To continue with the discussion that was started in the previous post, I wish to continue my thoughts and epiphanies that have stuck out to me since commencing my research into the effects of nostalgia and participatory media culture on the narrative of Old School Runescape. Interestingly, I’ve learnt quite a lot from my participation within the community through my blog and Twitter page which have insighted differing perspectives to my initial assumptions from my pitch.

When scripting my pitch, I had presumed that the OSRS community was one to admire from the standpoint of my analytical framework. I thought that the culture of the developers using the construct of participatory media culture to benefit the games production would entail that the community has a good relationship with the developers at Jagex. I believe I referenced within my pitch that the example would be one to note for other games developers that wished to build solid communication with their player base to accomplish a balance between ‘fan service’ and unseen content. However, the more I research into the OSRS community, I have come to find that the model is not as tremendous as first interpreted, which I began to touch on in the previous blog post with the community taking aim at Jagex for simply managing the games development and distribution.

This was amplified within my new DA blog post summarizing the community’s stipulations around the implementation of the new game mode, Group Ironman. While the results of the in-game poll, voted on by players, came to be the most voted-on poll in OSRS history with a landslide vote to introduce the update to the game, there was much speculation into the legitimacy of the vote. The update had initially been announced years ago but had not been ready for release until present day, meaning the update is already finished with development and is ready to be enabled. This process differs to the regular approach of waiting for approval from the community before starting development which had cause many to speculate that Jagex had rigged the polls.

Within my post, I acknowledge how this is highly unlikely for multiple reasons but mainly due to the potential uproar it would cause and revolt of fans, which seemed to occur anyway. This event along with additional resources have scoped the reality of the complexity of the Old School Runescape community which I hope to use to continue advancing my DA. If the balance between developers and community can’t be maintained, is it valid to enlist my hypothesis of nostalgia and participatory media culture as the culprits behind maintaining the popularity of OSRS for an extended period? Or am I witnessing the collapse of the system as I have mainly examined contemporary examples?

I will be beginning to look retrospectively at similar events to determine whether my analytical framework can still stand within my DA or whether other elements have greater power, which I will further document within the conclusion of my project. Stay Tuned.