Citation Practices in Games. Why Citing or Not Citing ?

Listing the citation practices in boardgames and tabletop role-playing games for the On the shoulders of Cloud Giants project.

Why citing ?

What are we citing others authors and sources ?

• to pay homage ;
• to acknowledge we are not the original author ;
• to put ourselves in filial relationship ; 
• to position ourselves in opposition [3] ;
• to be protected by the person we dedicate the works ;
• to explictly ackowledge an adaptation, an imitation, a remix, a mash-up ;

• to display our erudition ;
• to help assess the original idea [1] ;
• to support the veracity of an idea with factual informations or call to expert authorities ;
• to show the angle of the study (which field, which method, etc.) ;
• to help understand the context of the birth of an idea ; 
• to help assess the impact of an idea (calculating the number of citations, publications, etc.) [4] ;
• to track or understand the evolution of an idea [1] ;
• to create an asynchronous space of conversation between reasearch of the world ;
• to web a social network of documents ;
• to list a curated selection of sources on a topic ;
• to help the reader to re-use an original idea (CC).

Why Not Citing (sic) ?

Here is a list of reasons why people don't cite.

• « The type of document I am writing doesn't need to cite. » 
• ex : an home-made rule, an invitation card to a private convention, etc.
• « The type of document I am using in my own work doesn't need to be cited. »
• ex: a sentence said by a game designer in a panel of a conference, etc.
• « I don't know a thing in copyright, plagiarism or intellectual property. »
• « I was inspired by a work but I want to show the original ideas are coming from me. »
• « Everything come from me. »
• « Newton and Einstein didn't cite much. Me neither. » [7]
• « Citing will burden or confuse the reading process. »
• « It is not esthetically beautiful. »
• « There is no place to put all these informations. »
• « I don't want to explain my method, I just want deliver the results. » [6]
• « Some authors, who re-use copyrighted content, were legally prosecuted, even if they cited well theirs sources. »
• Ex: Cease and desisit of the Tolkien Enterprises vs. TSR, leading to abandon all references to Tolkien in the 6th print of D&D (1977).
• Ex: Cease and desist of TSR vs. Grimoire Games (Arduin) ;
• Ex: Agreement between Chaosium and TSR about Elric of Michael Moorcock and the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft ;
• Ex: Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate vs. TSR (Warriors of Mars wargame) ;
• Ex: TSR vs. Gary Gygax's Dangerous Dimensions [8];
• « Game authors who used to cite, doesn't cite anymore. » [5]

Lyrism on citation practices

« It is textual DNA. » Dan Martin, 2018.

« The references and the bibliography ? They are the documents' social network. » Pascal Martinolli, 2018.

Bibliography

^{[1] King, Peter, & Andrew Arlig. « Peter Abelard ». In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2018. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/abelard/. Part 7.
[2] Anderson, Elizabeth, 2011. “Democracy, Public Policy, and Lay Assessments of Scientific Testimony,” Episteme, 8(2): 144–164. [read in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-knowledge-social/]. Part 3.
[3] Deslauriers, Marguerite. « Lucrezia Marinella ». In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2018. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/lucrezia-marinella/. Part 6.
[4] Nickles, Thomas. « Historicist Theories of Scientific Rationality ». In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2017. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/rationality-historicist/. Part 1.6.[5] Vianney, & Manuel. « Qui possède le game ? » Ludologies, du jeu sous toutes ses formes, 2019. https://soundcloud.com/ludologies/76-qui-possede-le-game. at 00:56:01.
[6] Jean-François Dortier, Descartes : Pouvoirs et limites de la méthode, Sciences humaines, no. 308, 2018, p.55.
[7] Jean-François Dortier, De Socrate à Foucault, Les philosophes au banc d'essai, ed. Sciences humaines, 2018.
[8] The Ultimate Interview With Gary Gygax. Interview by Ciro Alessandro Sacco. The Kyngdoms, 1999. http://www.keithrobinson.me/thekyngdoms/interviews/garygygax.php.}