Interfacing With Data Facts and Fictions on Japanese Digital Games in Fan-Curated Databases

Fan-curated databases represent an emergent way of preserving and propagating (game) culture and its practices. On the one hand, they are tools for users, created by users to navigate media cultures. On the other hand, they mediate and (re)construct media culture by reflecting underlying geo-socio-technical conditions. In producing cataloged items, users deploy and crystallize consensus views, which interpolate, intersect, commune, and clash as part of user interactions with media, narratives, practices, and other users. Consequently, approaching fan-curated databases requires increased focus on data models, definitions, practices, revealing what really constitutes the object of cataloging for the repository’s userbase. In the case of Japanese digital games, such examination may reveal multiple ways by which userbase may describe, relate, interact and make sense of the ‘Japanese’ in the Japanese digital games they catalog. To do so, this paper approaches two English-language databases cataloging Japanese digital games, MobyGames and The Visual Novel Database and produces comparison with Japanese-language repositories of similar scopes, Gēmu Katarogu@Wiki ~Meisaku kara Kusogē made~, ErogameSpace -Erogē Hyōron Kūkan-, and Otome Gēmu Matome@Wiki.