摘要:Almost since the inception of the industry, the player community has been instrumental in preserving video games and other variable media art. Drawing on a combination of primary and secondary sources of information, including the Preserving Virtual Worlds project (an academic investigation into viable models of preservation for videogames and 3D virtual worlds based on a series of archiving case studies) and the results of a game documentation survey conducted by Donahue, we examine how players are taking responsibility for collecting, managing, curating, and creating long-term access to computer games. Because our interest lies with the contact zone between players and information professionals, we also describe and analyze how we and other scholar-archivists are collaborating with or relying on the user community to preserve virtual worlds, with an eye to how these relationships might eventually be codified within a larger preservation framework.