This book chapter in Trophy Cases: The Theory, Design, & Cultural Politics of Video Game Trophies & Achievements (Bloomsbury Academic) discusses how the practice of video game trophy hunting between close friends has the potential to establish clear player types that are easily identifiable in individuals over time and through certain play practices. Utilizing a social cognitive theory model to classify modes of video game playing and player types alongside a friendship ethnographic research methodology, I take a critical and reflective approach to analyzing the social and psychological motivations of engaging in trophy hunting.

Hurezeanu, Alexander. “Understanding Player Types through Trophy Hunting: A Case Study in Friendship Ethnography.” Trophy Cases: The Theory, Design, & Cultural Politics of Video Game Trophies & Achievements, edited by Ryan Scheiding, Dan Staines, and Sarah Christina Ganzon, Bloomsbury Academic, July 2026, pp. 221–244.

This journal article, published in Gamevironments, places the concept of “epistemic genres” in dialogue with the concept of “gamevironments.” Responding to Radde-Antweiler’s (2024) call for a critical revision of gamevironments, we argue that genre can be understood as a socially and culturally situated practice that offers a complementary framework for examining the lived contexts of digital game play.

Hurezeanu, Alexander, Mark Nunes, Pamela Maria Schmidt, and S. Heeg. “Genre as Gamevironment: Epistemic Genres Beyond Play.” Gamevironments, vol. 24, July 2026, pp. 18–47.

In this journal article, published in the American Journal of Play, we explore the possibilities of preserving the unique online interactions of dead and dying software servers using Dany Guay-Bélanger’s (2021) game preservation framework. We review the collection, curation, and exhibition of diverse paratexts for the purpose of maintaining the cultural and storytelling significance of online encounters within games with online play components, including FromSoftware’s critically acclaimed Soulsborne series and Dark Souls II.

Hurezeanu, Alexander, and Christopher Hurezeanu. “Assembling Auras: Preserving Games with Online Play Components.” American Journal of Play, vol. 18, no. 2, July 2026, pp. 246–268.

This book chapter in Epistemic Genres: New Formations of Play (Bloomsbury Academic) argues that some of the most unique features of FromSoftware’s Soulsborne games are their capacities to mediate transcultural experiences through culturally situated aesthetic engagements as well as through their unique, language-free modes of player to player interaction. A transcultural understanding of the Soulsborne games acknowledges the fact that players primarily traverse Eurocentric mythological game worlds while specifically highlighting the translative and interpretive aesthetic lens through which the mostly Japanese developers and artists at FromSoftware construct and imbue meaning into their game worlds.

Hurezeanu, Alexander. “Soulsborne Games and the Transcultural Gaming Experience.” Epistemic Genres: New Formations of Play, edited by Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call, Matthew Wysocki, and Betsy Brey, Bloomsbury Academic, January 2026, pp. 237–255.

This article, published in the Future and Reality of Gaming Anthology: Gaming the Apocalypse, explores the classic post nuclear role-playing games, Fallout 1 and 2, as unique transcultural experiences from the perspectives of players, designers, and modders from former Eastern Bloc countries. Utilizing Mikhail Epstein and Ellen E. Berry’s (1999) transcultural interference framework, I argue that Interplay’s Fallout games emphasize “an open system of symbolic alternatives to existing cultures and their established sign systems” (24) as demonstrated by classic Fallout mods produced by developers from the former Eastern Bloc.

Hurezeanu, Alexander. “Apocalypse, Utopia, and Transcultural Imaginaries in Classic Fallout Mods from the former Eastern Bloc.” Future and Reality of Gaming Anthology: Gaming the Apocalypse. Donau-Universität Krems Publishing, November 2025, o:5888.

In this journal article, published in The Journal of Replaying Japan, I investigate the popular discourse surrounding Japanese role-playing games and seeks to position the theory of transculturalism as an effective approach for deepening our understanding of the JRPG as a genre. Furthermore, by analyzing certain JRPGs through a transcultural lens, such as FromSoftware’s 2022 title Elden Ring, I highlight and prioritize the aspects of cultural fluidity and the dynamics of cultural change that best suit the specifically designed, embodied, and evolutionary experiences that many JRPGs afford.

Hurezeanu, Alexander. “Discrimination, Transculturation, and Elden Ring: The Cultural Discourse of the JRPG and its Transcultural Potential.” The Journal of Replaying Japan, vol. 7, May 2025, pp. 29–41.

In this article, published in First Person Scholar, I explore the role of nostalgia in forming and maintaining the active community behind Project 1999: a free to play “classic” EverQuest server that operates under legal permission. Viewed through Hartmann and Brunk’s (2019) concept of “progressive nostalgia” (675), I argue that Project 1999 demonstrates significant elements of a kind of critical or productive nostalgia that is firmly situated in the past while simultaneously generating space for distinctly creative, subversive, and non-commodified forms of social play and storytelling that is rooted in nostalgic-laden principles of EverQuest’s classic design.

Hurezeanu, Alexander. “EverQuest and the Progressive Nostalgia of Project 1999.” First Person Scholar, fall issue, February 2024.