Black Mesa
Game
Documents about Black Mesa
Whitepaper4 pages
Between Preservation and Nostalgic Fantasy: Approaches to Fanmade Remasters
This paper examines fanmade remasters of digital games, positioning community modifications as an under-researched form of game remastering that complements and sometimes contests the remaster and remake practices of the commercial industry.
- The paper argues that on PC platforms, file-level openness blurs the line between a mod and a remaster, letting fans produce visual and technical upgrades identical in form to official releases, and that grassroots remastering should be studied as its own practice with motivations distinct from industry work.
- More than 80% of pre-2010 games have disappeared from commercial circulation, and fan modders respond by adapting these titles to modern operating systems and hardware as a form of archiving.
- Fan projects such as Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition and the Echo-S 7 modification for Final Fantasy VII add high-resolution assets and full voice acting while preserving original game design, offering an alternative to official releases.
DiGRAJun 2025
Whitepaper4 pages
Remakes, Remasters, and Paratextual Revisits
René Glas's paper argues that remakes and remasters of video games should be understood not only as hypertextual transformations of their originals but as paratextual objects that shape how players perceive, value, and revisit those originals.
- The paper argues that remakes and remasters are paratextual objects that shape how players perceive and value original games, not merely hypertextual transformations of them, with the label itself creating an implicit contract inviting players to compare two texts through play.
- Remakes are defined as new code with updated presentation and mechanics, while remasters retain original code and mechanics and update only presentation; the paper notes that these industry labels are often shaped by marketing narratives.
- Drawing on Švelch's notion of the 'corrective' function of updates, the author suggests remakes and remasters present themselves as the authoritative, up-to-date way to play a game and can become the only practical means of access once originals become obsolete.
DiGRASep 2024