📂 Playful Records: Counter-Archival Game Art and Videogame Collections (forthcoming)

Abstract: Although it has become quite popular within the fields of film studies, critical archival studies, and media studies, counter-archival theory is not something that has yet been significantly taken up by the field of game studies. One of Playful Records’ central arguments is that counter-archival theory is a novel and useful framework for examining the political aspects of historically focused art games (i.e., short, artistically motivated videogames that are often made by solo or very small teams of independent developers) and works of game art (i.e., gallery-intended media art made that relies on game engines and/or appropriates videogame content). When examining this kind of work, counter-archival theory provides methods to critically reflect on how they challenge dominant narratives within both popular gaming culture and traditional forms of history, as well as how marginalized voices have often been excluded from these spaces.

Furthermore, I argue that counter-archival theory is similarly useful for expanding how videogame archives and collections are overseen and studied, in that the majority of scholarship that exists on the topic has been primarily focused on issues of technological and experiential authenticity, legality and copyright, and/or tensions between professional and enthusiast modes of archiving. Counter-archival theory fills the gaps between these methods and provides opportunities to examine how race, nationality, gender, and sexuality have impacted how videogame history has thus far been written and how these processes subsequently undergird the historical infrastructure of its growing, yet still relatively limited, number of archives. In this way, counter-archival theory allows for decolonial, feminist, queer, anticapitalist, and Indigenous perspectives to gain traction over the media archeological methods that have previously occupied the field.

Playful Records will utilize a wide variety of short recent case studies to demonstrate that counter-archival theory is a productive tool for expanding the conversation around videogames, art, and history; how videogames function within and alongside GLAM institutions; and how worldbuilding and play can be productively framed as archival ethics of care.

Keywords: counter-archival theory, game studies, art games, game art, videogame archives, decolonial and feminist methodologies, archival ethics of care, GLAM institutions, media archeology

Recommended citation: Bailey, A. (2026). Playful Records: Counter-Archival Game Art and Videogame Collections. Amsterdam University Press.