Title

Paper Please: Lessons from Three Decades of Video Game Fanzines

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

Before dial-up internet forever changed one-to-many communication, video game fans, like science fiction fans before them, shared their views on games by exchanging copies of handmade publications––fanzines. Video game fanzines are sometimes crude, sometimes incisive, but always idiosyncratic, the products of unmistakably individual minds. In this talk, librarian Michael Hughes will discuss the history of game fandom’s print culture, including its little-remembered origins in "Joystick Jolter", a newsletter from New Jersey. He'll also discuss why fanzines matter, not just for their informational content but, in the words of Sherry Turkle, as “companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought”.

Comments

Presentation given at MAGFEST, January 2019, Maryland.

MHughes_MAGFest Slides_2019.pdf (175020 kB)
Slides from presentation

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