The Author-Audience Struggle in New Media Storytelling: Research #4

In an attempt to bring this New Media class full circle, at least for myself, I looked specifically for an article that related and discussed storytelling on some level. Since one of the first ideas discussed in this class was the human need for stories and storytelling to communicate, I thought it was appropriate to touch on that broad theory again. Rob Cover's article, “New Media Theory: Electronic Games, Democracy and Reconfiguring the Author-Audience Relationship” discusses general New Media theory within several contexts. The primary aspect I am going to focus on is that of the author-audience struggle that has developed due to interactivity in media.

Cover describes the general author-audience struggle as “engaged in a struggle for control over the text in terms of participation, co-creation, transformation and distribution” (173). This can be seen most heavily within the video game industry. Neverwinter Nights, an online Role-Playing Game or RPG for short, is one of the most well-known games for allowing its users to have access to the basics of the game with the full knowledge that they will manipulate, transform, and distort the original game in an effort to create Mods. This is done to allow the game life to be extended. With the ability to create your own story, users can develop the world of Neverwinter Nights further than its original creators did. This is relative to Cover's theories about author-audience struggle because the users, or audience, of Neverwinter Nights has become its authors as well. Although original copyright and authorship rights still remain the property of the original creators, the game extensions belong to its various audience members. This creates the struggle that Cover references.

Another video game in the same situation as Neverwinter Nights is The Sims. The original The Sims game was meant specifically for the user to create their own stories and share them with the online Sims community of users. However, The Sims gradually developed tool sets that enabled its users to also manipulate the look of characters and items within the game, which was outside the bounds of the storytelling feature. The initial release of The Sims did not come with skinning software, which was used specifically for skinning or modification of the current character models and objects, however, once users began modifying these things with programs such as Adobe Photoshop the game developers began shipping follow-up versions that contained an additional program called Body Shop. This program allows user to modify their Sims more easily. There are still those who skin the “old-fashioned” way though, due to the fact that the Body Shop program has limitations. Once again, user interaction and participation as authors provided a longer shelf-life for the medium of video games.

Outside the video game industry, there is also the use of text-based programs which use co-authorship to continue a particular narrative and keep it interesting. MUDs are among this type of author-audience struggle. Someone authors or creates the initial environment and storyline within a MUD, but the audience/users keep the story going and can manipulate the objects within a story as they please, so long as they remain within any parameters set at the outset by the initial author. In this way, the narrative is ever-changing, always new, and belongs to the original author as well as the audience. Technically, these are not video games since they do not employ any graphics in the medium. MUDs belong within the print medium, but with the addition of the Internet to allow for intensive interaction and co-authorship.

Two quotes from Cover's article discuss this struggle:

“The very idea of the author as the central authority of a work is, as Foucault had pointed out, one that is regulated within culture, and one that is more recently put in question” and “The continuation of the mythos of the author into the digital age is one that is now to be located in what Manuel Castells (1997, 303) refers to as a pluralisation of sources of authority” (179).

Cover references two authors who agree with the idea that our current society is in the midst of an author-audience struggle that has come about primarily due to New Media in the above quotes. The Internet and video games have especially influenced this issue by not only allowing, but encouraging users to branch out from what they are initially given.

Personally, I feel the concept of an author-audience struggle will not need to be discussed much further into the future. It is a concept based on an archaic idea of property. Although I am a proponent of some intellectual property, (I don't particularly care for the idea of someone modifying one of my poems and then producing it as ours rather than leaving it alone and mine) I do feel the sense of community that co-authorship provides and the abundance of creativity that evolves from this cooperative effort are perfectly suited to New Media. I doubt co-authorship will be removed since it has had such success in the video game and Internet industries.

Works Cited:

Cover, Rob. "New Media Theory: Electronic Games, Democracy and Reconfiguring the Author -- Audience Relationship." Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 173-191. Academic Search premier. 29 April 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com