CFP – Special Issue: Party Studies in Game Studies (submission deadline Sept. 1, 2025)

2025-03-04

 Call for Papers:

Eludamos Special Issue

Party Studies in Game Studies

Parties and partying are fundamental aspects of human cultures (Sutton-Smith 2009). They are tied to play and playfulness, enjoyed and participated in by the majority of humans – yet usually studied only in relation to the risks involved (Kramer & Wittman 2023). In this way, they strike major resemblances to the history of game studies. Parties and games also bear practical similarity: parties are inefficient and full of rules, rituals, and cultural meaning (Harviainen & Frank 2018). Much like games, parties can create liminoid spaces where everyday expectations are put on hold and normal societal expectations change (Törrönen & Maunu 2007). Parties repeated over years and decades become customs that reinforce emotionally and socially satisfying components of being a society member at large. Put simply, parties are as essential as games to understanding playful culture (Schechner 2017).

The above is a concise summation of Masek & Stenros’s (2024) argument that preceded their call to establish party studies as a sub area of game studies, spinning out of the 2023 seminar Party! This call for papers for a special issue of Eludamos is the next step in that process. 

Parties are interactive structures, featuring expectations and rules, meaning that humans can and do play around with these expectations. In this way we invite analyses of not just games in, around, or co-occurring with parties, but also contributions that understand parties as games and play. Thus, we call on scholars of games and play to turn their eye towards parties and partying. What is a ‘party’? What is the meaning of LAN parties as parties? What is the role of the games-industry party to the ecosystem of game production? What do parties mean within the fiction of games? What does the genre of “party game” truly mean?

The list of possible topics includes but is not limited to:

  • Design features and playful aspects of festivals, soirées, feasts, raves, burns, carnivals, jamborees, banquets, hoedowns, and symposiums
  • Party games 
  • In-game parties and representations of partying
  • Industrial formations around games and parties
  • Historical developments between partying / playing / gaming
  • “Serious” partying and how parties may be connected to larger meanings other than pure entertainment
  • Cultural parties with playful practices and games, such as those at Weddings, New Years Celebrations, Eid Al-Fitr, Holi, Christmas parties and more.
  • Methodological considerations of studying parties and partying
  • Parties as sites of playful political engagement/resistance/protest

Guest editors

Leland Masek & Jaakko Stenros (If you have any questions, please contact Leland.Masek@tuni.fi)

Important dates

Full paper submission deadline: September 1, 2025 

Review results: December 2025

Revisions due: March 1, 2026

Final versions: April 29, 2026

Publication: June 30, 2026  

Submission guidelines

Please make sure your manuscript corresponds to the journal’s formal requirements regarding length, citation style, and so on. Submissions can be up to 8000 words in length (not counting the bibliography).

For the full submission guidelines, see the official Eludamos guidelines for authors available at: https://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/information/authors

When submitting your article, please clearly mark your contribution as belonging to the special issue by adding [SI: Party Games] to the title of your submission.

Please use the online submission system for all correspondence with the guest editors and editors: https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/eludamos/submission/wizard

All submissions will by evaluated by at least two experts in a thorough double-blind peer-review process.

About Eludamos

Eludamos is a diamond open-access international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the academic study of games and play. We do not charge APCs or any other fees from authors.

The journal is indexed in Scopus, ERIH PLUS, and DOAJ. See a complete description of Eludamos and its objectives at https://eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/about  

References

Harviainen, J. T., & Frank, K. (2018). Group sex as play: Rules and transgression in

shared non-monogamy. Games and Culture, 13(3), 220–239.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412016659835

Kramer, J., & Wittmann, M. (2023). Nightlife as counterspace: Potentials of nightlife

for social wellbeing. Annals of Leisure Research, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/

11745398.2023.2273548

Masek, L., & Stenros, J. (2024). Parties as playful experiences: Why game studies should study partying. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 15(1), 75-96.

Schechner, R. (2017). Performance studies: An introduction. Routledge.

Sutton-Smith, B. (2009). The ambiguity of play. Harvard University Press.

Törrönen, J., & Maunu, A. (2005). Going out, sociability, and cultural distinctions. Nor-

dic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 22(1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/

145507250502201S07