[Commlist] Call for Papers: ‘Save State: Ethics, Politics and Poetics of Video Game Preservation’📢

*Call for Papers: /Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds/*

Special Issue: ‘Save State: Ethics, Politics and Poetics of Video Game 
Preservation’

Guest Editors: Paweł Frelik (University of Warsaw), Magdalena Kozyra 
(SWPS University), Tomasz Z. Majkowski (Jagiellonian University)

Important Dates

  *

    Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 March 2026

  *

    Notification of Acceptance: 10 March 2026

  *

    Full Article Submission: 15 June 2026

  *

    Peer Review Returned:1 August 2026

  *

    Revised Article Submission: 31 August 2026

  *

    Publication: late 2026

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-gaming-virtual-worlds#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-gaming-virtual-worlds#call-for-papers>

The Call

Video games and virtual worlds are among the most culturally 
significant, yet materially fragile, artifacts of the late 20th and 21st 
century. As the industry pivots aggressively toward ‘games as a service’ 
(GaaS), cloud streaming and digital-only distribution, the ontological 
stability of the ‘game object’ is collapsing. We are witnessing a 
paradox: games are more ubiquitous than ever, yet their history is 
disappearing in real-time.

 From the shuttering of MMO servers to the delisting of licensed 
titles, and from the ‘bit rot’ of physical media to the ephemeral nature 
of day-one patches, the archive is in crisis. This Special Issue of 
Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worldsseeks to move beyond the technical 
question of howto save games (emulation, migration) – although this 
issue will also be considered – to the critical question of whatis being 
saved, by whom and for whom. We invite scholars and archivists to 
investigate the tension between corporate intellectual property rights 
and the cultural imperative of preservation, the role of ‘piracy’ as 
archiving, and the methodological challenges of documenting dynamic, 
ever-changing virtual worlds.

We welcome contributions from game studies, media archaeology, platform 
studies, critical code studies and digital ethnography. We are 
particularly interested in research that challenges the ‘official’ 
histories of games, looking instead at the messy reality of modded 
lobbies, private servers and cracked executables.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

  *

    The materiality of the medium: approaches to preserving physical
    artifacts beyond the software code, including ‘feelies’, packaging,
    manuals and the tactile history of decaying plastics (e.g. disc rot,
    cartridge battery failure);

  *

    Hardware, haptics and the CRT: the phenomenological gap in emulation
    – how to preserve the authentic experience of specific display
    technologies (scanlines, vector monitors) and proprietary input
    devices (light guns, dance pads, Wii remotes);

  *

    Paratextual contexts: the necessity of archiving the ‘surround’ of
    the game to understand its play – including strategy guides, fan
    magazines, box art and advertising materials that framed the
    original experience;

  *

    Regionality and localization: the challenges of preserving distinct
    regional variants; how translation choices, censorship and technical
    differences create divergent histories for the ‘same’ game; global
    digital divide: game preservation in the core, semi-periphery and
    periphery;

  *

    Politics of abandonware: legal grey zones, DMCA exemptions and the
    conflict between copyright and cultural heritage;

  *

    Archiving ‘living’ games: methodologies for preserving MMOs, GaaS
    and ephemeral events (e.g. Fortniteconcerts). How does one archive a
    social space?

  *

    Shadow archives: the role of pirate communities, torrent trackers
    and ‘scene’ groups as de facto archivists;

  *

    Archaeology of updates: tracking the aesthetic and narrative drift
    caused by patches, updates and version changes;

  *

    Emulation as translation: technical and philosophical implications
    of playing games on non-native hardware;

  *

    Virtual world necropolitics: what happens to communities when the
    servers go dark? Case studies of ‘sunset’ phases in virtual worlds;

  *

    Curating the glitch: preserving bugs, exploits and ‘broken’ states
    as essential parts of gaming history;

  *

    Source code and sovereignty: leaked source code, SDKs and developer
    tools as archival materials;

  *

    The performance of play: moving beyond the software object to
    archive the actof playing; utilizing Let's Plays, Twitch VODs,
    esports replays and speedrun records as archival evidence of
    gameplay practices, meta-strategies and player culture;

  *

    Platform death and web history: the specific urgency of preserving
    browser-based history, focusing on the crisis of Flash, Java applets
    and Shockwave games following the deprecation of legacy web plugins;

  *

    Oral histories and developer narratives: the role of interviews,
    studio post-mortems and internal design documents in reconstructing
    the intent and production context behind the code, bridging the gap
    between the final product and its creation;

  *

    Fan restoration and ‘un-breaking’: labour of not just storing games
    but actively repairing them: creating ‘community patches’ to fix
    bugs, restore cut content or remove restrictive DRM (digital rights
    management) that prevents archival access;

  *

    Institutional challenges and metadata: the logistical and
    epistemological struggles faced by organizations (NGO and
    otherwise), libraries, museums and archives in cataloguing
    interactive media; how to standardize metadata for a medium that
    changes versions constantly.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit a 500-word abstract and a brief author biography (100 
words). Selected authors will be invited to submit full articles of 
5,000–6,000 words (including references). Notes for contributors, 
including the citation stylesheet, can be found here:

https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/98535/1/JGVW_NFC_Nov_25.pdf 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/98535/1/JGVW_NFC_Nov_25.pdf>

Contact

Please direct all abstract submissions and inquiries to Paweł Frelik 
((p.frelik /at/ uw.edu.pl) <mailto:(p.frelik /at/ uw.edu.pl)>).

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