MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This paper examines the role of viral newsgames in reinforcing public opinion and narrative around a news story. Bogost, Ferrari, and Schweizer (2010) noted that newsgames encompass “a broad body of work produced at the intersection of videogames and journalism” (p. 6). Sicart (2008) defines newsgames as “those games that utilize the medium with the intention of participating in the public debate” (p. 27). The newsgame examined here is Normal Collars (normalcollars.com, 2018). A tabloid newsgame (Bogost et al. 2010) that mocks former Philadelphia 76ers Team President and General Manager Bryan Colangelo, who, at the time of the game’s release on June 4, 2018, was mired in a bizarre public imbroglio that centered around basketball secrets, five fake, “burner” Twitter accounts, and his wife that ended with his resignation days later.

Players play Normal Collars by moving an image of Colangelo’s head along the bottom of the screen to, “Collect very normal collars to increase your burner account follows…Avoid Hinkie, Joel, The Ringer and others who might expose your burners…Jerry [Colangelo] will give you more burners” (normalcollars.com, 2018). The name of the game itself is a riff on the criticism in Philadelphia 76ers fandom that Bryan Colangelo’s shirt collars are abnormally large.

Ludically, Normal Collars is unremarkable. When taken as a part of a larger paratextual news event, however, one where much digital (and real) ink was spilled and hours were spent in deliberation on sports radio and ESPN, Normal Collars is an illustrative case on the ability of newsgames to extend the public debate on this issue. Analysis in this paper will be conducted through an autoethnographic approach of playing the game, as well as a holistic examination of the paratextual media elements surrounding the game itself and the story at large.