On, Off and In the Map: Materialising Game Experiences Through Player Cartography

This paper examines player-made maps in games, treating them not as disposable instruments of play but as recording devices that capture and preserve gameplay narratives and experiences. Drawing on material culture studies, anthropology, literary studies, geography, and game studies, the author argues that these maps should be understood through the lens of materiality, encompassing their physical existence, practical instantiation, and personal significance. The work positions player cartography as a site where players make meaning from their experiences and where historical practices around games can be investigated, with particular relevance for historical games studies, game history, and analogue game studies.

The analysis draws on a range of physical and digital maps, alongside rulebooks, archives, blogs, and the games themselves. Some player maps are held in formal archives such as PlaGMaDa, while others survive in personal collections, and online commentary reveals that players often keep these maps as treasured possessions, attesting to their affective weight. The paper engages with digital materiality, arguing that digital maps cannot be separated from physicality and that the notion of materiality encompasses practical instantiation as well as significance.

A central concern is the colonial character of mapping in games. Mapping and naming are framed as acts of taking possession that re-enact imperial logics, often through what has been described as the discoverer's fantasy, in which space acquires meaning only through the arrival of the player-protagonist. The paper contends that this objectification of space shapes the stories player maps can tell, yet it stresses that colonial overtones are not the only or necessarily the principal quality of these artefacts.

The author concludes that player maps are embedded in relationships of meaning shaped by their material qualities and affordances. Beyond recording, such maps orient players, give form to imagination, and capture experience through their notation, gradual development, and absences. They can evoke memory and tell stories that are both individual and collectively legible, with their value residing in their materiality as products of the relationships between maps and the players who make, use, and preserve them.