This poster presentation was delivered on October 20, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.
Read full article here: https://ijrp.subcultures.nl/?page_id=817
Description:
Some of the most popular role-playing games (RPGs) limit the potential for diversity among player characters, link character abilities with their racial backgrounds, and provide platforms for real-life racism. This critical literature review examines a body of multidisciplinary scholarship and popular sources discussing race in fantasy RPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft. Integrating interdisciplinary literature on the topic of race in RPGs provides an opportunity for exploring race, games, and identity discourse from a critical perspective. This presentations analysis engages with power dynamics in games and provides a framework for positioning future scholarship. While progress toward correcting racial misrepresentation and under-representation in existing RPGs is slow, that progress is meaningful and it can pave the way for more significant changes in new RPGs. Fantasy games have a great potential to step outside the issues of real life and engage with topics such as race in a way that undermines stereotypes and encourages nuanced representations. Though there is not always a clear parallel between a real-world race and a fantasy race, the notion of “otherness” connects the two ideas. RPGs are one of the most popular genres of game and fantasy RPGs impact real-world discourse. It is vital that scholars continue the work of the authors discussed in this paper by encouraging nuanced diversity of representation in games and advocating for “own voices” game designers. Only then can the positive potential of fantasy RPGs be more fully realized. As existing RPGs and new games work to reduce and correct racial stereotypes in digital and tabletop RPGs, scholars, designers, and players can work together to move toward more nuanced, diverse representations and discourse surrounding RPGs.
Bio:
Marissa M. Baker received her B.A. in English from The Ohio State University and is currently a master’s student in the University of Findlay’s Rhetoric and Writing program. She has worked for two years in the university’s writing center as a tutor and Graduate Assistant. Her research interests focus on representation in games, the educational applications of gaming, and writing center tutor training. Her thesis work uses gamification theory and elements of character sheets from tabletop RPGs to create engaging educational role-play during Writing Center tutor training with the goal of improving participants’ self-perception as capable writing tutors.
Click here to read PDF of slides.
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This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
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Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin.