WildStar

WildStar's Rogue Archives: Exploring an Anarchaeological Approach to Defunct Games

This paper proposes a "paratextual anarchaeology," a method for reconstructing defunct videogames from the player-produced remnants that surround them, rather than relying solely on technical preservation through emulation.

• The paper proposes "paratextual anarchaeology," a method that reconstructs defunct videogames from player-produced remnants (forum threads, discussion posts, gameplay videos) rather than relying solely on technical preservation through emulation.
• The authors argue that conventional preservation overlooks the context of play and the embodied, affective experiences of players, which are often absent from institutional archives.
• The approach adapts platform anarchaeology and Siegfried Zielinski's media anarchaeology to videogames, treating player-created communities as "rogue archives" that capture emergent player experience.