À quoi pensent les archives de la jouabilité?

Abstract

Videogame has the particularity to involve not exclusively creators, but also and especially players, sometimes grouped in rigorously organized communities over the Internet. The remarkable devotion of these communities for their objects situate them as privileged witnesses and core historiographical actors to document, preserve and write the history of videogames. In that regard, player communities and their collective archives play a crucial role as curator and mediator of the videoludic heritage. However, this role still needs to be better understood. What conceptualization of history is put forward by videogame fans and their archives? How players’ archival practices allow us to reevaluate the historiography of video games? In order to explore and undertake the challenges that represent a videogame history developed from the perspective of players, this article consolidates a micro-historical method called a « history of gameplay ».

Keywords

• gameplay
• archive
• historiography
• player communities
• YouTube.