Research and Writing, 2005-2012

My dissertation, Gamic Race: Logics of Difference in Videogame Culture, was completed in 2012 at the University of California, Riverside. It’s the result of seven years of study, a deep commitment to social justice and change, a lifelong interest in games, and a need to understand and dismantle race and racecraft and to fight for solidarity among all people.

As a white person from the suburbs of Detroit, I grew up surrounded by the casual racism that emerges out of segregated communities drawn up by white flight and redlining. It was clear to me that game culture, spaces, and discourses echoed and reimagined these issues. My dissertation attempts to unpack this, exploring how logics of racial difference and racist systems and logics get baked into games at a foundational level. In short, with Gamic Race I wanted to show how race is central to the study of videogames and videogame cultures.

The project thus emphasizes the need for critical race theory within game studies, specifically how broader, societal notions of race get informed and reshaped by the logics of gameplay. This what I call gamic race. The project’s other key concept, displaced racialization, pushes past the predominant focus in game studies on racial representation and diversity, examining how racialization happens beyond bodies via game code and player experience/expression.

The first three chapters of Gamic Race explore different layers of gamic race and its formulation through displaced racialization: spatial, technologic, and discursive. The final chapter attempts to put theory into practice via an analysis of racially inflammatory raids of virtual worlds by users of the popular message board 4chan. These raids serve as a compelling but flawed model for future progressive performative interventions in gamespace. The conclusion considers how to progressively transform videogame design by placing African American expressive traditions, indie games, ethics, philosophy, and the interaction design of Erik Loyer in conversation. It’s within this nexus that the project ends, gesturing toward a future paradigm of interaction and aesthetics within videogames that handles difference productively, and does not solely rely on visual inclusion and representation.