In this paper I focus on “sporting metagames” as the adoption of a form of critical “metagame” or series of “metagames” utilizing elements of sports in fan-created, player-organized, competitive play atop a game. Many digital and analog gaming communities could serve as potential sites within which to address these kinds of “sporting metagames”; for this piece, I explore how it has taken hold in a small, customizable,
largely-analog card game community. Since 2013, I have been a casual player, competitive tournament player, blogger, and critic within the community for the card game Android: Netrunner (most recently published by Fantasy Flight Games). My previous and ongoing work on this game and its play communities
(Duncan, 2016; Garcia and Duncan, 2019) has been based on a five years’ worth of ethnographic field notes, supplemented by interviews with players. This paper focuses in particular on two cases drawn from
moments in the history of the game’s community, both of which address the strange and interesting position that Android: Netrunner has taken in the space between “game” and “sport,” as well as how fan-created and player-managed “sporting metagames” help to explicate community relationships with rewards and money. I track tensions between interpretations of the game in player communities and ultimately player ownership of the game to some degree, as the game has moved from a published product of Fantasy Flight Games to a murkier, fan-managed model (known as “NISEI”). As a consequence, we will find that the influence of various forms of reward (monetary, subcultural fame, or otherwise) may play a role, and point us back toward the ways that some fan-created “sporting metagames” may address the critical project that Boluk and LeMieux have laid out for us.
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