Race in Games and Game Studies

Conference Registration is now availble through Eventbrite. Registration is free! 

Race is a fundamental dimension of games implicating who is represented in games, how the labour of making games is divided, and who is welcomed to play and on what terms. As a field, game studies has only begun the work of understanding these matters because race also shapes the study of games. Game studies is built on colonial logics and animated by white supremacy.  The major problematics of the field (ludus v narrative, game v player, pro-social v antisocial) are premised in Western epistemic traditions. And games researchers largely focus on the hegemony of play, the games and gaming practices of the presumed audience of white male players imagined by the mainstream games industry (Fron, Fullerton, Moire, and Pearce 2007). 

Race in Games and Game Studies will be a two day conference dedicated to exploring how race impacts games and game studies. The conference will be hosted online December 7-8, 2023 and registration is free. We will feature conventional paper panels as well as plenary discussion panels focused on future directions for research at the intersections of games and race. 

In addition to advancing the state of games research concerning how representations, industry practices, and community norms contribute to the shifting dynamics of racial privilege and marginalization, we hope to identify the gaps and trends in recent research in this area. By outlining what is being done and what has yet to be examined closely, we hope to suggest new directions and possibilities for this work to explore and to highlight ways that researchers in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts might work together to close gaps in the field. 

We as eager to learn about joy and justice as we are to gain new insight into ongoing/emerging harms, and encourage participation from game scholars and/or developers from all careers stages who are working on topics at the intersection of race and games, such as:

• Representations of race and/or racialized identities in games

• Experiences of racial minorities in the games industry and/or gaming communities/cultures

• Anti-racist and/or decolonial activism in games, game cultures, game studies, games education,  and/or in the games industry

• Indigenous, Black, Latine, and/or Asian/Asian-Americangames and/or game studies

• Racism in games, games education, game development and/or in spaces of play

• Black and/or Indigenous futurism in games

• Race as a facet of intersectional identity in games and/or gaming

• Racialized ontologies of games and/or play

• White supremacy and/or coloniality in games and/or gaming

Interested games scholars and makers are encouraged to submit abstracts for 15-20-minute-long presentations (300 words + 5 keywords) and a short bio note (100-150 words) to https://raceandgamesconf.uwaterloo.ca/openconf.php by September 15, 2023 (deadline extended to) September 29, 2023. Questions can be addressed to the organizers at race.game.studies@gmail.com.

The Race in Games and Game Studies conference is enabled in part by the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The conference Advisory Committee is:

• Gerald Voorhees, Chair (University of Waterloo)
• Kishonna Gray (University of Kentucky)
• Ashlee Bird (University of Notre Dame)
• Jennifer Whitson (University of Waterloo)