Z1: Battle Royale
Game
Documents about Z1: Battle Royale
Article
Entering the Battlegrounds: Fan Labour in PUBG and Its Connection to the Mega-Platform
Emmanouloudis's paper examines how the success of PUBG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) relied substantially on unpaid fan labour, including modding, streaming, fan art, feedback, and tool-building, all channelled through a "mega-platform" of interconnected community sites and social media.
- Fan labour was central to PUBG's growth, with modding, streaming, fan art, feedback, and tool-building all contributing largely unpaid value that the publisher captured commercially.
- The relationship between players and publisher is characterised as symbiotic yet exploitative: fans gain belonging and recognition, while the company profits from contributions it neither compensates nor fully controls.
- PUBG reached over 60 million copies sold by 2019, and its streams attracted more than 70,000 viewers in early 2018, illustrating the scale of its audience and community.
G|A|M|E – The Italian Journal of Game StudiesMay 2026
Article
Cheating Against the Machine: Reclaiming (Game) Space in The Hunger Games
Anh-Thu Nguyen's analysis treats the arena of The Hunger Games as a fictional game space, drawing on Michael Nitsche's framework of rule-based, mediated, fictional, play, and social spaces to examine how the Capitol's power is built into the arena's rules, surveillance technology, and the manipulations of the Gamemakers.
- The analysis treats the Hunger Games arena as a fictional game space using Michael Nitsche's framework (rule-based, mediated, fictional, play, and social spaces), arguing that the Capitol's power is embedded in the arena's rules, surveillance technology, and Gamemaker manipulations.
- Unlike videogame battle royales, the Hunger Games carries explicit political content about oppression and resistance, making the Games a closed system in which tributes begin with little genuine agency.
- The paper argues that tributes can recover limited agency by cheating or exploiting arena flaws, with Katniss's nightlock berry stunt and her breach of the force field read as resistance.
Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game CultureJun 2025
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