Fantasy play-worlds: A study of culture, communication and technology as they intersect in computer fantasy roleplaying games

This dissertation uses the computer Fantasy role-playing game as a site to investigate the intersection of technology and culture and how these forces shape communication. Drawing on the ideas of Medium Theory (or Media Ecology) and the Social Construction of Technology, I conceptualize media as meeting or mediating points for social forces, mediating points that shape and are shaped by communication. I use a series of licensed Dungeons and Dragons computer games to investigate this process.;I approach the games from three angles: first, I consider how this genre of computer games helps mediate the pressures that the game-making industry feels. Specifically, I talk about economic, technological, political and cultural demands that game-makers face. I argue that a series of features in digital Fantasy role-playing games, such as its well-established genre and serial narratives, make them particularly successful at mediating many demands placed on the industry.;Next, I talk about how digital Fantasy role-playing games help us to negotiate the traditional forms of stories and games. Recent work in Game Studies argues that games are not interactive stories. Although I give credence to these ideas, I argue that the digital Fantasy role-playing game provides an environment that modifies what we understand as story and game. Stories become systematic, participatory and immediate, while games become story-driven.;Finally, I talk about how these games help men to mediate the pressures of masculinity that they experience in every day life. Drawing on research that suggests men have great difficulty reconciling the internal contradictions of masculine ideals, I argue that the digital Fantasy role-playing game provides a space in which men can be respectable, rough and playful all at once.;In each case, I argue that social, cultural and technological construction of this new medium provides unique opportunities and limitations for communication, which in turn shapes our culture. This is not an argument of technological determinism, but a recognition that communication has a material component that matters: computers change the communicative environment in which we play, and in so doing, offer the possibility of cultural transformation.