About the Journal

Videogames now represent one of the most significant ways that values are negotiated, constructed and communicated in today’s deeply mediatized societies. The cultural and social influence not only of videogaming but of gaming's influence on other media, calls for an  original, specific, and analytical discourse. Our academic, peer-reviewed, online journal aims at establishing and fostering a platform for these discussions. The journal seeks to explore both established approaches and new frontiers of researching video gaming in relation to value formations in culture and society.

Our concept of value formations derives from a social-constructivist approach, which understands values not as timeless, essential, universal or static, but rather as constructed by and within specific social  constellations. Values are therefore discourses and practices that are constantly (re)defined and (re)negotiated by competing actors according  to time, context and skill. These actors can be individuals, groups or  organizations. Our goal is not to evaluate these values, but rather to analyze how the different individual and collective actors (re)define and understand values.

This journal encourages submissions that taking an actor-centered approach. Many games play  with values or construct symbolic universes that are related to values  and, accordingly, numerous existing studies on video gaming focus on  deciphering and interpreting value formations within game narratives. These media-centered approaches are significant, especially when  studying the role of values for games and the intentions of game  designers. This journal, however, argues that we need to widen the  perspective. While we are primarily interested in the cultural and  social implications of gaming and in studying gaming as practice, it is important to also include the recipients’ perspectives. We acknowledge this by focusing on the actors in their respective mediatized and gametized life-worlds.

The journal's title – gamevironments – refers to an  actor-centered approach which highlights how games are part of larger media environments. Gamevironments as a concept and lens encompasses the technical as well as the cultural environments of video games and  gaming. The journal welcomes contributions applying all approaches and  highlighting all fields of investigation related to video gaming in  relation to culture and society. The journal also explicitly seeks to  acknowledge the steadily increasing impact of video gaming’s global aspects. In order to actively contribute towards establishing and maintaining a critical dialogue including perspectives beyond the so-far  dominant regional contexts, the journal encourages contributions which  address the diverse global gaming landscapes.

Review Processes

Gamevironments only publishes original research. Articles are first assessed by the editorial team and, prior to possible publication, are reviewed by at least one independent expert in a double-blind peer-review process. Reports, interviews and reviews are assessed by the editorial team only.

Our peer reviewers are asked to follow COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers.

Open Access and Publishing Policies

Gamevironments does not apply any charges to authors or readers at any stage. There is no charge to submit, publish or access articles at any time, according to the open access policies of the journal’s publisher, the State and University Library Bremen.

Registration is free, but is only required for authors and not for readers.

Copyright and Permissions

Copyright for published articles remains with the author(s). Authors are free to archive and distribute the published version of their article freely if gamevironments is acknowledged and linked to as the original place of publication. These are applied according to the policies of the journal’s publisher, the State and University Library Bremen.

Gamevironments is hosted at the University of Bremen in Germany, so all legal questions (e.g. concerning questions of copyright) will be regarded under the German law.

Authors must sign two copyright forms before publication. In one, the authors confirm that (1) they are the copyright holder of the work to be published, (2) the work is original and does not contain material that they do not have permission to publish, and (3) that the work contains nothing libellous or unlawful. In the other, they grant the State and University Library Bremen the indefinite, non-exclusive right  to archive the electronic version of their contribution to make it publicly available on the Internet and within other data networks in accordance with "Open Access" principles. All copyright and licensing issues relating to the electronic publication – in particular with regard to images and patents (pending or otherwise), trademarks and brands – need to be resolved by the author(s). All liability for the contents of the document rests with the author(s). Further information is available in the publisher’s data protection declaration: https://www.suub.uni-bremen.de/home-english/info-en/data-privacy/.

In addition, authors who wish to use images or other copyrighted material in their articles will be provided with a form that must be signed by the image’s copyright holder before publication.

For any questions, please contact the editors at games2@uni-bremen.de.

Indexing and Archiving

Articles published with gamevironments are archived by the State and University Library Bremen according to its policies.