HISTORY OF GAMES 2027
From Play to Display: The Musealisation of Video Games
University of Luxembourg
5-8 July 2027
By the late 20th century, video games had grown from ephemeral entertainment to enduring cultural artefacts. Long subject to cultural hierarchies that framed games and play as trivial, they are now collected, catalogued, exhibited, and celebrated. While video games have entered the realm of musealisation, how their histories are constructed, what is remembered, what is forgotten, and the ways in which they are preserved and exhibited, remains the subject of ongoing debate.
Dominant narratives of video game history have often privileged certain regions, genres, devices and platforms: Japan and the United States as main producers, role-playing and first-person shooters as emblematic formats, and home consoles as the quintessential hardware. Yet counter-histories thrive elsewhere. European microcomputer cultures, South American and Eastern European bootleg markets, African arcades, and grassroots modding communities reveal alternative genealogies. Regional specificities, often overlooked in favour of a global mainstream, demand new forms of recognition within the museum and the archive.
Meanwhile, preservation remains one of the fundamental challenges associated with the musealisation of video games. From fragile physical cartridges to volatile digital files, from custom controllers to network-dependent MMOs, games resist traditional archival practices. Metadata standards struggle to capture their hybrid nature as both software and cultural experience. “Rogue archives” (De Kosnik, 2016), fan-made databases, emulation projects, and pirate networks have stepped in where institutions faltered, raising questions about legality, legitimacy, and cultural stewardship.
Museums and galleries, for their part, have increasingly confronted the issue of how to exhibit games: as playable experiences, as art installations, as historical artefacts, or as media texts. Online collections compete with physical exhibitions, while hybrid approaches experiment with accessibility, preservation, and interactivity. Amateur collectors and grassroots initiatives intersect, and sometimes clash, with institutional frameworks. Curatorial strategies oscillate between nostalgia, scholarship, and spectacle.
For History of Games 2027, we invite you to interrogate the musealisation of the video game. How do we preserve, archive, and exhibit games in ways that address their complexity as technical objects, cultural practices, and works of art? What tensions exist between amateur and institutional approaches, between canonical histories and marginalised counter-histories, between physical display and digital accessibility?
The primary focus of History of Games 2027 is on digital games. We nevertheless welcome selected contributions on analogue and tabletop games where they address issues of preservation, collection, exhibition, documentation, historical interpretation, or museum practice, particularly where they offer comparative perspectives or illuminate broader questions of game heritage.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Canon formation and its disruptions in video game history
- Regional and national trajectories of preservation and exhibition
- Rogue archives, piracy, and emulation as heritage practices
- Metadata, standards, paratexts, and the documentation of video games and gaming cultures.
- Amateur collecting and grassroots preservation movements
- Institutional archives and their strategies for acquisition and display
- Online vs. physical exhibitions of video games and gaming culture
- Games as art objects, installations, and curatorial experiments
- Playability, authenticity, and the reconstruction of historical gameplay experiences
- The materiality of video games: hardware, interfaces, peripherals.
- Case studies of exhibitions, collections, or preservation projects
- The politics of representation and inclusion in video game musealisation
- Legal and ethical challenges of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting video games
Submission Formats
History of Games 2027 welcomes a range of contributions from scholars, practitioners, museum professionals, archivists, curators, artists, and independent researchers working on the history, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of video games.
To accommodate both work in progress and more mature research, the conference offers the following submission tracks:
Abstract Track 500–750 words (excluding references)
Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract (500–750 words, excluding references) presenting original research, projects, case studies, or methodological reflections. Submissions may present completed research or work in progress. References should follow the Chicago author-date style.
Following the conference, all accepted abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts. Authors will have the opportunity to revise their abstracts before publication.
Conference Format
History of Games 2027 will take place on site at the University of Luxembourg’s Belval Campus, with sessions streamed online. We hope to welcome you in Luxembourg for lively discussions, exchanges, and opportunities to connect with the wider History of Games community. However, authors of accepted abstracts who are unable to attend in person will be offered the opportunity to present their work in dedicated online sessions.
Doctoral Consortium and Poster Track
The Doctoral Consortium provides a dedicated forum for PhD researchers to present and discuss their ongoing research, receive constructive feedback from experienced scholars, and exchange ideas with fellow doctoral researchers in a supportive environment.
PhD researchers are invited to submit an extended abstract outlining their doctoral research (500-750 words), accompanied by a poster proposal. Accepted participants will present their work during the Doctoral Consortium and the accompanying poster session, offering opportunities for discussion, networking, and engagement with the wider History of Games community.
Participation in the Doctoral Consortium does not preclude submitting a separate contribution to the general abstract track.
Publication of edited volume
Following the conference, selected contributors will be invited to develop their presentations into full papers for an open-access edited volume in the Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics series (De Gruyter Brill). Papers submitted by invited contributors will undergo peer review and editorial evaluation, with publication subject to successful completion of this process.
Submission
All contributions will undergo double-blind peer review. Authors should anonymise their manuscripts by removing names, institutional affiliations, acknowledgements, and other identifying information, including self-citations where appropriate. Manuscripts should be submitted via the History of Games online submission system:
https://historyofgames.site/openconf
Open science
We encourage authors, where possible, to share datasets, documentation, metadata, software, and other research outputs that contribute to the preservation and study of game heritage.
AI policy
The use of generative AI tools in the preparation of submissions should be disclosed where it has made a substantive contribution to the writing or analysis. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, and scholarly integrity of their work.
Presentation limit
Please note that to ensure equity and access to the conference, no author may present more than two contributions to the conference. This includes single- and joint-authored submissions.
Important dates
Submission system opens: 6 November 2026
Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2027
Doctoral Consortium submission deadline: 31 January 2027
Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2027
Early-bird registration: 15 April 2027
Final programme: 15 May 2027
Conference dates: 5-8 July 2027
Programme committee
Beatriz Pérez Zapata, TecnoCampus (Pompeu Fabra University), SP
Eugen Pfister, HKB, Bern, CH
Regina Seiwald, University of Birmingham, UK
Hanna Wirman, IT University of Copenhagen, DK
Local organising committee
Sandra Camarda (General Chair)
Jean Botev
Daniele Guido
Alexandra Knysheva
Sascha Helsper
Tugce Karataş
Stefan Krebs
Kirill Mitsurov
Vanessa Napolitano
Valérie Schafer
Steering committee advisors
Victor Navarro-Remesal, Pompeu Fabra University, SP
Kieran Nolan, Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT), IE
Alex Wade, Birmingham City University, UK
Supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) RESCOM/2026/SC/2000109/HoG27