Enculturing Anti-Racism, Decolonization, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion in Games Research & Creation.
Creating opportunities for meaningful equitable change in the games industry requires active and inclusive community-building. As a part of this mission, we created the following speaker and workshop series to centre the voices of individuals from marginalized groups. This includes, but is not limited to, persons who are Black and/or Indigenous or otherwise racialized, women-identified, LGBTQ2S+, disabled and/or neurodivergent, and people from other under-represented communities.
The speakers, workshop leaders, and panellists share their unique knowledge, experiences, and perspectives regarding the following overarching questions:
How do we make anti-racism, decolonization, and equity vital elements of the research and development of games and playable media?
What can we do to ensure that the methods and approaches we practice in our scholarship and creative work are respectful and responsive to the needs of the marginalized communities?
Where do the logics and imperatives of colonialism still inform and/or impede how our critical approaches address inequalities related to intersecting identity markers like race, gender, Indigeneity, ability, etc.?
Taken
together,
these
questions
offer
an
opportunity
to
thoughtfully
engage
with
the
systemic
barriers
and
exclusions
that
continue
to
be
articulated
within
games
scholarship
and
games
communities.
We
hope
that
by
highlighting
historically
marginalized
voices,
our
community
will
gain
fundamental
understandings,
be
challenged
with
critical
questions,
and
learn
practical
skills
and
insights
to
address
current
challenges
across
games
communities
in
academia
and
the
industry.
The series will feature 8 distinguished speakers and 8 workshops/panels between February - May 2023 and September – December 2023.
Check out the upcoming Fall 2023 event summaries!
This
series
is
funded
by
a
SSHRC
Connection
grant
and
in
collaboration
with
the
Games
Institute
at
the
University
of
Waterloo.
The
series
Principal
Investigator
is
Dr.
Gerald
Voorhees,
and
the
co-applicant
is
Dr.
Daniel
Harley.
The
Winter
‘23
lecture
and
panel
summaries
were
written
by
Sophia
Richardson
BKi
’23.
Goals of Series:
1. Provide a platform for diverse scholars, practitioners, and students to foster dialogue and promote public discourse on how we might better incorporate ADE across our games research and creation.
2. Provide training and networking opportunities for junior games scholars and practitioners while providing them with the language, practices, and tools to address current barriers and exclusions in the games industry.
3. Normalize and extend sustainable, community-oriented games cultures that value diverse perspectives experiences.
Event Summaries:
In this workshop, members of the worker cooperative game studio Soft Chaos discussed how building structures of care and accessibility into the team's day-to-day working environment strengthened the creative process of developing games, and led participants in interactive exercises to inspire them to bring similar ideas to their own work contexts.
The Impact of Genuine and Mindful Inclusion of Marginalized Communities in Creative Works
Elaine Gómez-Sanchez described the importance of representation in games and digital media. She spoke on how gaming has the power to destroy the perpetuation of stereotypical perceptions and explained how games can be designed to create social impact in meaningful ways.
Researching Disability and Play - Where's the fun in that?
Dr. Katta Spiel explored the relationship between disability and play. Using the theory on the surrogate body in play, they illustrated how it can be instrumental to critically engage with norms governing digital play and identifying design opportunities playing with said bodily norms to holistically cater to disabled audiences. They did so by focusing on the critical analytical category of disability not just through an access oriented lens per se, but rather to bring principles of disability justice to play.
Designing for Disability and Accessibility Panel
For this hybrid panel, three researchers talked about their work and research in Accessibility in Digital Games and Virtual Reality. The panel included Triskal deHaven, Dr. Katta Spiel, and Dr. Cayley MacArthur. Triskal deHaven led the panel with frequently asked questions about Virtual Reality and Accessibility, research studies within higher level education, and some of the gaps in Accessibility that students could pursue.
The Changing Same: Blackness, Representation, and Video Games
Dr. André Brock discussed the promise and peril of POC video game character voice acting, focusing primarily on the connections of Black male anger and Black fatherhood in God of War through the voice work of TC Carson and Christopher Judge, contextualized against the audio Brownface of two voice POC women characters in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
Just Relationships for Research Panel
This interdisciplinary panel outlined roles and responsibilities as well as best practices for graduate student supervision to frame a discussion of how to foster and maintain just relationships among researchers, with a focus on the principles and practices animating non-extractive student-supervisor relationships. Different panelists shared their knowledge of institutional guidelines for student supervision and/or experience with cultivating and leading non-oppressive research groups. The panelists encouraged conversations about what constitutes just research relationships within and across disciplinary and institutional contexts.
In this lecture, Dr. Bird emphasized how mechanical, coded language, and visual language in games is used to present Indigenous representation. She included various examples from Custer’s Revenge to the Mortal Kombat series to apply and showcase how language is used to create harmful Indigenous narratives. She then contrasted this by showing how language can also be used in ways that promote Indigenous futures.
A Discussion on Indigenous Research and Epistemology
How should we conduct research in cooperation and partnership with Indigenous communities? What does it mean for Indigenous scholars and students to do research within the colonial structures and settler epistemologies of Western universities? In this conversation moderated by Dr. Hector Perez, Dr. Kelly Laurila shared her perspectives and experiences on these questions.
