• Cultural Threads in Gaming: Indigenous Representation, Knowledge, and Game Development
  — Kendall Scott, Harley Ceberano, and Diego Martinez
• Distorting Settler Colonial Space-Time: Space-Time Distortions and Indigenous Counter-Narratives in Pokémon Legends: Arceus
  — Changie Chang
• * Decolonizing Play: Frameworks for Game Design Free of Colonial Values
  — Elaine Gómez, Dan Cook, and Roxanne Blouin-Payer

• Playing with Orientalism in How to Host a Murder's Hoo Hung Wu
  — Noah Miranda
• Clones and their (All)Mother: Postmemory, Techno-Orientalism, and Asian Diasporic Gaming in 1000xResist (2024)
  — Joseph Wei
• Beyond the Colonial Politics of Recognition
  — Gerald Voorhees
• * Lake Minnewaska Uplifting a Black Narrative in an Underrepresented Industry, Exploring Grief Themes in a Fishing Video Game
  — Lloyd Campbell

This roundtable brings together the editorial board of Analog Game Studies, including founding members, new editors, and editorial interns, to discuss the current state of game studies scholarship, publication, professionalization, as well as the intersections with game design, industry, technology, and popular culture. In particular, while game studies as a field is growing and changing, much of game development, marketing, and criticism is still largely white, normative, and homogenous. According to the Citational Justice Collective, scholars and researchers must “recognize the knowledge contributions of less dominant, routinely overlooked voices. Pursuing citational justice, then, entails moving away from individualistic views of authorship and toward a shared, reciprocal understanding of how knowledge is produced.” Therefore, this roundtable hopes to outline and explore:

● Organizing, maintaining, promoting, and archiving an online, academic journal; navigating economic, cultural, and institutional landscapes and pressures
● Editorial and peer review philosophies that center mentorship and collaboration, challenge current models of academic publishing, and embrace diversity and interdisciplinarity in policies and leadership
● Engaging with diverse topics, contributors, and audiences; encouraging underrepresented and marginalized authors and designers; innovating ways to address representational, ludic, and citational justice (i.e. #gamestudiessowhite), particularly Black, Indigenous, Non- Western, Queer, Trans, and Crip game studies
● Organizing Generational Analog, an annual online tabletop games and education conference, which foregrounds new voices, global perspectives, and innovative games and criticism
● Publishing, professionalizing, and persevering in academia, publishing, game design, and game studies

• Expectation versus Reality: Black Millennial Fandom of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game
  — Taylore Woodhouse
• The Role of Romance in Shaping Player Interactions in Thedas: Deconstructing Misogynoir and Fan Interpretations of Vivienne — Diamond Beverly-Porter
• * Reclaiming My Controller: Gaming as Site of Black Feminist Intervention
  — Myranda Bell

• * Racial Representation and Resistance in Dystopian Video Games: Exploring Detroit: Become Human and The Last of Us
  — Kendal Jordan
• Procedural Blackness, or How to Read a Loss of Ontological Resistance in Video Games
  — Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield
• “I Can’t Lie to You About Your Chances, But... You Have My Sympathies”: Racial Movement Rhetorics and the Interface of Horror in Alien: Isolation
  — Brandon Blackburn
• A Greater History of Video Games — Anthony Brave

• Preserving and Promoting Latine Cultural Heritage Through Gaming
  — Samantha Conde
• * What the Aesthetic and Preservative Functions of Batik in Songs of the Hmong?
  — Sha Huang
• * Virtual Reality Museums: Redefining Engagement and Understanding in Cultural Heritage
  — Yuning Gao
• “Jokes over you’re Dead!”,  The Role we Play in the Necropolitical Design of Black and Latinx Characters in Games, Luke Hernandez   

Panelist bios

Lien B. Tran is an associate professor of games and design and chair of the game design program at DePaul University. She directs Matters at Play, a design lab creating interactive advocacy solutions for social justice, health, and the environment.

Dr. Belquis Elhadi is the Manager of Learning and Impact at Full Spectrum Features and an ACLS Leading Edge Fellow. Their work bridges cultural research, healing-based pedagogies, and curriculum design, drawing from a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan.

Clara Bergamini is a PhD Candidate in history at UC Santa Cruz, specializing in East Asian history and memory-making around crises. She also works with Full Spectrum Features and serves as Web Producer for the Reckoning with Redress project.

Dr. Ashley Cheyemi McNeil is Director of Education and Research at Full Spectrum Features, where she develops cinematic Open Educational Resources. With dual PhDs in Literary and American Studies, she brings expertise in community collaboration and cross-disciplinary public projects.

Dr. Karen (Kat) Schrier is Professor and Director of Games & Emerging Media at Marist, as well as CEO of PlatyPlay, LLC. A game designer, author, and consultant for the WHO, she has over 20 years of experience in game development and scholarship.

• * Black Quare Game Studies: A New Approach to Gaming Education
  — Kenneth Norwood
• Expanding Inclusion in Game Development: Creating the HBCU Expert in Residence Program
  — Krystal Cooper
• Let’s Intelligame: Spreading Social Good with #ThoughtfulPlay
  — Josh Boykin

Overview

This panel will explore the structural challenges facing today’s games industry, including toxic work culture, high development costs, mass layoffs, and the collapse of studios. Panelists will examine how these issues affect BIPOC developers in particular—asking where displaced talent goes after layoffs and what steps are needed to build a more equitable and sustainable industry. The conversation will touch on securing venture capital, sustaining indie studios, and the importance of fostering creative and social gaming spaces.

The panel features Javon Goard, Latoya Peterson, and Dr. Kishonna Gray, each bringing distinct expertise. Goard researches African Americans in esports and Black joy in gaming, alongside leadership roles in conventions and advocacy groups. Peterson, recognized by Forbes as a rising star, co-founded Glow Up Games and works at the intersection of technology and culture. Gray, a professor at the University of Michigan and Berkman Klein Center faculty associate, is an award-winning scholar and author of foundational works on race, gender, and gaming.

• * We Can Still Revive Rival Schools: Contemporary Efforts to Maintain Arcade Venues and Culture and the Relevance of Competitive Culture in Community Building
  — Rhys Hall
• Collegiate Esports: Overcoming Bias, Exclusion, and Misinformation
  — April Welch
• Designing a Community Generated Video Game Exhibition
  — Masaya Heywood
• * “I Am Not the Default”: Racialized Experiences of Avatar Embodiment Among Black Social VR Users
  — Cyan DeVeaux, Eugy Han, Zora Hudson, Jordan Egelman, James Landay, and Jeremy Bailenson