Mutability and Materiality in Star Trek - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 101

In the previous chapter, I discussed how the Battlestar Galactica games
highlight the automation and cyborgiication of the digital world through a
Spimatic analysis of the interactive mechanics within the game. Principle 10
extends this discussion by approaching Axel Bruns' notion of “produsage”
from the standpoint of user-created game play. Produsage is the intersection
of production and usage within a digital environment, and looks not just at
the way individual texts become converged online, but also at how nothing is
ever inished —everything is always in process . 7 Similarly, each of these Star Trek
games is never just a game; each is always a game in process . I can never point
to any one play session as the quintessential “ Star Trek paratextual board game
experience” and this is crucial to the relationship the games have with their
requisite texts. he world of Star Trek is also always in process and never seems
complete: as a franchise of multiple iterations, the series includes narrative gaps
that facilitate additional moments of narrative building. Star Trek is one of the
most franchised television series, with an original series spawning three sequel
series, a prequel series, six original series ilms, and four new series ilms, as
well as the addition of three alternate timeline reboot ilms with their canonized
graphic novel series, and that's not counting the ancillary products and spin-ofs,
including the animated series, the novels, the comics, and all the fan-created
productions. 8 Although similar in terms of structure and aesthetic elements,
the additional iterations of the Star Trek franchise make it harder and harder to
characterize “ Star Trek ” as any one particular entity. he franchise, as Geraghty
points out, “continues to change and adapt for a new audience.” 9 By examining,
irst, the materiality of the games and then, the mutable aspects of each of the
games, I demonstrate how the series and cult world of Star Trek is continually
changing and shiting, mutable in its textuality.
Playing (with) multiple Star Trek s
Although both games use similar components, the game play of Fleet Captains
and Expeditions are quite diferent from one another. In Fleet Captains , each
player controls an armada, using those ships to explore space, to build Starbase
stations, and to engage in battle with the other players' ships. he player
who earns 10 victory points, by completing missions, surviving encounters,
or building Starbases, wins the game. In contrast, Expeditions follows the
adventures of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Uhura on the planet Nibia, where they