John Yoon, GI resident and English PhD student, presented a poster at this year's University of California Esports Conference (UCIESC), that took place Oct. 11-12, 2018. His poster examined the cultural practice of sports writing in esports.
Yoon's work examines and analyzes narratives in esports writing. He argues that esports writing is a mode of technical communication that accommodates non-expert audiences through narratives.
His analysis is based on Jeanne Fahnestock's model of genre shifts in scientific writing. When scientific knowledge is translated into digestible information for public audiences, Fahnestock calls that process "accommodation":
"My paper argues that this generic transformation is paralleled in esports writing when highly technical games analyses geared towards knowledgeable fan bases are decoded into much broader terms for the public unfamiliar with the game, or even esports as a whole"
Yoon proposes that esports writing utilizes narrative as its rhetorical mode because relatable story-building fosters emotional investment in the audience toward the highly technical esports competition.
With a new model for approaching cultural production surrounding esports, we can better understand, guide, and communicate the culture of competitive play […] allowing the industry to more effectively present itself not only to its fans but also the world at large.
- John Yoon