CFP: Special Issue of ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories on ‘Esports’ 

Over the last decade, esports – the most commonly accepted term for organized video game competition – has grown from a mostly online subculture to a modest media industry in its own right. As a result, scholars in a range of fields have become interested in competitive gaming as a research topic. This special issue of ROMchip both contributes to and challenges the emerging interdiscipline of 'esports studies' by asking the reflexive question, “what is esports history a history of?” Is it a dispassionate record of wins and losses, a hagiography of elite players, or a catalog of the many games that have supported professional play? An investigation into the many technologies — from arcades to living room consoles to digital distribution platforms — that have shaped competitive gaming? Or an accounting of the financial arrangements that have made esports economically viable (or, seemingly just as often, non-viable)? Whose interests do these different constructions of esports history serve, and who or what is excluded by particular orientations towards competitive gaming?

The editors of this issue take as a given that all (esports) histories are partial and that no one approach is inherently more valuable than any other. Even so, as critically-engaged scholars, we are conscious of historical inquiry as a site of contestation and we welcome scholarship that addresses professional gaming’s relationship to a range of contemporary ills, from ecological devastation to commercial surveillance to the concentration of corporate power. We are especially eager for contributions from scholars who have expertise in areas with relevance to esports (science and technology studies, critical internet studies, celebrity studies, platform governance, political economy, content moderation, platformization, surveillance, geography, physical cultural studies, infrastructure studies, media theory, etc.), but for whom digital games and esports may not be a primary research area. To support such scholars, we will be offering extensive editorial support both prior to and after the submission of abstracts. This may include suggestions about the objects of research based on scholars’ theoretical interests, primers on the context of particular objects and histories in esports, and, when appropriate, introductions to potential co-authors. 

In organizing our critical inquiry into esports, we encourage contributors to consider the following sample questions: 

• How do industry narratives about esports function in the production of esports history? How is “esports history” constructed across the esports industry and beyond?
• How do global media infrastructures serve as contexts for practice in esports? In what ways do local cultures and political economies intersect with the planetary computing stack?
• In what ways do esports dramatize broader issues of race, class, gender, and nationality?
• For what reasons have scholastic esports programs proliferated, and on whose terms have these programs been developed? How do these programs interact with existing organizations, cultures, and infrastructures? What are the implications of educational athletic programs and campus life activities becoming dependent upon game publishers?
• In what ways have esports historically been commodified and how have the affordances of particular media technologies shaped the political economies of competitive gaming? What revenue models have different esports stakeholders, from teams to tournaments to publishers, utilized and to what effect?
• How do the broadcast structures of platform-native esports competitions influence esports fandom and spectatorship?
• In what ways does esports celebrity intersect with or challenge the broader phenomenon of internet celebrity and “influencing” as a whole? 
• What are the ecological and environmental costs of professional video game competition and how have they changed over time?
• What purposes do data serve in esports, and in what ways are data produced, collected, circulated, and monetized? 

Format

Prospective contributors should submit an extended abstract of 1000-1200 words, inclusive of citations. Abstracts should clearly detail the research object, theoretical framework, and method scholars plan to employ; scholars should also indicate whether or not data collection has been completed, if relevant. In particular, we ask contributors to be reflexive about how their chosen approaches construct esports as an object of research. We are also open to discussing alternative timelines with scholars whose ability to perform research has been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Please email romchipesports@gmail.com with all submissions. Please contact co-editors William Clyde Partin (wcpartin@live.unc.edu) and Iris Bull (irbull@indiana.edu) with any and all questions.

Important Dates

April 6, 2020 – Submissions Open

May 31, 2020 – Submissions Close

June 15, 2020 – Notifications

October 1, 2020 – First Drafts Due

July 1, 2021 – Publication