A Challenge to the Duel
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customers in their performance, but this preparation happens to different degrees based
upon a person’s exposure and socialization.
The emphasis here is on the education of the fan, in which interaction between
players, which included face-to-face, machine assisted, and Internet communication, was
Virtual World’s most important tool. Dedicated fans – some have played several thousand
games – have been socialized in their home centers and by other experienced players
(e.g., mentoring). The strategies presented in the entertainment center stand in contrast to
the ones used in the older video game arcade model. Entertainment centers expanded in
the late 1980s and were adopted as a business model by major media companies in the
mid-1990s. Entertainment centers target a specific demographic niche, which includes
children, teenagers or adults. They normally have several attractions besides arcade video
games. Some attractions, such a virtual reality games or ride-a-films, are treated as
spectacles. The centers collect money up front and coordinate consumer traffic in heavy
use installations. In Virtual World's implementation of the entertainment center model,
the competence of players is judged in communicative events according to how well their
performance adheres to the ideology. If they are successfully educated, players come to
share with others the same ideology of textualism. If they are not successful, fans have
the means to legislate their codes and rules. Using ethnography, qualitative interviews,
and a comparison of present and past survey data, I show how the performances of the
fans in the entertainment center, although creative (e.g., organizing clans, insults, etc.),
conform to the ideology of the producer.
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In short, communicative resources are used to
create a sanctioned community around its ideology of textualism.
Convention