Double click anywhere & add an idea
fan 
production
fan games
Influenced Creation
Personal 
                Adventures
the shift from player to author
anastasia salter
doctoral candidate, communications design
university of baltimore 2010
"Walk the streets of Florence and you’ll find a copy of David on practically every corner. For centuries, the way to become a Florentine sculptor has been to copy Michelangelo, to learn from the master. Not just the great Florentine sculptors, either—great or terrible, they all start with the master; it can be the start of a lifelong passion, or a mere fling. The copy can be art, or it can be crap—the best way to find out which kind you’ve got inside you is to try."

Cory Doctorow, 2008, p. 89
Why do adventure games have this lasting influence? Which games survive and why?  What does this divergence say about game culture and the ordering of the gaming canon?

What changes as the player becomes the author? How is society and industry changing with this reordering? How is creation changing both in and outside the industry?
original
remake
revisit
the long tail
Like all old gaps, the one between producer and consumer is closing. Production is more and more incidental to information. The factory depends upon it as much as the DNA particle. The consumer depends on the symbolic data to direct his energies, too. Ideas have become the main ingredient of the new economy. 
Marshall McLuhan, 1970, p. 138

The Secret of Monkey Island
the resurrection of adventure games
the fan remake: resurrecting unplayable games

top: maniac mansion by lucasarts
bottom: maniac mansion deluxe by lucasfan
(thanks to recently realized demand)
a tentative canon of referenced, reworked, and respected adventure games
“As an addict who will read anything, I obeyed, but I am not saved, and return to tell you neither what to read nor how to read it, only what I have read and think worthy of rereading, which may be the only pragmatic test for the canonical." 
Harold Bloom
1995, p. 518
rereading is but one of 
many expressions of 
appreciation for a text:
other forms of fan production do not involve
creation, but archiving: for instance, the maintenance of games as abandonware
...this practice, of course, is of questionable
legality in most cases: only in rare instances
has a publisher ceded their game into public
download space. In most other casese, archivists explain that as the company no longer sells the title, they are "preserving" the games for those who wish to replay them.

However, even those archives are threatened by obsolescence, as the technology to play old games gradually disappears.
some take preservation a step further, and
remake old games for new systems
but not always to the joy
of the copyright holders
King's Quest II (AGD)
New Zak McKraken (LucasFan)
Day of the Tentacle 2 (RAM)
Royal Quest (Tierra)
Many of these fan remakes and sequels 
are made with Adventure Game Studio,
a free point and click visual interface for
developing games in the tradition of 
classic-era adventures.
creation as play
while not all (or even most) works 
created with Adventure Game Studio
are so clearly "fan" works, nearly all 
these works owe a clear debt of influence
to the genre even as some strive to move
beyond its traditional limits
"Given the overwhelming community support for the Silver Lining project," a company statement released to Kotaku on Sunday read, "Activision is in discussions with Phoenix Online Studios about allowing them to continue to finish the game and then release it to their fans."
dark clouds,
silver lining
Some of these games have even spawned collaborative worlds, as with the Reality-On-The-Norm series, which is open to contributions from anyone and has an advancing narrative over a series of AGS games. 
these creations can be shared, collaborative, or truly personal: a game for a son's birthday or a work of experimental art 
yet not all worlds are so freely shared
Reality on the Norm
abandoned
worlds
The Silver Lining team has no legal right to the King's Quest franchise, even non-commercially, yet the community is outraged at Activision's move. Fans feel they have become custodians of these worlds, particularly in the face of corporate abandoment.
Daventry is not the only kingdom deserted...
though only rarely is the abandonment official
Lessig is right that we are moving towards a hybrid economy: a space where shared work and commercial work must coexist. Yet right now, they are two factions still at war.
and most of this content will forever languish
this is not the only way
Symbiotic relationships between the hybrid and the commercial are possible. Sony's Little Big Planet offers a space where the elements coexist, although all to the benefit of the corporation.

Similarly, the Japanese model of doujinshi allows manga artists to distribute and even profit off of fan works--there, it is understood that the fan production adds value to the corporate work.
without the adventure game fans as custodians, there would be little content left in these worlds worth fighting over
Adventure: An Inside Job (Akiri15)
WLBSWHEAC (Vince Twelve)
Cirque de Zale (Rebecca Clements)
A Tale of Two Kingdoms (Crystal Shard)
Warcraft Adventures (Blizzard)
Sam and Max 2 (LucasArts)
Full Throttle 2 (LucasArts)
Space Quest 7 (Sierra)
the fans seem themselves as the true custodians of these worlds, and the corporate owners as having abandoned not only particular sequels but their larger 
rights to the games: after all, they betrayed the adventure game genre by moving to action and 3-D and away from narrative and puzzle-based interaction
“Ideas and expression must to some degree be free. That was the aim of copyright initially—the balance between control and freedom” 

Lawrence Lessig, 2002, p. 249
hybrid
spaces
Sam and Max on the iPad
Lady Gaga and Greyson Chance
Myst Uru Fan Servers
Glee and the Corporate Fan Vid
in the past, the fan has remixed the work of the corporate

now, the corporate is remixing the work of the fan


the lucasfan website
selected works cited
AGS. (n.d.). Adventure Game Studio FAQ. Retrieved Nov 17, 2008, from http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/

Akril15. (2008, October 28). Adventure: The Inside Job. Retrieved January 2, 2009, from Adventure Game Studio Forum: http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=35962.0

Anonymous Game Developers. (2010). Remake Release Information. Retrieved February 7, 2010, from King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones: http://www.agdinteractive.com

Bloom, H. (1995). The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages. New York: Riverhead.

Doctorow, C. (2008). Content. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications.

Gilbert, R. (1987). Maniac Mansion. Lucasfilm Games.

Gilbert, R. (1990). The Secret of Monkey Island. Lucasfilm Games.

Gilbert, R. (2009). The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. LucasArts.

Grossman, D. (2009). Tales of Monkey Island. Telltale Games.

Grossman, D., & Schafer, T. (1993). Day of the Tentacle. LucasArts.




Lessig, L. (2008). Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin.

Lucasfan. (n.d.). Another One Bites the Dust. Retrieved January 6, 2008, from Lucasfan Games: http://www.lucasfangames.de/

MacCormack, A. (2007, November 12). A Tale of Two Kingdoms. Retrieved December 1, 2008, from Adventure Gamers: http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,819/p,2

Manos, D. (2004, Aug 18). Interview with Rebecca Clements of Cirque de Zale. Retrieved Nov 17, 2008, from Just Adventure: Inventory 14: http://www.justadventure.com/Interviews/Rebeca_Clements/Rebeca.shtm

Ratliff, M., & Jong, P. (2008, August 26). The Rise and Fall of Full Throttle. Retrieved January 28, 2010, from Adventure Classic Gaming: http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/

Reality-On-The-Norm. (2008). Reality-On-The-Norm. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from http://ron.the-underdogs.info/

Roper, B. (n.d.). PC Graveyard: Warcraft Adventures. Retrieved January 18, 2010, from Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/



prezi created May 2010
as part of the requirements for
the doctorate in communications design
at the University of Baltimore

Anastasia Salter
anastasia@selfloud.net
http://www.selfloud.net
Twitter: MsAnastasia
(or, rebuilding the purple tentacle)
Maya Plisetskaya
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/04/
16/maniac-fashion-day-of-the-tentacle-shoes/
amy gurumi
http://amysodyssey.wordpress.com/2
009/10/14/day-of-the-tentacle/
maya pixelskaya
http://maya-pixelskaya.blogspot.com/
2010/02/purple-tentacle-tie.html
snack or die
http://www.snackordie.com/2008/10/day_of_the_tentacle_sugar_cook.html
oliver kutsche
http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/1691
Tentacle cakes from Anastasia Salter's 10th Birthday
http://www.cosplayisland.co.uk/
costume/view/551
Michael Nusair
http://dadott.reelfilm.com/
http://www.papercraftcentral.net/2010/
01/paper-model-purple-tentacle/
twittered by Tobytes