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Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

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Video Games: The Most Expensive Fan Fiction Ever Written

Presenter: 
Brett H. Butler (Morgan State University)
Presentation type: 
Paper
Abstract: 

Comic book and video game cultures overlap in many ways, so it is logical that the two genres would overlap as well. In the glory days of arcades in the 1980s and 90s, comic books such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men were translated to multiplayer cabinet games. With the development of more advanced home gaming systems, comic book-themed video games became more complicated than segmented side-scrollers leading to a boss on every level. They developed into 2-D fighters, sandboxes, RPGs, and MMOs, each game with its own complicated take on popular comic book heroes and story lines. Some of the people designing these games were comic book readers while others were not.

What emerges from this collaboration of comic book fans and non-comic book fans is often a re-imagining of already well-defined heroes. Some of these games such as Injustice became so popular that the comic book publisher adopts the re-imagined heroes and story lines for their publications. As successful as the numerous video games based on comic books have been, they are, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than interactive fan fiction. My paper will analyze the evolution of video games based on comic books as fan fiction, where the games’ developers adjust story lines and character power sets for better playability, which ultimately results in modified stories set in a pre-existing “universe” such as The Batman: Arkham series and completely new universes such as the Lego Batman. Both often develop their own canon and and fans both in and outside of comic book culture.

Scheduled on: 
Friday, November 9, 3:15 pm to 4:30 pm

About the presenter

Brett H. Butler

Brett Butler is an assistant professor of Technical and Business Writing at Morgan State University with scholarly works in gender discourse and popular culture.

Session information

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