For my Digital Artifact, I am looking to bridge a gap of knowledge I have between my current knowledge of Old School Runescape with its current community. By sharing my personal experience with others that may be intimidated to interact with such a well established community, I hope that the audience of my DA content will feel more inclined to also delve into the same media niche that harbors so much charm and humour that I’ve fallen in love with time and time again.
In the mind map below, I have constructed and condensed my field site into categories including access, places, people, agency, motivation, inspiration and content. While I have mainly noted resources encompassing fan wikis and social medias led by OSRS’s developers, I have also documented two YouTube channels that have inspired me to create this kind of content, J1mmy, a Runescape YouTuber in which creates content regarding the Runescape community, and Izzzyzzz, a channel dedicated to researching fandoms and their conspiracies in a way I wish to have my DA be influenced by.
I will be achieving this by uploading a YouTube video once a week, to be released on Sundays, reflecting upon any epiphanies developed through my research, with some examples including the evolution of the ‘Gnome Child’ meme as well as the events of the ‘Falador Massacre’. Below I have framed my weekly process in producing my content as well as a weekly timeline dictating my efforts in the weeks leading up to my Beta.
I’m beyond excited to release my first video next Sunday but until then, thats all for now. Thank you for reading, and Stay Tuned!
~Bree
drawoncedrawtwice 
Hi Breanna, I am already fascinated by your digital artefact and your pitch video was excellent. Your tone, choice of visual aid, and structure of information really made your presentation stand out. During your pitch, you began referring to Old School RuneScape as OSRS and this confused me for a second. Perhaps mentioning in your contextual blog, what OSRS stood for would’ve avoided that.
Your choice of platform is great for social utility and your decision to share your personal experiences, will no doubt help your digital persona. You have identified good communities to engage within your niche, however, you should have outlined the ethical constraints you will follow involving these communities. Admittedly, I myself have not done this too.
During your digital artefact, I believe you will start to gather a wide variety of scholarly sources for your ethnographic research, however, your pitch doesn’t reflect that you have any thus far. ‘Making sense of community in RuneScape…’ is a great source. It acknowledges MMORPGs such as OSRS as “not just a game” (Walker 2014, p.69). Rather than being distinct worlds or social entities, the source highlights just how much power MMORPGs have over “the social and emotional well-being of their players”. As your DA engages with the OSRS communities, I think this source could help build your analytical framework. You have chosen an interesting topic for your digital artefact, and I am excited to see how your autoethnographic research goes!
Walker, B 2014, ‘Making sense of community in RuneScape’, University of London. .
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