Category: Movies

Nerd Wars

Posted on Posted in Movies1 Comment

Slashdot gets a sometimes-interesting conversation going in response to a BBC report of Serenity beating Star Wars for best sci-fi movie of all time. The result was reached in a poll of 3,000 SFX Magazine readers. One Slashdot reader comments:

I think if they were operating systems Serenity would be Linux (small market share in general, but popularised in geek circles by very loyal fans/users). Star Wars would be Windows (huge market share, almost no loyalty). This being a nerd poll, Serenity will win by a huge margin.

It’s certainly an understatement to claim that Star Wars commands no more loyalty than the default PC operating system, but consider how this poll might have turned out if there were more high-profile Star Wars news going on right now. Blogger Danny Choo takes a quick look at Google Analytics to suggest that the giant-robot anime franchise Gundam maintains a steady fan base online, whereas Star Wars fan activity online ebbs and flows with the release of new Star Wars products. (Link via Kotaku.)

If such results were to hold up under a more sustained analysis, it would be interesting to see whether Star Wars loyalty and interest are more contingent upon other product offerings. And, of course, it’s also quite possible that web site hits and SF magazine polls are poors measures for fan loyalty and interest when considering transmedia franchises.

I can’t help but wonder, actually, if the respondents in the SFX Magazine poll were answering for best franchise/universe (as opposed to best movie) with regard to Star Wars and Serenity. Perhaps the juxtaposition of the two titles was enough to heighten a sense of contrast between them, as fans have been bitter in recent years about “the prequels” and have held up Firefly as everything Star Wars could have been, but wasn’t.

Which Blogs and Cons Should I Be Visiting?

Posted on Posted in Comics, Computers, Conventions, Games, Movies, Television3 Comments

As of now, my dissertation will probably be focusing on some of the various cultures surrounding computers, video games, comics, and sci-fi TV/film. I’ve definitely had interviews (or have them lined up) with appropriate people for these topics, but I need to stay more continually plugged in to these industries and cultures than a few interviews allow for. That means attending some conventions and following some blogs, hopefully including the best trafficked of each.

In terms of cons, I’ve already attended the Penny Arcade Expo, the San Diego Comic Con International, the Big Apple Con, the Come Out and Play Festival (where I shot a short movie), and the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (no movies or music for me.) Depending on how certain things shake down, my travel plans for this year potentially include Wizardworld Philly (June), another trip to San Diego for Comic Con (July), Defcon in Vegas (August), the Tokyo Game Show (September), and the Small Press Expo (October). If some of that falls through and I could actually afford to go to PAX again, that’s another possibility. (I’ll also be going back and forth to Boston to visit friends and family, heading to San Francisco in May for the International Communication Association 2007 Conference, and doing research with Annenberg’s Summerculture program in Lisbon, Portugal for about half of July.)

As for web sites, I regularly sift through feeds from Joystiq, Kotaku, Game Politics, The Comics Reporter, and a number of sites maintained by academics I admire, such as Henry Jenkins’s Confessions of an Aca/Fan, Nancy Baym’s Online Fandom, and Jane McGonigal’s Avant Game. More recently, I picked up the feed for Slashdot, plus subscriptions to the print editions of Wired and Geek Monthly. I occasionally visit a number of other sites, including The Escapist, Journalista, and MacUser. (And that’s all on top of the design sites, traditional news sites, and web comics, which I won’t even get into here.)

Clearly, though, I’ve been more deeply involved with the comic book and video game scenes than the others. So I turn to you: got any suggestions for cons and web sites I should visit to get a better angle on what’s geeky about TV, film, and/or computer culture and industry?