Video game archaeology is a relatively new field. This can involve studying players through the traces they leave in digital game worlds, though only limited work of this kind exists. Furthermore, the potential of these methods to record ephemeral play experiences for preservation purposes has not been widely explored. We conducted an archaeological survey of five sites in Elden Ring, taking place directly before, during and after the release of a major expansion. We present what is, to our knowledge, the first collaborative autoethnography of an archaeological survey in a video game, reflecting on our recorded footage, notes and data. Through a diffractive analysis, we demonstrate the value of video game archaeology as a form of hauntological practice that allows for a deeper reflection on the knowledge production process, and in doing so contribute to the development of new interdisciplinary methodologies in HCI, archaeology and games research.

Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games boomed in the late 1990s to 2000s. In parallel, ethnographic studies of these communities emerged, generally involving participant observation and interviews. Several decades on, many MMOs have been reconfigured, remastered or are potentially no longer accessible at all, which presents challenges for their continued study and long-term preservation. In this paper we explore the “go-along” methodology, in which a researcher joins a participant on a walk through a familiar place and asks them questions, as a qualitative research method applicable for the study and preservation of games culture. Though the methodology has been introduced in digital media studies, to date it has had limited application in digital games, if at all. We report on a pilot study exploring applications of the go-along method to the sandbox MMO Wurm Online; a persistent, player-directed world with a rich history. We report on our motivations for the work, our analysis of the resulting interviews, and our reflections on both the use of go-alongs in digital games, as well as the unique and inspiring culture and community of this lesser-known game.

Archaeogaming and queer games studies have both grown as paradigms in the last decade. The former broadly refers to the archaeological study of games, while the latter concerns the application of queer theory to the medium. To date, there has been limited engagement of archaeogamers with queer games scholarship, and vice versa. This article argues that there are epistemological parallels between the two; they are both concerned with the limits and ethics of representation, the personal and political contexts of game development and engagement with video games through transgressive play.

Procedural content generation has been applied to many domains, especially level design, but the narrative affordances of generated game environments are comparatively understudied. In this paper we present our first attempt to study these effects through the lens of what we call a generative archaeology game that prompts the player to archaeologically interpret the generated content of the game world. We report on a survey that gathered qualitative and quantitative data on the experiences of 187 participants playing the game Nothing Beside Remains. We provide some preliminary analysis of our intentional attempt to prompt player interpretation, and the unintentional effects of a glitch on the player experience of the game.

Archaeology can be broadly defined as the study and interpretation of the past through material remains. Video game worlds, though immaterial in nature, can also afford opportunities to study the people who existed within them based on what they leave behind. In this paper we present one of the first formal archaeological surveys of a predominantly single-player game, by recording the player-generated content that is asynchronously distributed to players in Elden Ring. We report on the methodology and results of the survey, before reflecting on what we could extrapolate from those results about Elden Ring’s player community, and the nature of archaeological surveying within video games more broadly.