DTC professor Diamond E. Beverly-Porter’s game, “Run Game Series: How Digital Games and Afrofuturism can bridge the gap of culture and representation,” was exhibited at the Electronic Literature Organization’s art exhibition in July. The series of short games explores race and gender issues within the context of injustice and inequality, utilizing classic adventure game aesthetics and simplified text-based mechanics. Influenced by Cyborg (1984) and Méwilo (1987), these games blend cultural narratives with engaging puzzles. Run: a Sci-Fi Apocalypse Adventure delves into the costs of reparation on a colonized planet, while Run: Algorithms, AI, and Archives examines the preservation of digital records in an apocalyptic future. Created with Twine, these games highlight Black thought and Afrofuturism, focusing on themes of sci-fi, gender, race, and social justice, with three more installments planned.
From the exhibit statement:
“In the mid-19th century Martin Delaney published what is considered the first African American science fiction novel Blake; or the Huts of America as a serial in The Anglo-African Magazine. In culture, Science fiction is used as a tool for social commentary. The standard narrative design of the hero’s journey in a Western context is explicitly influenced by stereotypes of the other. Science fiction extracts from marginalized and non-Western cultures with colonial roots. alluded to by Indigenous scholars Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, in “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” We see the intersects of race gender, and speculative fiction in the 20th-century work of Pauline Hopkins in Of One Blood and W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1920 story The Comet. Both Black Sci-Fi Character works by Black sci-Fi authors are rendered invisible and hyper-visible through stereotypes and othering in sci-fi in games. Through this extraction and racialized otherness in science fiction Black Characters are rendered both invisible and hyper-visible through stereotypes and the usage of marginalized identities to inform narrative monstrosities through non-normative othering. Through these series of short games, I seek to remix our understanding of culture by intersecting concerns of race and gender as they relate to injustice and inequality. I do this by calling upon 1980s game aesthetics and leaning into text-based narratives; while simultaneously simplifying the game mechanics with text interest and on-screen puzzles. The creative works that have influenced my project include Cyborg (1984) and Méwilo (1987). Cyborg is the core inspiration for this game series project’s critical-making process and game mechanics. At the same time, Méwilo informs the inclusion of culture and narrative design. Run: a Sci-Fi Apocalypse Adventure is set in a future where Earth has colonized another planet. Throughout the game narrative the protagonist and the player are asked to consider what exactly reparation means and what is the price to be paid. Run: Algorithms, AI, and Archives is set in an apocalypse future by human-designed technology. The last librarian and archivist in the apocalypse has been discovered. They have been tasked with keeping malicious code from destroying the last of human digital records. All Games in the series were made with Twine which utilized HTML JavaScript. Through this game both the protagonist and player are asked to consider the importance of archives and history in societies and culture. These games are an experimental short-form narrative game series with a Black protagonist and the first two in the game collection. I intend to create three more games for this series. The post-apocalypse has been of recent interest with scholars such as Lawrence Gross’s work “Post-apocalypse Stress Syndrome” leading discourse on Indigenous epistemologies. For the scope and purpose of The Run game series, I center Black thought and experience that are often rendered invisible. Through calling on the legacies of Black thought and centering of Afrofuturism these games examine sci-fi and fantasy themes and questions of gender race, social and economic injustice, and inequalities.”