Video Game Fan Fiction is Small and Oddly Distributed

[CrimzonSamurai]

When I was but a child, I read a decent amount of fan fiction, mostly Harry Potter stuff in between the book releases, but I read Dragon Ball Z and even Super Smash Brothers fan fiction, back when there was only Smash 64.

Recently, I've been reading some before I go to bed. Mostly it's been ones for a manga I like, Shokugeki no Soma, but I have been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and wanted to check out what kind of fan fiction it had going on. Horizon only has 66 stories on faniction.net, my dumb shonen cooking manga has like 780 something. That seems.... odd. Horizon has a huge and really cool universe for original characters and stories, it has way more going on than Shokugeki in terms of the scale of its fictional universe.

So, I went looking around ff.net and while nothing touches Harry Potter's almost 800k count, the dispersal of the numbers of video game stories seems really weird. First of all, the numbers are low in general. There are only two video games that have more stories than WWE Wrestling, and one of those is Pokemon, and there isn't a separate anime section for Pokemon so that invalidates that one, which means that standalone the only game that has more than the WWE is Kingdom Hearts. It also seems like game universes that have large and exploitable settings and lore have particularly few stories, even within games themselves. Like, why does Five Nights at Freddys have more stories than Warcraft? Why does Portal have more than Metal Gear? Why does Kirby have more than GTA? It just seems weird to me.

Are people that play video games as a hobby just less likely to write fan fiction than consumers of other types of media? Unless they're part of some other fandom in addition (I,.e Sonic the Hedgehog). I dunno, just seemed odd to me, I thought there would be much more and that it would be concentrated under different titles.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

oddly distributed indeed

 

[astro]

It's because videogames rot your brain and books make you smarter.

 

[Officer Big Mac]

Oddly distributed? No, they're exactly where they ought to be.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

I thought the thread was more about fan fiction than gaming so I posted it in Etcetera intentionally, but if it fits better in Video Games a mod can move it.

 

[Wulfric]

Every fandom is different.

Magic the Gathering for instance, has almost no fanfiction and a piddling amount of fanart. I chalk it up to a player base that isn't into lore or non-game aspects of it.

Warcraft has less fanfiction, but a lot of fanart. Warcraft has a lot of lore tie-in books, which I think makes writing more complicated for fans when you account for the extra research they would have to do.

Pokemon has a lot of arts and crafts plus rule 34 (tons of it).

Final Fantasy has a decent amount of everything, simply by virtue of it being 30 years old now.

Games that attract larger female audiences (Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Legend of Zelda) tend to have lots of fanart and cosplay. Fanfiction is an outlier rather than a norm.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

I thought the thread was more about fan fiction than gaming so I posted it in Etcetera intentionally, but if it fits better in Video Games a mod can move it.

Click to shrink...

i don't really mind personally

i just wanted to make a hilarious "wrong forum" joke when i got the chance at the first reply

 

[RiOrius]

I expect it's not "video game fans are less likely than average" but rather "Harry Potter and anime fans are more likely than average." I doubt there's a lot of Gilmore Girls fanfic out there.

And while it's true that there's a lot of overlap between video game fandoms and the fandoms that inspire a lot of fanfic, I don't think it's a surprising that a fanfic writer who both watches anime and plays video games would prefer to fanfic the anime. Plot is still often the secondary feature of video games (especially the popular ones), while it's the raison d'etre for anime or literature.

 

[MadeULook]

As a rule of thumb, the more shipping that goes on in a fanbase, the more fanfiction there will be. Most fanfiction is just people writing their favorite ships together without much care for quality or any actual storytelling really. Just take a walk into Kingdom Hearts or Naruto fanfiction to know true horror.

This was at least my experience when I read fanfiction all the time back in high school. I log into my old FF account to laugh at how I used to think some of it was high literature. Occasionally I'll come across some excellent ones here and there but you really gotta filter through a bunch of garbage.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

I remember reading a fan fiction of Harry and ginny singing snow patrol cars, and I knew it wasn't for me.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

I expect it's not "video game fans are less likely than average" but rather "Harry Potter and anime fans are more likely than average." I doubt there's a lot of Gilmore Girls fanfic out there.

And while it's true that there's a lot of overlap between video game fandoms and the fandoms that inspire a lot of fanfic, I don't think it's a surprising that a fanfic writer who both watches anime and plays video games would prefer to fanfic the anime. Plot is still often the secondary feature of video games (especially the popular ones), while it's the raison d'etre for anime or literature.

Click to shrink...

Well, I checked, there are 17.8k Gilmore Girls stories, which puts it just beneath Mass Effect's 19.3k and above Fire Emblem's 15k. Mass Effect has the 7th most stories out of any of the games listed.

 

[Deleted member 3345]

i don't really mind personally

i just wanted to make a hilarious "wrong forum" joke when i got the chance at the first reply

Click to shrink...

and this is why video game fan fiction isn't taken seriously.

shame on you

(i dont know)​

 

[Daniel Westlake]

I think a lot of it comes down to which games make a larger cultural impact and how much those series are based on relationships and character interactions. For instance I don't have numbers obviously but I imagine the number of Fire Emblem fanfics shot up massively after Awakening and then Heroes more recently. Clearly things like Pokemon are in a league of their own.

 

[WhateverItTakes]

It really depends on what the demographics of the fans are. Kingdom Hearts is massively popular in all ages, has a huge cast, and infinite crossover potential. Naturally that leads to one of the biggest fanfic communities.

Persona, the fandom I write stuff for, is much smaller, but still big relatively, which I credit to being a story based game- it naturally makes for more stories.

But communities can latch on to different things. Doki Doki Literature Club has over 300 fics on AO3 already, meanwhile Katawa Shoujo, which has only been around for a little bit, only has about 60.

Honestly I think the key is characters. You make characters people absolutely love, hell yeah they're gonna want to get more milage from them. Plus if the story really lacks certain character interactions, or has broad scope to introduce more material, people will fill in the gaps.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

So, I went looking around ff.net and while nothing touches Harry Potter's almost 800k count, the dispersal of the numbers of video game stories seems really weird. First of all, the numbers are low in general. There are only two video games that have more stories than WWE Wrestling, and one of those is Pokemon, and there isn't a separate anime section for Pokemon so that invalidates that one, which means that standalone the only game that has more than the WWE is Kingdom Hearts. It also seems like game universes that have large and exploitable settings and lore have particularly few stories, even within games themselves. Like, why does Five Nights at Freddys have more stories than Warcraft? Why does Portal have more than Metal Gear? Why does Kirby have more than GTA? It just seems weird to me.

Click to shrink...

somehow kingdom hearts having the most fan fiction doesn't surprise me at all

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

It really depends on what the demographics of the fans are. Kingdom Hearts is massively popular in all ages, has a huge cast, and infinite crossover potential. Naturally that leads to one of the biggest fanfic communities.

Persona, the fandom I write stuff for, is much smaller, but still big relatively, which I credit to being a story based game- it naturally makes for more stories.

But communities can latch on to different things. Doki Doki Literature Club has over 300 fics on AO3 already, meanwhile Katawa Shoujo, which has only been around for a little bit, only has about 60.

Honestly I think the key is characters. You make characters people absolutely love, hell yeah they're gonna want to get more milage from them. Plus if the story really lacks certain character interactions, or has broad scope to introduce more material, people will fill in the gaps.

Click to shrink...

I guess the website might make a big difference, because Horizon has 267 of AO3 and only 66 on ff.net.

 

[Daniel Westlake]

I guess the website might make a big difference, because Horizon has 267 of AO3 and only 66 on ff.net.

Click to shrink...

Some smaller titles get a bit more love on AO3 in addition to the usual suspects.

Besides the overall numbers are lower than some other sections, but the drop off once you get out of the top ten or so tracks pretty similarly in other categories.

Only looking at fanfiction.net the drop from Harry Potter to the next highest Twilight is massive and from Twilight to Percy Jackson is also significant.

 

[H.Protagonist]

I did my part. My FF7 fan fiction was a masterpiece. A masterpiece, I say! Getting on almost 20 years since I posted that thing and I still get reviews once in a blue moon. Ah, sweet youth~

 

[Daniel Westlake]

One thing I will say though how the hell is the His Dark Materials series that low on the list for books?
-
Also we need to revive a fanficion recommendation thread. IveI been searching for a particular Kingdom Hearts fanfic for like a year and a half now, this was before I began saving copies of every fanfic I read.

 

[BDS]

It's because fanfiction writers are more likely to be women.

(Shameless thread plug, but I worked hard on it)

 

[Daniel Westlake]

It's because fanfiction writers are more likely to be women.

(Shameless thread plug, but I worked hard on it)

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It's a great thread.

 

[Akira86]

as long as it stays out of my Bazooka Joe bubblegum wrappers, I'm okay with it.

 

[Haelsly]

I guess the website might make a big difference, because Horizon has 267 of AO3 and only 66 on ff.net.

Click to shrink...

Beat me to it. Not that I can measure this statistically or anything, but most of the people I know who are active in fandom post to AO3 exclusively. So yeah, some of it might just depend where you're looking.

 

[Wulfric]

One thing I will say though how the hell is the His Dark Materials series that low on the list for books?
-
Also we need to revive a fanficion recommendation thread. IveI been searching for a particular Kingdom Hearts fanfic for like a year and a half now, this was before I began saving copies of every fanfic I read.

Click to shrink...

Is HDM still popular? I remember there was a movie, but I don't hear people talk about it like Eragon or Unfortunate Events.

 

[WhateverItTakes]

I guess the website might make a big difference, because Horizon has 267 of AO3 and only 66 on ff.net.

Click to shrink...

AO3 is the better site by a country mile but FF.net will always have the mindshare. AO3 you've gotta find out about somewhere y'know?

I did my part. My FF7 fan fiction was a masterpiece. A masterpiece, I say! Getting on almost 20 years since I posted that thing and I still get reviews once in a blue moon. Ah, sweet youth~

Click to shrink...

Getting those 'like' notifications do warm my heart wonderfully, but nothing will beat the feeling of a review from someone who gets it.

 

[Kalentan]

Warcraft has less fanfiction, but a lot of fanart. Warcraft has a lot of lore tie-in books, which I think makes writing more complicated for fans when you account for the extra research they would have to do.

.

Click to shrink...

In terms of research it does also come down to the fandom as well. Halo has a shit ton of books and still manages to have an impressive 8.7k fanfics and 2.7k Crossover fanfics. On FF.net though not at all sure about other sites.

 

[Kyougar]

I also find it strange what fandom is getting massive fanfiction support and some others are low in the dust.
In the book section, Peter F. Hamilton's works are non-existant, but the web series "Worm" (a 1,7 million epic) has over 600 fanffics on ff.net alone.

Also, the male to female ratio plays an important point which franchise is popular. AO3 is more M/M and FF.Net is more F/M. So you would find more fics on AO3 if the game has a bigger male ratio.

Personally, I am more inclined to read amateur original webfiction. And on the fanfiction side more on the TV-Series side.

 

[Daniel Westlake]

Average age of a works audience also plays a huge role. Like the sun will always shine on the Sonic empire just based on it's ability to maintain a stable fanbase of children and teens.

 

[SchrodingerC]

You could say a lot of fanfics are oddly disturbed...and have badly written sex scenes.

IIRC, it depends on the series. Heavy role playing games, or just RPGs tends to have more fanfics, like Dragon Age, ME, FF, etc
Or have a cast of variety of characters that are largely appealing, ie Overwatch.

 

[Jonnax]

AO3 is the better site by a country mile but FF.net will always have the mindshare. AO3 you've gotta find out about somewhere y'know?
[\QUOTE]

I never really got what was better about AO3 apart from the tagging system. But whenever I gave the place a browse what stood out to me is that the tagging system highlighted that were a lot of rape stories on the site .

So I presumed it was a site set up by people upset about "censorship" on Ff.net

Click to shrink...

 

[tino]

ZD Horizon is really not that interest to expend upon. The overworld is very interesting but the game itself answered almost all questions it asked in the beginning. There is no need to explain the origin of the lore for game 1 but it went ahead and explained it anyway. There is nowhere interesting for the story to go.

 

[Sybil]

Games in which plots are a little more involved than a few dialogue boxes tend to be more popular with the fanfic-writing type. There needs to be enough established canon so that people would want to write fanfiction rather than just completely make up their own characters and settings in prose.

On a related note, I noticed a resurgence in castlevania fan content in general (fanart, fanfic, etc) as a result of the cartoon. What surprised me is that most of these creators have never played a castlevania game or played one after watching the cartoon.
To really get into the lore of a video game you have to play the game, which to some may not be their thing I guess. Watching a TV show or reading a book is a bit simpler in a way, and a lot of video game lore is pretty garbage anyway.

 

[WhateverItTakes]

I never really got what was better about AO3 apart from the tagging system. But whenever I gave the place a browse what stood out to me is that the tagging system highlighted that were a lot of rape stories on the site .

So I presumed it was a site set up by people upset about "censorship" on Ff.net

Click to shrink...

Well yeah the tagging system, and the general UI is a lot cleaner and easy to navigate. FF.net still looks like it's from the mid-2000s and not in a good way, tbh I never get the vibe that the webmasters cared that much.

But you're right AO3 has a lot more of the weirder stuff. Like I could put my Doki Doki Literature Club fic on there straight away with the tagging, while for FF.net the subsection didn't exist yet and I don't think you can make one yourself.

 

[Jojo Leir]

It's because fanfiction writers are more likely to be women.

(Shameless thread plug, but I worked hard on it)

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That's a very interesting subject, I'll make sure to read it soon.

My uneducated guess would be that, outside enthusiast circles, gaming fans move on from game to game much faster than say, those of a tv show or book. That and the medium by-and-large not having a laser focus on storytelling, even the lore-heavy examples in the OP.