The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 7 Volume Set

21

“It's a Nigger in Here! Kill the Nigger!”

User-Generated Media Campaigns Against Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Digital Games

Lisa Nakamura

ABSTRACT

Digital games scholars who study race, gender, and sexuality predominantly focus on representations – namely, the racist and sexist images and narratives found within games themselves. In this chapter, Lisa Nakamura explains that in the age of networked gaming, players often experience virulent types of discrimination not only through these representations but also at the hands of other players. In response, some players are expressing resistance to this discriminatory culture of gameplay (Nakamura, 2011a, 2011b). This chapter looks at born-digital media campaigns against racism, sexism, and homophobia such as blogs, YouTube videos, and other web-based media, examining how they document, archive, and critique instances of racism, sexism, and homophobia in live gameplay as well as within the texts of games themselves.

I've been a video game freak all my life. I play X-Box 360's Need for Speed: Carbon (Electronic Arts, 2006), Gears of War (Microsoft Game Studios, 2006) and Dead or Alive 4 (Tecmo, 2006). They need Tekken (Namco) to come out on the 360. I got ideas for a racecar game and a motorcycle game. I got so many ideas, I guarantee you, people will love my ideas for games. I played Halo (Microsoft Game Studios, 2002). But when they came up with Halo 2 (Microsoft Game Studios, 2004), it was more like for the online thing. ...