History, Fandom, and Online Game Communities

Historical activity around persistent online game environments such as EVE Online and EverQuest is significant and ongoing, particularly as these games age. A wide range of attempts have been made to capture and concentrate tales of those experiences which players have considered significant. Yet as with all historical work, attempts to curate and represent the history of a community are political and often contested. Projects can be compromised by competing interests and by differing perceptions of what does or does not ‘count’ as history. The distinctions made in this online historical work evoke the debates of contemporary public history: issues of ownership, power and acceptability are central, and the outputs of this historical activity are varied, constituting a short forum thread collecting player reminiscences in one instance, for example, compared with a book-length piece of self-consciously historical writing in another. Yet they also parallel debates within the space of fan studies. This chapter discusses the tension between fandom and history that exists in player communities by examining fanworks as forms of historical work.