CALL FOR PAPERS - Issue 47: Game cultures and participation: platforms, fandoms, and transmedia circulation

2026-04-15

Submission timeline: April 15 to November 1, 2026

Publication date: June 1, 2027

 

Dossier editors

Ruth S. Contreras Espinosa, PhD. (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Jose Luis Eguia Gómez, PhD. (Universitat Politécnica de Cataluña, Spain)

Álvaro Iparraguirre Bernaola, PhD. (Universidad de Lima, Peru) 

Nico Valdivia Hennig, PhD (c). (University of California, Riverside, United States)

 

THEMATIC APPROACH

Over the last few decades, the video game has established itself as one of the most relevant phenomena in the contemporary communication ecosystem. Beyond entertainment or technical innovation, it takes shape as a deeply participatory cultural practice in which interactive systems, platform infrastructures, and user communities converge. In this context, playing does not merely entail consuming content, but rather participating in communicative processes in which player agency, system rules, and community dynamics produce meaning, regulate behaviors, and articulate forms of belonging (Bogost, 2007; Murray, 2017).

From this perspective, the video game can be understood as a meeting point between different media and narrative traditions. On the one hand, it dialogues with narrative forms that have accompanied humanity since antiquity: stories of travel, exploration, conflict, or transformation that run through epic literature, the modern novel, and popular narratives. Digital worlds make it possible to experience narrative not only as representation, but also as an inhabitable space in which the reader-player actively intervenes in the development of the story (Murray, 2007; Ryan, 2015). In this way, video games recover and reconfigure historical narrative modes in interactive environments, transforming the experience of storytelling toward ergodic forms in which exploration, decision-making, and simulation become central devices for the production of meaning.

At the same time, there are profound affinities between video games and animation. From their plasmaticity, that capacity of forms to transform, deform, and acquire a life of their own (Eisenstein, 1986/2018), to contemporary approaches that understand animation as an ontological principle of audiovisual media (Cholodenko, 2007), the animated image is characterized by its potential for movement, metamorphosis, and vitality. In this sense, the video game may be understood as an extension of animatic logic: an environment in which images do not merely move, but also respond, transform, and are activated through player intervention, expanding the field of animation toward interactive systems and navigable spaces.

This special issue proposes approaching video games from a communication perspective centered on game cultures and participation, paying attention to the way communities, platforms, and networks configure the contemporary ludic experience. In today’s digital environment, play expands and is continuously reassembled in connected ecosystems: streaming, social media, community servers, wikis, mods, and user-generated content production. These practices are not peripheral; they constitute the core of the cultural circulation of video games, where identities are negotiated, visibility is contested, and shared repertoires are constructed (Jenkins, 2006; Taylor, 2018; Contreras Espinosa & Eguía-Gómez, 2014). In the Ibero-American context, this turn toward participation and the socio-technical ecologies of play has been especially productive for understanding how collective practices, cultural circulation, and local appropriations of the medium are articulated (Contreras Espinosa & Eguía-Gómez, 2024).

Within this framework, transmedia circulation makes it possible to understand how game worlds unfold across platforms and formats, and how audiences participate actively in their expansion and reinterpretation. Communities not only amplify narratives: they also produce knowledge, establish norms, organize events, create informal learning infrastructures, and activate attention economies (Jenkins, 2006; Gray, Sandvoss, & Harrington, 2017). At the same time, these dynamics are mediated by material and political conditions: platform architectures, recommendation systems, engagement metrics, monetization models, and moderation policies, all of which shape who participates, what circulates, and under what conditions (van Dijck, Poell, & de Waal, 2018; Gillespie, 2018).

The dossier emphasizes the relationship between participation and power: community governance, conflicts, toxicity, care, accessibility, and inequalities in game cultures. It also invites exploration of how emerging technologies - such as generative AI and creative automation systems - reconfigure cultural production practices, authorship, creative labor, and the mediation of experience, as well as the role of interaction design and UX/UI in the construction of participation, agency, and meaning in ludic environments (Gillespie, 2018; van Dijck et al., 2018).

In line with Contratexto’s areas of interest, this special issue addresses the video game as a privileged object for the analysis of technological convergence, semiotics and the production of meaning, socio-communicative issues, and the transformations of media in digital culture. Priority will be given to contributions that articulate theory and method from communication research —discourse analysis, semiotics, reception studies, digital ethnographies, platform analysis, metrics, and digital methodologies— and that engage with media education and media literacy in ludic environments.

Finally, the dossier seeks to consolidate a space for transregional dialogue that strengthens the circulation of theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and Ibero-American studies, activating research networks on participatory cultures, fandoms, and platform ecologies. In doing so, it aims to broaden the academic conversation on video games from a contemporary communication perspective capable of explaining how meanings are produced, circulated, and contested in today’s game cultures, and how these cultures participate in central debates on digital citizenship, ethical design, algorithmic visibility, and life on platforms.

 

POSSIBLE FIELDS OF RESEARCH

  • Video games and the languages of digital communication
  1. The video game as a communicational medium: interaction, interfaces, and the production of meaning.
  2. Digital visual culture of play: aesthetics, styles, genres, and media literacy.
  3. Interface grammars and experience design (UX/UI) as communicative mediation.
  4. Relations between digital animation and video games: technological, visual, and narrative convergences.
  5. AI and transformations in the production, distribution, and circulation of interactive content.
  • Narratives, design, and interaction
  1. Emergent narratives, agency, and participation: decisions, rules, and interpretive communities.
  2. Narrative archetypes and mythologies of play: the hero’s journey, fantasy worlds, and the construction of fictional universes.
  3. Simulation and procedural rhetoric as discursive and communicative strategies.
  4. Game design and interaction design: accessibility, onboarding, feedback, and experience.
  5. Creative automation and generative AI: authorship, creative labor, and new narrative practices.
  6. NPCs/conversational AI and human-machine communication in ludic environments.
  • Platforms, fandoms, and communicative practices
  1. Streaming and the performativity of play: audiences, creators, and attention economies.
  2. Transmedia circulation: the expansion of worlds, narratives, and communities across platforms.
  3. Fandoms and participatory culture: wikis, mods, UGC, fan art, fan fiction, and collective knowledge.
  4. Digital sociability and gaming communities: cooperation, conflict, norms, and rituals.
  5. Moderation, governance, and platform policies: rules, sanctions, “care,” and violence.
  6. Metrics, algorithms, and visibility: recommendation, discovery, and inequalities in circulation.
  • Communication, identity, and critical perspectives
  1. Avatars, representation, and identities: gender, race, class, disability, and intersectionality.
  2. Representation and aesthetics in animated characters and avatars: identities, bodies, and digital performativity.
  3. Communities, belonging, and exclusion: toxicity, harassment, safe spaces, and practices of care.
  4. Video games as a cultural public sphere: controversies, activism, memory, and social debate.
  5. Inequality, migration, colonialism, and climate crisis in ludic imaginaries and community practices.
  6. Justice and ethics in gaming platforms: governance, rights, accessibility, and digital citizenship.

 

EDITORIAL POLICY AND AUTHOR GUIDELINES

To access the journal’s editorial guidelines, click here.

 

REFERENCES

Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: The expressive power of videogames. The MIT  Press.  

Cholodenko, A. (Ed.). (2007). The illusion of life II: More essays on animation. Power  Publications.

Contreras Espinosa, R. S., & Eguía-Gómez, J. L. (Eds.). (2024). Videojuegos en  Iberoamérica (InCom-UAB Publicacions; No. 27). Institut de la Comunicació, Universitat  Autònoma de Barcelona. https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/llibres/2024/290729/vidibe_a2024p158.pdf 

Contreras Espinosa, R. S., Eguía Gómez, J. L., & Lozano Muñoz, A. (2014). Juegos  multijugador: El poder de las redes en el entretenimiento. Editorial UOC. 

Eisenstein, S. (2018). Walt Disney (Trad. P. Châtenois). Casimiro libros. (Trabajo  original publicado en 1986). 

Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the  hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press. 

Gray, J., Sandvoss, C., & Harrington, C. L. (Eds.). (2017). Fandom: Identities and  communities in a mediated world (2nd ed.). New York University Press. 

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York  University Press. 

Murray, J. H. (2017). Hamlet on the Holodeck, updated edition: The future of narrative in  cyberspace. The MIT Press. 

Ryan, M.-L. (2015). Narrative as virtual reality 2: Revisiting immersion and interactivity in  literature and electronic media. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Taylor, T. L. (2018). Watch me play: Twitch and the rise of game live streaming.  Princeton University Press.  

van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & de Waal, M. (2018). The platform society: Public values in a  connective world. Oxford University Press.

 

ABOUT THE GUEST EDITORS

Dr. Ruth S. Contreras Espinosa. She holds a PhD from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and is a Serra Húnter professor and researcher at the University of Barcelona. Her work lies at the intersection of video games, digital culture, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on participatory cultures, transmedia, and user-centered design. She coordinates and collaborates on international research projects aimed at the digital transformation of communication and the creative industries, and she actively participates in various Ibero-American (such as Digra MX) and European academic networks (such as Computational Techniques for Tabletop Games Heritage).

Dr. Jose Luis Eguia Gómez. Researcher and professor at ETSEIB-UPC, CITM-UPC, and ENTI-UB, with a positive ANECA evaluation as professor/researcher. His work focuses on Game Studies, Digital Game-Based Learning, gamification, Technology Enhanced Learning, and Serious Games, combining research and applied teaching in the fields of design and learning with video games. He is the author of the book Commodere Odyssey and co-author of other volumes.

Dr. Álvaro Iparraguirre Bernaola. He holds a PhD in Humanities and is a professor at the University of Lima, where he coordinates the academic area of Animation and Video Games. His research focuses on the intersection of video games, animation, and digital culture, with particular interest in interactive narrative, contemporary mythologies, and participatory platforms. He has published work on digital animation, the metaverse, and video game narratives, and he is a member of the research group Mythmaking y heroísmo en las narrativas at the University of Navarra and of the Ibero-American Research Network on Audiovisual Narratives.

Dr. (c) Nico Valdivia Hennig. PhD candidate at the University of California, Riverside. His research addresses Indigenous video game production in Latin America and game activism in the region. He is co-founder of Niebla Games, a studio selected for the Google Indie Games Accelerator in 2022 and a recipient of the Google Indie Games Fund Latin America in 2025. His distinctions include Best Game Design at EVA 2019 in Córdoba, Argentina, and nominations at A MAZE Berlin 2024, as well as Best Social Impact Game and Best Diversity Game at BIG Festival / Gamescom Latam 2024 in São Paulo.