[Commlist] CfP Chapters for Book on Nostalgia (for the Future) and Video Games

Call for Chapter Abstracts -- Games and Nostalgia for the Future
Edited by Richy Srirachanikorn

Abstracts (750 words) due November 3, 2025

Scholars and artists, whose works touch on nostalgia, memory, 'old' 
technology, and video games are invited to submit abstracts for an 
edited volume. The editor is currently finalizing with Play Story Press 
and Psychgeist to be the publisher.

Note: Authors do not have to pay to submit the abstracts, and if 
accepted, have their chapters published.


** Why Video Games, Nostalgia, and "for the Future"? **

Video games and nostalgia share an interesting overlap. They are 
culturally recognizable  yet personally, and subjectively, resonant. 
When a game adopts a style that harks back to past titles, like 8-bit, 
the Silly Symphonies cartoons, and PS2 graphics, does this make it a 
'retro' game? Even if it 'looks' like an old game, does it play and feel 
like one?

Remakes and remasters, if done right, can be cash cows for game 
companies. Games like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy 7 are examples 
of successful remakes that appeal to old players for its faithful 
restorations, but also to old and new players, for its upgraded graphics 
and new content. In contrast, remakes like World of Warcraft: Return to 
Azeroth or the Club Penguin private servers have left their nostalgic 
communities to take matters into their own hands. 
Players-turned-developers remake these remakes, but even so, some of 
these restorations do not follow the original's footsteps, or just do 
not feel safe, legitimate, or 'right'.

What about emulation, MAME, modding, and DIY cultures? When hobbyists 
and members from these groups 'bring back' an obscure machine or game, 
is it still a 'nostalgic' object once taken apart, remodelled, or reapplied?

These are cases where nostalgia cannot sit still. It is not a 
past-based, passive, and individualized emotion; it is a generative, 
active, and collective force to act -- to define, to find a place for, 
to actualize a nostalgia... for the future.


** Potential Topics **

• The debate of what makes a game 'retro'
• The rise of contemporary retro games, or games that adopt past styles 
and mechanics
• Remakes and remasters -- what do players do?
• Designers who draw on past play memories and break them
• Anemoia, counterfactual, false nostalgia that games produce -- where 
does the yearning go?
• Past aesthetics and the problem of historicity, or defining the 'past'
• Grief and games -- what is lost and found?
• Modding and emulator communities that resist the industries' drive for 
newness and progress
• Apps that help people 'play' with the past and see it differently
• New ways of looking at the old
• Theories: hauntology, retrotopia, simulacra, utopia, vaporware, 
historicity, etc.


** Submission Details **

Due November 3, 2025

Please fill out this Google Form: 
https://richysrirachanikorn.wixsite.com/home/post/cfp-nostalgia-for-the-future-book 
<https://richysrirachanikorn.wixsite.com/home/post/cfp-nostalgia-for-the-future-book>

1. Abstract (750 words)
2. Proposed Title
3. Keywords (6 max.)
4. Supplemental Materials
5. Author Information

Contact: (srirachanikorn /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(srirachanikorn /at/ gmail.com)>


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