 10,000 wads
created from 1994 to present• half-life (1998) – hundreds of
mods listed on moddb.com• games such as the sims (2000),
gta3 (2001), halo (2001), and morrowind (2002) also have sizable modding communities
castle smurfenstein
doom mods 1994 - 2003
• aliens tc• batman doom• goldeneye tc• sin city• 2002: a doom
odyssey• doom raider• ...
half-life mods
moddb.com
dragonball: break the limit
the sims 2 mods
modthesims2.com
overview
• what is modding?• a brief history of modding• modding and popular culture• modding and new media
modding and popular culture
• modding tools are often used to inscribe popular cultural texts into digital games
• this can be seen as similar to henry jenkins‘ concept of textual poaching – however, it de-stabilizes game texts to a much greater degree (‘textual looting’)
• modding thus emerges as a practice that fluidifies game texts and blurs the boundaries between games and other popular cultural texts
• this allows us to regard games and mods as ‘intertextual commodities’ (marshall 2002)
modding and popular culturecontinued
overview
• what is modding?• a brief history of modding• modding and popular culture• modding and new media
modding and new media
• modding thus draws attention to games‘ new media aspects– fluid rather than fixed texts– multiplicity of authorship– distribution more important than
production– convergence of different media forms– innovation from the margins
questions?
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