Hidden Gamers: Recovering Black Figures in Video Game History

Throughout the history of the arcade, consoles, and computers, video games have often been portrayed as a success story of the Global North. Often, individuals hear the success stories of Nolan Bushnell and Shigeru Miyamoto and believe that video games can be attributed to a few daring developers. However, video games have always been a multifaceted technology with a complex, varied past that includes many different peoples and cultures. Unfortunately, the stories of figures and communities that disrupt simple narratives often go untold, and among these, Black individuals are often neglected when telling the history of games. But what if we highlighted those who rarely got the spotlight? What if we disrupted the narratives of video games by mentioning unspoken names? And what could we learn by discussing the hidden Black gamers throughout video game history? In this talk, Dr. Akil Fletcher will tackle these questions by discussing the impacts of Black individuals throughout the history of video games. By engaging with stories of individuals like Gerald Lawson, Muriel Tramis, Bill Gillis, Gordon Bellamy, and others, Dr. Fletcher will demonstrate how alternative histories can be crafted to offer a more holistic interpretation of the past.

Dr. Akil Fletcher is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows & Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University. As an anthropologist who researches race and video games, his work intersects the fields of Anthropology, African American Studies, and Game Studies. Dr. Fletcher earned his B.A. in Anthropology from the City College of New York and his Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. Fletcher is the recipient of multiple awards and grants, such as the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Nation Science Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, and the UCI President’s Fellowship.

His research examines how Black individuals create identity, community, and alternative forms of play and being within online games and gaming spaces. Using his expertise, Fletcher has authored multiple pieces on the Black experience in video games and has developed community-driven initiatives, such as Camp Kiki, a youth esports initiative, to teach about the possibilities for games and community. In his dissertation, "Playing in Color: An Exploration of Black Gaming Communities and Practices,” Fletcher examines how online Black communities use digital platforms to form selfhood and relationships in gaming spaces while circumventing forms of racism and anti-Blackness in games like Final Fantasy XIV and communication platforms like Discord. Currently, Fletcher is developing his book project, Playing in Color: How Black Gamers Build Worlds, which engages with how Black gamers use gaming technologies to imagine new worlds of play within pre-established game worlds.