Been talking with Kid the Elder about how to get more video game content on Fanlore. We've come up with a video game infobox. (She helped come up with the topics that should be listed; I did the formatting and then got help because my first version didn't work right.) Also came up with a page template with instructions.

Currently working on brainstorming categories - like, what categories will we need for good video-game-fandoms coverage? So far, we've come up with the following:

Fans

• Video Game Fan (Person known for video game activity - likely a "top level" category with most people belonging in subcategories)
• Game Dev/Game Publisher - uncertain whether this is one category or two. (Game dev & publisher companies are two categories, but individual people may not be. Or dev may be a "Video Game Fan" and publisher-person may not be.)
• Let's Player (e.g. Markiplier, John Wolfe)
• Reviewer (e.g. JimQuisition, Ross's Game Dungeon)
• Analyst (e.g. MatPat from Game Theory, the Extra Credits team, Jacob Geller)

Content Types

• Series - YouTube specific term - not a series of games, but a series of videos with a shared them, such as "Undertale Let's Plays" or "Physics Mistakes videos." May need a different name so it doesn't get mixed up with TV series.
• Channel - Absolutely a YouTube thing; most people have one channel (because if you don't update it regularly, you drop in the ratings). An example of more than one is MatPat with Game Theory, Film Theory, and Food Theory channels.
• Video - single notable videos; I'll have to check if the "fanvid" template will work for this or if it needs a new one.

Platforms/Sites

• Vid Platform (Not at all sure that's the right label) - things like YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch; places where you can host fan-made video game content
• Mod Site - also known as romhacks site - places where you can host & share mods
• Game Store - e.g. Steam, HumbleBundle, GoG - the commercial/pro side of the fandom
• Review Site - e.g. Polygon, RockPaperShotgun, Kotaku

Um. That's... kind of a lot of categories, for content that basically doesn't exist.

KtE also came up with some ACTUAL CONTENT for Fanlore, that she is too shy to post:
* History of Pokemon Generations fandom
* Binding of Isaac fandom set to the new page template

I want to see SO MUCH MORE like that. Just... raw content drops with no formatting and minimal explanation and someone else can go in and clean up the phrasing and structure, add links, search for references, and so on.

But right now, Fanlore subtly discourages (...sometimes not-so-subtly) sloppy unfocused editing, and the result is: we have very few pages about topics that aren't known and loved by the tiny handful of regular editors. We need a way to encourage new editors, and we especially need a way to encourage one-time drop-ins to say "hey I know some stuff about this one niche thing in my fandom." And that means not responding to it with "I see you added four paragraphs about Old Forum Controversies to Large Fandom Way Outside My Normal Range, but you didn't add any links or references. Here's a link to Fanlore's editing cheatsheet which should make those easy!"

...They are not easy. I get lost on the cheatsheet sometimes and I have been editing Fanlore for over a decade. I don't add the content I want to, because "write down raw details" is a very different headspace from "add section dividers, internal links, reference links, fucking WAYBACK links, and figure out what we have in categories and notice templates that might be relevant." So I write up two paragraphs and spend another 30 minutes sorting out structure, links, references, and... I'm done. No more content for today.

Fanlore desperately needs content. We have people who can add structure. (We don't have as many as we like, but if we had more people throwing content in, we'd draw more editors interested in those fields.)

There's so much happening in video game fandoms - so many fans that engage with them in ways that both are and aren't similar to tv/movie/book fandoms - and we're not tracking the history we have, much less how much of it is going on in Discord servers.

When the OTW started, "video game fandom" was a separate niche from "tv/movie" fandom, which was a separate niche from "book fandom." (Book fandom & tv/movie fandom started to split in the 60s; there's still a lot of acrimony in the scifi community about the differences.) These days... people are growing up with "video game" as just another media. They get their scifi, mystery, romance, fantasy, historical content from games as much as they do from tv or movies. More, in many cases. And they blend with anime/manga fandoms, in many cases.

We can no longer talk about "fandom" - not even "western media shipping fandom" that was the core of OTW's existence - without talking about video games. (I don't know who the hell Sephiroth is but my Tumblr dash seems to imply he may have dated Castiel in the past.) We are missing so much by not having good support for video games.

(Next intended rant: TTPRGs. Both "on fanlore" and "how Critical Role warped the whole industry.")