Search

This text is the result of years of ethnographic fieldwork among market research analysts at XPG [pseudonym]—a small firm that specialized in collecting, processing, and reporting on consumer data for the videogame industry. Acting as a participant-observer at XPG, I examined the socio-technical processes through which large videogame publishers came to know their audiences, weigh their opinions and desires, and develop new products for them. In the pages below, I alternately explore the perspectives and practices of professional consumer analysts, entertainment capitalists, and outspoken consumers of games, showing how the dynamic relationships between such actors help constitute the warp and weft of the mass-market gaming scene, a variegated cultural context that connects and divides people across the globe. More broadly, this text represents an ethnography of popular demand, showing how players’ demands were incited, expressed, elaborated, interpreted, performed, and accounted for both in public gamer discourse and behind the closed doors of the videogame industry. My aim in this approach is to show how and why certain demands come to matter for businesses—and others do not. Along the way, I encounter myriad complications to the notion of popular demand, detailing how players’ demands are historically situated (Chapter 1), relational (Chapter 2), multiple (Chapter 3), and cyclical (Chapter 4). Taken as a whole, I argue for a reconsideration of demand and its role in capitalism, one that understands capitalists as more than rational, profit-maximizing machines responding to demand automatically as if it were merely a market “force” or “pressure.” Rather, I depict capitalists as thickly enmeshed in tangles of collective judgments which they recognize, incite, and attempt to shape, but never fully control. Similarly, I argue for a reconsideration of videogames as a medium, showing how their current instantiation as mass-market, viral entertainment—in the style of Ho

This text is the result of years of ethnographic fieldwork among market research analysts at XPG [pseudonym]—a small firm that specialized in collecting, processing, and reporting on consumer data for the videogame industry. Acting as a participant-observer at XPG, I examined the socio-technical processes through which large videogame publishers came to know their audiences, weigh their opinions and desires, and develop new products for them. In the pages below, I alternately explore the perspectives and practices of professional consumer analysts, entertainment capitalists, and outspoken consumers of games, showing how the dynamic relationships between such actors help constitute the warp and weft of the mass-market gaming scene, a variegated cultural context that connects and divides people across the globe. More broadly, this text represents an ethnography of popular demand, showing how players’ demands were incited, expressed, elaborated, interpreted, performed, and accounted for both in public gamer discourse and behind the closed doors of the videogame industry. My aim in this approach is to show how and why certain demands come to matter for businesses—and others do not. Along the way, I encounter myriad complications to the notion of popular demand, detailing how players’ demands are historically situated (Chapter 1), relational (Chapter 2), multiple (Chapter 3), and cyclical (Chapter 4). Taken as a whole, I argue for a reconsideration of demand and its role in capitalism, one that understands capitalists as more than rational, profit-maximizing machines responding to demand automatically as if it were merely a market “force” or “pressure.” Rather, I depict capitalists as thickly enmeshed in tangles of collective judgments which they recognize, incite, and attempt to shape, but never fully control. Similarly, I argue for a reconsideration of videogames as a medium, showing how their current instantiation as mass-market, viral entertainment—in the style of Ho

Tennyson Transformed explores how the life and work of the great Victorian Poet Laureate was interpreted by artists, illustrators, photographers and other creative practitioners. This book evaluates several strands of Tennyson's influence on Victorian visual culture, and sheds new light on this crucial aspect of his influence. Including discussion of well-known paintings such as J.W. Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott and other Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, the book looks beyond the obvious to uncover the breadth of media used to express Tennysonian themes. Book illustration, photography, engraving and sculpture are examined alongside previously unpublished archival material, such as the proof woodcuts for the famous 'Moxon Tennyson' of 1857. Including essays by leading specialists in the field and followed by a catalogue of seminal objects and images, Tennyson Transformed is essential reading for both the specialist and the enthusiast. Literary scholars and art historians will find fascinating new connections between the art and literature of the nineteenth century.

The Boulder Conglomerate is the Lower Carboniferous sedimentary allochthon deposited in the second order half graben created by major listric normal faults in the Navan area. The base of the Boulder Conglomerate comprises erosive-based, highly immature rock avalanches which are interbedded with hemipelagic limestone. Sulphide mineralisation in the autochthon, the Pale Beds Ore, is truncated by the fault-generated unconformity and is reworked as clasts and matrix into the basal Boulder Conglomerate. Matrix-deficient breccia beds deposited on the unconformity possess mineralisation as cement to interclast porosity. This cement is contiguous with replacement and fracture-cementing mineralisation in limestone strata beneath the unconformity. Mineralisation associated within the interbeds to the Boulder Conglomerate occurs as early diagenetic concretions and as stratiform replacement. The 34S of these sulphides ranges from -21‰ to +1‰. The rock avalanches are overlain by clast-bearing carbonate mud strata. The carbonate mud is replaced by pyrite and paragenetically later sphalerite and galena. The isotopic range of 34S for pyrite (-32‰ to -35‰) is distinct from that of the zinc and lead sulphides (-18‰ to +6‰). The uppermost Boulder Conglomerate is characterised by slumped and brecciated mineralisation which is dominated by pyrite. The 34S values of the in situ and reworked mineralisation range from -40‰ to -23‰. The Thinly Bedded Unit overlies the Boulder Conglomerate and comprises interlayered shales and calcarenite and laterally impersistent, erosive-based, graded bioclastic and oolitic microbeccias. Mineralisation occurs as selective replacement to the microbreccia and as stratiform sphalerite and pyrite mud. The latter occur in-situ as laminae and as channelised debris flows. The reworked sulphide mud supports plant fragments which exhibit exceptional preservation by pyrite, sphalerite and galena. The 34S of the laminated and reworked sulphides ranges from -37‰ to

The Boulder Conglomerate is the Lower Carboniferous sedimentary allochthon deposited in the second order half graben created by major listric normal faults in the Navan area. The base of the Boulder Conglomerate comprises erosive-based, highly immature rock avalanches which are interbedded with hemipelagic limestone. Sulphide mineralisation in the autochthon, the Pale Beds Ore, is truncated by the fault-generated unconformity and is reworked as clasts and matrix into the basal Boulder Conglomerate. Matrix-deficient breccia beds deposited on the unconformity possess mineralisation as cement to interclast porosity. This cement is contiguous with replacement and fracture-cementing mineralisation in limestone strata beneath the unconformity. Mineralisation associated within the interbeds to the Boulder Conglomerate occurs as early diagenetic concretions and as stratiform replacement. The 34S of these sulphides ranges from -21‰ to +1‰. The rock avalanches are overlain by clast-bearing carbonate mud strata. The carbonate mud is replaced by pyrite and paragenetically later sphalerite and galena. The isotopic range of 34S for pyrite (-32‰ to -35‰) is distinct from that of the zinc and lead sulphides (-18‰ to +6‰). The uppermost Boulder Conglomerate is characterised by slumped and brecciated mineralisation which is dominated by pyrite. The 34S values of the in situ and reworked mineralisation range from -40‰ to -23‰. The Thinly Bedded Unit overlies the Boulder Conglomerate and comprises interlayered shales and calcarenite and laterally impersistent, erosive-based, graded bioclastic and oolitic microbeccias. Mineralisation occurs as selective replacement to the microbreccia and as stratiform sphalerite and pyrite mud. The latter occur in-situ as laminae and as channelised debris flows. The reworked sulphide mud supports plant fragments which exhibit exceptional preservation by pyrite, sphalerite and galena. The 34S of the laminated and reworked sulphides ranges from -37‰ to