Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives Melanie Swalwell 9780367878528

This anthology addresses videogames long history of fandom, and fans' important role in game history and preservation. In order to better understand and theorize video games and game playing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers are active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of media texts they share with other fans (mods, walkthroughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating and preserving games through activities such as their collective work on: emulation, creating online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse perspectives that examine the complex processes at work in the phenomenon of game fandom and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recognize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of archives.

Melanie Swalwell is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow in Screen and Media at Flinders University, Australia. She is co-editor of the anthology, The Pleasures of Computer Games (2008). Melanie is currently completing a monograph Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality for the MIT Game Histories series.

Helen Stuckey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University, Australia. Her research explores the curation and collection of videogames. A games curator and historian, she has worked at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and was the Director of the Games Program at RMIT University.

Angela Ndalianis is Professor in Screen Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she also directs the Transformative Technologies Research Unit. Her publications include Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment (2004), Science Fiction Experiences (2010), The Horror Sensorium (2012) and The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero (2008).

"This book is an essential read for those of us who study what people (especially communities) do with games beyond designing and playing them. It will be of interest to anyone working in game history and especially those who study issues of preservation and archives. It should also be useful for fan scholars."- Samuel Tobin, Fitchburg State University,American Journal of Play