SVI Conference 2027

GAMES AND COMMUNITIES – PLAYERS, FANS, GAMERS

Video games become culturally important and politically consequential in part through the immediate impact they have on players, and through the ways players, in turn, shape them. Video games are formed through the situated practices of those who play, watch, collect, discuss, modify, preserve, and contest them. Whether described as players, gamers, or fans, those who engage with games actively participate in shaping their meaning, value, and cultural significance. They are not passive or monolithic recipients within the contemporary game ecosystem: they interpret, transform, critique, archive, preserve, and expand games and play beyond their original publication and purpose. Through community formation, affective investment, creative production, collecting, and public discourse, players continuously reshape the cultural and political landscapes surrounding video games and the platforms on which they play them. From ambient play to the creation of fan folklore, from children’s learning practices in digital environments to coping mechanisms embedded in single-player and multiplayer narratives, players’ activities provide crucial insight into how video games function as cultural systems.

Thus, it becomes essential to examine video game culture through the activities, practices, and creative engagements of players themselves. This year’s Video Game Studies Conference places players, fans, gamers, and communities at the forefront of academic discussions on the significance of researching video games, fandom, and popular culture more broadly.

The scope and impact of this topic are vast and complex. We seek contributions that treat fandom and player communities not as peripheral contexts but as core analytic objects – crucial to theorizing games as cultural artifacts, affective experiences, and political formations. For this reason, the conference invites interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches that examine players and communities from diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to literary studies, cultural studies, media studies, fan studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, history, platform studies, and digital humanities.