Equal Footing: Cool idea, but is it possible?

Although I'm not sure how well it achieves its goals of collaboration, I really like the ideas underlying the GAM3R 7H30RY project. Like Wikipedia, in theory, it allows users to rule; it privileges the voice of the common man/woman (ok...not really common. By "common", I mean the computer-savvy person reading the book), and it helps break down the boundary between author and reader. (And yes, I think I'm most fascinated with this right now because Scott Rettberg commented on my blog post.) Because of the nature of the comments (which I'll get to in a minute), like Lulu, I wanted to privilege the index cards over the comments. However, because I wanted to look at this as a piece of collaboration, I was most interested in the comments, so I made a deliberate effort to study them.

As for the comments, they weren't as spectacular or engaging as I thought they'd be. In the "Atopia" chapter, which had numerous comments, readers mostly critiqued how Wark describes the game Vice City. Eventually one user comments: "This is a funny thing to argue about in these comments, whether you are describing the game accurately (its almost like a test of who has played the game thoroughly and recently)" and Wark responds, "It’s important to get the details right, but not to get fixated on them." And it seems like the readers do get fixated on them. This is emphasized by the lack of comments in the chapter "Boredom", which is more therotectical, with quotes from Schopenhauer and Adorno. Yes, the few comments posted in "Atopia" are lengthy and clearly engaged with material...but there are only a few. In other words, the juxtaposition of the two chapters shows that readers seem more interested in critiquing Wark's knowledge of the games than his analysis of gaming itself.

Nevertheless, I think it's cool that all voices and comments are appreciated. But, like Lulu again points out, it doesn't seem (based on the comments) like the end product will put the book and its discussion on equal footing, as the creators wanted.