This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Juno Threadborne
I didn’t set out to join a fandom.
I played a game. I enjoyed it. That was supposed to be the end of it.
But then I finished the second episode of Dispatch by Adhoc Studio and sat there, still in the glow of it, and realized something was pulling at me. A kind of emotional inertia. Yes, the writing was immaculate, yes the mechanics were smoothly executed. But more than that, I cared. About my decisions, about the characters and...I wanted to talk about them. I wanted to know what other people saw in them. I wanted to laugh at the same dumb lines and ache at the same quiet moments
That’s when it clicked: this is what makes someone a fan. Not how many hours you’ve logged or how much merch you own. Just this: you care so much that the silence after the credits rolls feels too loud. And the only thing that can balance it is knowing someone else felt it too.
So I joined the Discord server.
And within an hour, I was laughing with strangers about an absolutely ridiculous scene in a public bathroom, quoting lines back and forth, defending the weirdest character in the game like he was family, and wondering why it had taken me so long to care in public.
But here’s the thing: it wasn’t just the writing or characters that pulled me in. It was something sneakier. A bit of UX wizardry baked into the game’s post-episode recap:
“You and 55% of players threw water at Flambae.”
That’s it. One sentence. But it speaks volumes.
It told me:
I wasn’t alone in my decision.
I had played a part in how the story unfolded—not just for me, but in this invisible collective narrative.
My weird little choice had meaning because other people made it too.
This is the magic of community-driven stats. It’s not just a numbers trick. It’s empathy engineering.
By showing me how my choice aligned (or didn’t) with the majority, it turned solitary gameplay into a communal event. It quietly opened the door for discourse. You see that 45%? You want to talk to them. What were they thinking? What did they see that you didn’t?
It's not "multiplayer." It’s more subtle. And it’s genius.
Because from that moment on, I didn’t just want to play Dispatch.
I wanted to belong to it.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Juno Threadborne
Juno Threadborne | Sciencx (2025-10-23T14:58:26+00:00) This Is What Fandom Feels Like. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/10/23/this-is-what-fandom-feels-like/
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