Woke Gaming

From #Gamergate to the 2016 election, to the daily experiences of marginalized perspectives, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression. Whether visible in the persistent color line that shapes the production, dissemination, and legitimization of dominant stereotypes within the industry itself, or in the dehumanizing representations often found within game spaces, many video games perpetuate injustice and mirror the inequities and violence that permeate society as a whole.

Drawing from groundbreaking research on counter and oppositional gaming and from popular games such as World of Warcraft and Tomb Raider, Woke Gaming examines resistance to problematic spaces of violence, discrimination, and microaggressions in gaming culture. The contributors of these essays seek to identify strategies to detox gaming culture and orient players and gamers toward progressive ends. From Anna Anthropy’s Keep Me Occupied to Momo Pixel’s Hair Nah, video games can reveal the power and potential for marginalized communities to resist, and otherwise challenge dehumanizing representations inside and outside of game spaces.

In a moment of #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and efforts to transform current political realities, Woke Gaming illustrates the power and potential of video games to foster change and become a catalyst for social justice.

Kishonna L. Gray (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is the Director of the Critical Gaming Lab at Eastern Kentucky University as well as faculty in the School of Justice Studies, African/African-American Studies, & Women & Gender Studies. Her work broadly intersects identity and new media although she has a particular focus on gaming. Her most recent book, Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live (Routledge, 2014), provides a much-needed theoretical framework for examining deviant behavior and deviant bodies within that virtual gaming community. Her work has been featured in public outlets such as the Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, Bulletin of Science, Technology, & Society, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, Information, Communication, & Society, among others. Her work has also been featured in the LA Times, Paste Magazine, Engadget, The Guardian, BET, and Blavity. She’s a featured blogger and podcaster with “Not Your Mama’s Gamer” (http://www.nymgamer.com/). She also actively blogs on her own websites at www.kishonnagray.com and at http://lachezbippy.kinja.com/.Leonard David J. :

David J. Leonard is professor and chair in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He regularly writes about issues of race, gender, inequality, and the criminal justice system. He is the author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness (SUNY Press, 2012). He is also author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema (Praeger, 2006); he is co-editor of Visual Economies of/in Motion: Sport and Film (Peter Lang, 2006), and Commodified and Criminalized: New Racism and African Americans in Contemporary Sports (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011). His work has appeared in Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, Game and Culture, as well as several anthologies. Leonard is a past contributor to NewBlackMan, Feminist Wire, Huffington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Urban Cusp. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Gawker, BBC, The Root, Ebony, Slam, Racialicious, and several other outlets.

Kishonna L. Gray is assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and Communication at the University of Illinois–Chicago. She is the author of Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins and a featured blogger and podcaster with “Not Your Mama’s Gamer.” David J. Leonard is a professor at Washington State University. He is the author of several books, including Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field. Follow him on twitter @drdavidjleonard.

"Gray and Leonard have assembled a courageous chorus of voices that challenge an industry emblematic of some of the most insidiously oppressive structures in American society... A must-read for scholars and students in fandom studies, popular culture and media studies, critical and cultural studies, communication, and sociology... Highly recommended."

Tola Onanuga:

"This eye-opening collection of essays serves to remind readers of the power and potential of games as a catalyst for change... Woke Gaming seeks to push readers to recognise persistent inequalities, as well as those who struggle for change within both our virtual worlds and in our everyday communities."

"Woke Gaming’s editors and contributors combine thoughtful and informed critiques of the contemporary game industry’s representational strategies, genre conventions, and employment practices with advocacy for groups that seek to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture through alternative game design, modding, fan fiction, games guilds, and much more. Written in the face of the Gamergate backlash against ‘social justice warriors,’ Woke Gaming offers a vivid snapshot of the struggles to change this powerful entertainment medium and to help it achieve its greater potential."—Henry Jenkins, coauthor of By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism

"A groundbreaking and important book for anyone who cares about the future of media. Through case studies and smart analysis it offers much-needed critical intervention into our understanding of gaming and game culture."—T. L. Taylor, author of Raising the Stakes