The Dark Souls of Archaeology: Recording Elden Ring

Abstract

Archaeology can be broadly defined as the study and interpretation of the past through material remains. Videogame worlds, though immaterial in nature, can also afford opportunities to study the people who existed within them based on what they leave behind. In this paper we present the first formal archaeological survey of a predominantly single-player game, by examining the player-generated content that is asynchronously distributed to players in the videogame Elden Ring.