Engines of Agency: Impact Events in the Development of Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Matthew Robert Green

Advisor: Douglas Eyman, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Heidi Lawrence, Wendi Sierra

Horizon Hall, #4225, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/92041933075?pwd=TGdVNTlsS3RMSzlFT2o2VGxGR3hvQT09
April 11, 2024, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Abstract:

The advent of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter for creative projects has enabled potential backers to discover and interact with creators to a great degree. This high level of interaction, paired with the self-organizing and widely distributed cottage industry of creatives providing products, is a valuable site for the investigation of agency in the making of creative works. This dissertation seeks to iterate on established work in agency, workplace studies, actor-network-theory, and agentic modeling to build a model which analyzes agency in this context to better understand what interactions between actants influence the moment of opportunity – or Kairos – and subsequent ‘impact events’ that set the course of a creative project over time. This dissertation takes data from a 14-month workplace study of a tabletop roleplaying game and models how different relationships and interactions among the game studio, its staff and its backers result in particular creative and logistical decisions being made. In constructing this model, this study reveals the complex arrangements that influence creative decisions across the domains of work, play, time, geography, and culture. In particular, tensions are revealed between the concept of an individual as principal creator and a member of an organization or culture, and the tactics that are used to negotiate these tensions. This study also reveals a space between work and play largely facilitated by the advent of crowdfunding and inexpensive or free productivity software. In this space, a non-employer firm of one can operate as a group, a company built along a profit model is considered successful by simply breaking even, and the consumers of a product are intimately involved in its development. These findings suggest that the work/play and official/unofficial dichotomy is not sufficient in many cases, and that creative works built in a highly distributed fashion are consequently impacted by highly distributed interactions.