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This general introduction to archeogaming describes the intersection of archaeology and video games while applying archaeological method and theory into understanding game-spaces.

“[T]he author’s clarity of style makes it accessible to all readers, with or without an archaeological background. Moreover, his personal anecdotes and gameplay experiences with different game titles, from which his ideas often develop, make it very enjoyable reading.”—Antiquity

Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. Video games also serve as archaeological sites in the traditional sense as a place, in which evidence of past activity is preserved and has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and which represents a part of the archaeological record.

From the introduction:
Archaeogaming, broadly defined, is the archaeology both in and of digital games…  As will be described in the following chapters, digital games are archaeological sites,  landscapes, and artifacts, and the game-spaces held within those media can also be understood archaeologically as digital built environments containing their own material culture… Archaeogaming does not limit its study to those video games that are set in the past or that are treated as “historical games,” nor does it focus solely on the exploration and analysis of ruins or of other built environments that appear in the world of the game. Any video game—from Pac-Man to Super Meat Boy—can be studied archaeologically.

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The sequel to Archaeogaming (2018) focuses on the practical application of archaeological theory and method on digital landscapes and the sites and artifacts found within them.

As a sequel to Archaeogaming: an Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games, the author focuses on the practical and applied side of the discipline, collecting recent digital fieldwork together in one place for the first time to share new methods in treating interactive digital built environments as sites for archaeological investigation. Fully executed examples of practical and applied archaeogaming include the necessity of a rapid archaeology of digital built environments, the creation of a Harris matrix for software stratigraphy, the ethnographic work behind a human civilization trapped in an unstable digital landscape, how to conduct photogrammetry and GIS mapping in procedurally generated space, and how to transform digital artifacts into printed three-dimensional objects. Additionally, the results of the 2014 Atari excavation in Alamogordo, New Mexico are summarized for the first time.

“…it really fleshes out what ‘archaeogaming’ looks like in its multiple and varied incarnations. In that respect, it dovetails well with the author’s previous book Archaeogaming which was more prescriptive about what archaeogaming could or should be. In that respect, it’s rare and interesting (and valuable!) to see a field get defined and then realized, and (with certain caveats) I could see the two volumes packing a one-two punch employed in classrooms or in graduate programs, providing focus and direction for aspiring archaeologists interested in this open field somewhere between digital archaeology and media archaeology.” 
—Shawn Graham, Carleton University