Tuesday evening, visitors to Gonzaga University’s Wolff Auditorium were pushed to level-up their understanding of intersectionality and, with the help of video game designer Diamond E. Beverly-Porter, connect a few topics not always associated in academia: identity, power and video games.
Part of GU’s Communication Studies Speaker Series, Beverly-Porter’s lecture, titled Play, Power and Possibilities: Exploring Identity and Culture Through Critical Making and Video Game Narratives, explored academic theories about games, play and storytelling. She then connected these ideas to her own game design, arguing that games are not just entertainment, but also powerful tools for reinforcing or transforming social biases.
“Games impact how we view the world,” Beverly-Porter said. “By blending both the mechanics and the narrative, it offers unique opportunities to explore and reshape stories, all pushing the boundaries of how we engage with games and how games can be made.”
Beverly-Porter is also an artist, researcher and assistant professor in the Digital Technology and Culture Department at Washington State University. Her work is often influenced by Black literature and Black feminism, she said, with authors and activists like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Patricia Bell-Scott providing inspiration. After exploring the theories that inform her work, she went on to explain how identity and bias are present everywhere, including in entertainment and technology.
“We often focus on the material outcome of different products, but it’s important to recognize the immaterial decisions that happen whenever we’re making something — so the histories, the cultures, the context that shape where we are today,” Beverly-Porter said. “No technology is inherently neutral. Technology has the subconscious bias of the person programming it.”
Beverly-Porter then explained the concept of “design-bleed,” which says that the interactions someone has in a fictional or virtual space can flow into their real life.
“A lot of times, when people think of games, we think that that violence stays there, but we know that that’s not usually what happens, especially if you’re a BIPOC person,” Beverly-Porter said.
Knowing that game contents can spill over into real life and vice versa, Beverly-Porter said she looks to use game design to create spaces of self-definition and support. Specifically, she said she created her games, Affirmations 1.0 and 2.0, to help her cope with negative feelings like impostor syndrome, which she said she faced as a Black female scholar from the South. In these role-playing games, players can fight negative versions of themselves and choose avenues of support when faced with realistic crises.
Cooper Margell is a freshman at GU who said he found Beverly-Porter’s talk entertaining and a strong reminder to advocate for diversity.
“I thought the examples of the games she designed were really cool,” Margell said. “It helps me think of implementing different groups of people into the games that I play and how companies can do better so that more people feel like they’re being represented in video games.”
Not only are her games meant to be uplifting and inclusive, but Beverly-Porter also said that the process of developing Affirmations led her to an important step in self-improvement.
“In [creating Affirmations 1.0] I started to think about these external forces that made me want to be violent toward myself, that made me want to punch this parallel version of myself,” Beverly-Porter said. “So that’s where Affirmations 2.0 comes in.”
To reflect the way Beverly-Porter wanted live her life, she said she included systems of support such as family members to interact with and boost one’s health in the game’s second version.
Beverly-Porter also said she has a variety of video games in progress. One game, RPG Rhythm and Rope, calls back to her childhood in Dallas and is set to come out this fall. She said that her games are all free to play and can be found the website, itch.io. Information about her work is also shared on her website, Diamondebp.com.
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