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DOI: 10.4324/9781003175605-36
26
BLACK GAMER’S REFUGE
Finding Community within the Magic Circle
ofWhiteness
Akil Fletcher
Introduction
So, why do you play video games when it can be harmful to play?
Because I grew up playing video games! And I refuse to let people run me out of
a space that I grew up loving.
Sapphire— Black Girl Gamers
In 1938, Johann Huizinga in his work Homo- Ludens theorized games as unique social spaces
in which the specific rules of the game supplant the rules of society and create a realm of
play. This allows for the existence of a game and its unique behaviours (Phillips 2020), or
the “magic circle.” Those who break the rules of this space, however, shatter this game realm
and become what Huizinga calls a “spoil sport.” While these definitions have been useful in
understanding how game zones are unique from other spaces in society, both game scholars
and anthropologists alike have critiqued the short comings of viewing a game as a vacuum
or closed- o space (Taylor 2018). Indeed, with the rise in popularity of online gaming it has
become harder to view gaming spaces as the closed magic circles Huizinga put forth in his
work. Online games through their connection to the internet exist in a state of intermediality,
where they are connected to multiple forms of social media, streaming websites, and commu-
nication apps. However, this does not mean that games as a form of polymedia (Miller and
Madianou 2013), do not exist without boundaries. After all, digital anthropologists such as
Boellstor (2008) and Nardi (2010) have written extensively on the fact that games exist and
create their own unique cultures. Rather, it is that the boundaries of what many consider a
game have expanded and become porous. They are similar to a cell filtering content in and out
while remaining its own unique entity.
Yet, as these boundaries expand to include multiple forms of media and digital communi-
ties, there has been a need to reframe what is thought of as a game or gaming space itself. This
is because online video games today are sites for more than just gameplay. Most notably, games
and gaming spaces have become powerful sites for anti- Black discrimination, in part through
numerous attacks on marginalized gamers and streamers. In 2021, musician Faheem Rasheed
Najm, better known by his stage name, “T- Pain,” was attacked while streaming on Twitch by
an opposing team calling him the N- word. Events like these display that online video games are
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more than just the game itself, but an interweaving of gameplay and anti- Black social dynamics.
We must understand this instance not simply as T- Pain being called the N- word as an insult,
but as an integral part of the gameplay for his white attackers.
For this reason, when considering race and gaming, typical definitions of a game or gaming
space simply do not fit. But how then does one make sense of an evolving gaming space that
is not only deeply aected by race, but sees race become a tool of gameplay? Here, while
Huizinga’s definition of a game/ gaming space is not without its shortcomings, I believe it can
be useful in understanding the role race plays within multiplayer online games and the media
which connects to them. This is because despite its limitations, Huizinga provides a definition
which sees the world of a game constructed through a set of rules— for example if you are
playing chess the world demands that you move your pieces correctly to maintain the game.
But what if instead of a set of game rules, the boundaries of the magic circle or “game” were
instead formed by a set of cultural rules or logics? Specifically, what if the “magic circle” of
online games weren’t just formed by the guidelines of the game, but reconceptualized to be
formed by the cultural logics of a hetero white male gaming culture? This conceptualization
could be used to understand the ways in which race has come to influence online gaming— a
conceptualization that I coin “the magic circle of whiteness” (MCW).
I define the magic circle of whiteness as a conceptual tool which builds upon Huizinga’s
definition of the magic circle by viewing online games and connected medias not just as
isolated spaces maintained by a set of rules or guidelines, but as spaces dictated and maintained
by a set of white cultural logics. This is because, historically, video games in the U.S (both
online and o) have been typically viewed as the domain of white men seeking to arm
their identity in technological know- how, constructing a form of what Kocurek (2015) calls
“technomasculinity.” Indeed, with about 70 per cent of game developers in the U.S being white
men (Browne 2020), and most human- appearing main video game characters being of the
same demographics, video games in the U.S have centred whiteness in their creation and pro-
liferation. This, along with the popular trope within media of the downtrodden white gamer,
has resulted in many games and gaming spaces being viewed as predominantly white, with
many white male gamers coming to internalize and act upon this belief. This can be seen in
examples such as #Gamergate1 which was a hate campaign against women and people of colour
by white men who largely felt that their games were being threatened by diversity (Gray 2016).
However, the MCW is not formed or maintained simply by individual attacks, but rather is the
coalescence of a white hegemony within gaming, that sees its industries, products, and players
act upon and maintain a white status quo.
Here, I build upon other scholars, such as Everett and Watkins’ (2008), who have discussed
how games can work as sites of harmful racial learning in what they call “racialized peda-
gogical zones.” Further, anthropologists such as Malaby (2007), have stressed the importance
of realizing that games are influenced directly by those who play them, writing that they
are “processes” which “always contain the potential for generating new practices and new
meanings.” (Malaby 2007: 102). However, it is through my own research that the premise for
the MCW comes to form, as throughout my time researching Black gamers and Black gaming
spaces, I have come to see the ways in which white forces have come to terrorize and deject
Black gaming spaces.
Specifically, throughout 2019 I had the opportunity to play with, talk to, and interview sev-
eral Black gamers as a part of my ongoing research on Black gaming spaces and communities.
Many of them commented on the reality of “games not being made for them,” and expressed
feelings that the industry only catered to white individuals. Additionally, within my research
I also spent time with multiple Black groups on popular gaming communication apps like
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Discord where many of the Black members (including myself) experienced harassment from
white actors spewing insults and invading the space. One group I participated in was Black
People Discord (BPD), a public Black online group on Discord, which unfortunately dissolved
due to a deluge of similar white discrimination and harassment during my time of research.
However, BPD was unique in that members were not simply scared into leaving the app, but
instead the group was slowly transformed from Black space to generalized space by a combin-
ation of white attackers and white individuals who joined the space to find their own pleasure.
It was from their fate that I developed the concept of the MCW to help better understand how
Black space was deconstructed and overwhelmed by whiteness, not just in the form of racist
attacks but by the consumption of Black space for white play or pleasure.
It should be said that not everything I experienced in my research was negative. In fact,
through engaging with my participant and friend Sapphire I was shown the possibilities for
Black joy in larger anti- Black online settings. She was a member of the group Black Girl
Gamers (BGG), an organization of Black women gamers spread through multiple websites
and spaces. While she and others in BGG have been attacked for being Black women in
gaming spaces, they have found ways to not only exist, but thrive in a larger anti- Black
gaming industry. Utilizing private online spaces such as Facebook groups and Discord
channels, this UK- and US- based group have found ways to build community despite being
bombarded by non- Black attackers. In fact, they are so successful that it is here where I found
the second half of my theoretical framework. Just as Huizinga’s spoil sport denied the rules
of the game, shattering the magic circle, Sapphire and her comrades portrayed this same out-
come. By finding joy and community in a white space structured to prevent this, they denied
the logics of the MCW. Instead, they exemplified what I term the “Black Spoil Sport,” an
identity which I base within the acts of refusal and fugitive expressions performed by these
gamers in the MCW.
It is this dichotomy between the MCW and the Black Spoil Sport, which serves as the core
of this chapter. I seek to provide anthropology a better way to understand the reality of Blackness
and gaming, and display how online video games, connected media, and participants in the
U.S are shaped by race. Specifically, I explore how a hegemonic whiteness marks Blackness and
Black players as a “gaming other” working to remove Blackness to maintain itself. Thus, in this
chapter, I will engage with the ethnographic data I have collected from my time with BPD and
my interviews with Sapphire about BGG and her own experiences to explore how a white
hegemony or “whiteness as default” within gaming influences the experiences and navigational
practices of Black gamers and online users.
Ironically, I will not be discussing any specific game in this chapter but instead placing
the focus of my analysis on Black media spaces connected to the larger gaming ecosystem, to
understand the challenges Black individuals face when trying to use these spaces to circumvent
or cope with the racism they experience when gaming. The body of this chapter is broken
into two parts. The first will recount the collapse of the online/ gaming community BPD, to
explore how Black communities are at risk within the MCW. Specifically, I discuss the ways in
which whiteness in both deleterious and well- meaning forms can work to eject Black online
community from gaming spaces and rearm the MCW.
The second section will elaborate on the concept of the Black Spoil Sport by exploring the
tactics of BGG to maintain a Black presence within the circle. I illustrate the possibilities for
Black existence within the circle and demonstrate how through their success in navigating and
finding space within it, they come to resist the logics of the MCW and encapsulate the identity
of the Black Spoil Sport. By applying these two concepts, I contribute to both the anthro-
pology of media and digital spaces, with a way to interpret racial trends among interconnected
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forms of polymedia. Providing this framework aids in the study of multi- sited digital projects,
but more broadly provides a useful tool in understanding spaces that are dictated by hegemonic
white forces within a period of rapidly growing digital media.
e Dissolution of Black People Discord
When setting out to study how Black people experienced, navigated, and made sense of online
gaming spaces, Discord was immediately one of the first places I went to. This is because since
its launch in 2015, Discord has become a staple among a wide variety of gaming communi-
ties. Created by Jason Citron and his partner Stanislav Vishnevsky, Discord is a form of video,
speech/ audio, and text chat communication program similar to predecessors like Skype, but
unique in that it was targeted towards gamers. It was created to allow them to join persistent
servers (both private and public) which served as hubs for interaction. These servers allow
anyone moderators approve into a space where users can send messages and communicate
with the other members of the server. They function like a giant group text, where individ-
uals could leverage the functionality of their computers/ phones, to do things like hop into
conference calls, stream videos with friends, or simply share images. By homing in on the idea
of providing a fast and reliable connection for gamers looking to communicate while they
played, Discord exploded in popularity and use. However, because Discord oers a multitude
of features ranging from advanced tools like bots (automated programs which conduct tasks),
which could perform features like automatically filtering incoming people or moderate chat
rooms— Discord also gained the attention of audiences beyond gaming, making it unique for
understanding Black community in gaming spaces.
Having used Discord myself, I knew it would be a suitable place to begin looking for Black
gaming communities as many gamers would use it as a communication hub to speak with
friends over a broad range of games. By utilizing a feature on Discord’s website that lets you
search through public servers, I began looking for anything that might lead me to Black space.
To my surprise, at least three pages of Discord servers with titles or references to Black culture
popped up in response to my inquiry. Servers like Black Gamers, The Black Experience, and Blerd
Stasis (a combination of Black and nerd) came up on my screen, filling me with both hope and
surprise. These search results seemed to indicate that not only were there Black gaming/ nerd
communities online, but that eorts to create such were consistent and plentiful. However,
my hope would not last long, as upon closer inspection I saw that mixed into the servers that
sought to celebrate Blackness, there were many servers that directly mocked and played with
Black imagery and text.
Like minstrel posters, many of these servers were listed with overtly racist server names
like “Niqqers be Wildin” and “Niqqer Server”2 with Qs instead of Gs (likely to avoid alerting
Discord’s sensors). Others utilized derogatory Black imagery such as Black cartoon characters
or celebrities which were edited to wear things like du- rags or eat watermelon. This would
mark some of the earliest signs of anti- Blackness which inspired my initial conceptualization
for the MCW, because not only were these images disconcerting, but they also served as digital
markers of space. They reminded individuals of the anti- Blackness which existed in online
spaces and reminded users of the possibility and fear that they might unknowingly join an
anti- Black space. But, when I did finally join servers, ten out of the 15 initial servers I joined
remained eerily inactive. Like digital ghost towns, these servers had little to no activity for
over a year.
While this is common, as Discord is host to countless abandoned servers, the sheer
amount of “dead Black space” stuck out like a thorn. As Taylor (2002) has noted, it is the
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people and players that give a digital space “life,” so seeing this left me asking why. It would
not be until I joined the group BPD that I would begin to find answers. BPD, a group
created to celebrate Blackness, would come to end during the time of my research. In 2019,
I witnessed BPD slowly collapse under a deluge of white harassment, infiltration, and non-
Black folk seeking their own play and joy within the space. As within BPD, I would come to
witness first- hand the reality of an openly Black community in a space rife with anti- Black
behaviours.
Created in March 2019 by a Black man I will refer to as “Gold,” BPD was a creation of
chance. Gold had only created the space after he was removed from another Black server for
defending a potential racist who had joined the group. Gold advocated that the individual not
be removed without sucient evidence of racism, to which the leaders of the group promptly
kicked them both out. Disgruntled and left without a community, Gold created BPD, a public
server dedicated to what he believed Black community should be. He hoped for a community
that was open and welcoming to all participants provided they were respectful and understood
that the community was primarily a Black space. By creating multiple channels (contained
spaces within the server, like subreddits but with audio capabilities), Gold deftly created sites
for discussion about topics such as food, politics, and memes, organizing the server in hopes
that all kinds of Black folks would find space there. Additionally, remembering the situation he
had come from, he went on to set up a gamified governing system to ensure no one would be
removed the way he was from his previous group. He provided a levelling system for people
in the community, where the more time they spent engaging and helping, the higher the level
they would achieve, and subsequently the higher their position in the community. To Gold’s
credit, this system succeeded in attracting many Black members to join the community. The
group had reached around 50 members when I joined in June 2019 with around half being
Black. Many used the space to find friends, play video games, or simply vent about the day
with one another. Through his group, Gold displayed how “Blackness could expertly utilize the
internetwork’s capacity for discourse to build out a social, cultural, and racial identity” (Brock
2020: 5).
Unfortunately, it did not take long for Gold to run into issues. In opening his community
to all participants, he also opened it to attacks which had a drastic impact on the space. For
example, on multiple occasions the space was invaded by random attackers spamming the N-
word and saying things like “fuck Black people.” While this was infrequent and the individuals
would be removed, it remained a significant detriment to the community as many became too
annoyed or bothered and would simply leave the space. Additionally, the group faced another
issue in the form of individuals joining and pretending to be Black, performing what Leonard
(2004) calls high- tech Blackface. Many individuals in fact made it a game, and would find
fun in pretending to be Black, using a Black profile picture or simply claim to be Black, only
to one day go on a racist rant resulting in their removal. However, while they had their fun,
their actions would often leave the rest of the group questioning whether they could trust the
remaining members. As part of an ongoing issue specific to online gaming spaces, online ano-
nymity provided cover to attackers that they would not have in a physical setting. These issues
became so common that Gold assigned key positions to other members to help moderate the
channel and ensure the safety of the community. But even this became complicated.
Gold’s levelling system came back to bite him, as many of the individuals ranking up in
the space weren’t Black but were instead white members who came to enjoy the company of
Black users. When the time came to select moderators for the group, Gold had little choice
but to rely on the white members who were most active in the community to help safeguard
it. One example was a white Australian man who called himself “Babatunde,” a name based on
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an African character played by Black British Youtuber KSI. This character was stereotypically
poor and could not aord shoes. The Discord user Babatunde would make no eort to hide
the fact that he was white and would consistently remind everyone of this in an attempt to
remain “racially sincere” (Jackson 2005) since his profile picture was of KSI (a Black man) and
not himself. Surprisingly, this honesty gained him a key position in the group as he become
both a moderator and a staple of the space, spending almost every day engaging in conversa-
tion in a wide array of topics. In fact, because of their time zone dierences, when Gold went
to bed, Babatunde would often become the de facto leader of the channel, kicking out racist
assailants and holding down the fort for Gold until he logged in again. Babatunde was quite
earnest about carrying out the job; when I asked him why a white man would seek out a Black
group he answered:
To be honest, I just joined this group chat because living in my country I feel like
there isn’t a lot of black people. Growing up in school my two best friends were black
until high school came, they had to go to other schools, and I lost touch. I sorta just
felt like I could be friends with anyone and seeing all the negativity towards people for
the colour of their skin I figured I should just join the group and spread some more
positivity if you will, ha- ha.
It is unclear if Babatunde was aware of the irony in his words. Between a white adminis-
trator gaining power and the continued verbal attacks on the community, more and more
Black people started to leave, while more non- Black individuals started to join. This continued
steadily with one Black woman telling me before leaving: “I want to join a group that’s for only
Black people, I don’t trust all this.” She and many others raised important concerns about the
boundaries of their Black space, specifically asking if they could even still call what they had
a Black community. While Black users rarely made these concerns public, they expressed fear
that too many non- Black members joining would result in the space no longer being made safe
for Black individuals. This is not to say members objected to or had any dislike of non- Black
members, but rather expressed a concern about how one could be truly vulnerable and free
in their expression of Blackness if they still had to encounter aspects of the white world they
hoped to escape.
After all, Blackness often resides as both a foil and peripheral force to whiteness, as Blackness
is often made to be the bar in which whiteness is measured against, and the tool in which
whiteness comes to realize itself as what Benjamin (2019) calls “the invisible centre.” The nor-
malization of whiteness as raceless comes to reinforce Blackness as the raced other (Harrison
1995), “for not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white
man” (Fanon 1952). This combined with a global history of seeing Black spaces demonized and
terrorized by white forces (Hartman 2019). Rendered the questions these Black members were
asking not only fair, but pivotal to the group’s survival.
This all came to a head when Gold finally met his breaking point and left the group after
a specific case of high- tech Black face. A member, calling himself “Dashiki Brown,” spent a
little over a month pretending to be a Black person. Surprisingly, Dashiki did not partake in
the usual racist behaviour. In fact, he was a cordial member of the group. However, one day
when another person was accused of committing digital Black face, Dashiki became adamant,
demanding that the person be removed, telling the group: “digital Black face is a thing, and he’s
got to go.” Ironically, many members had suspected that Dashiki himself was not Black (Dashiki
was a little on the nose), but since no one had proof, everyone decided to let it go, arguing that
if he remained civil it would not matter. But with his newfound fervour for removing people,
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Gold found him threat enough and performed his own investigation by joining other Black
groups and asking if anyone had heard of him.
Through his Discord hopping, Gold discovered that not only was Dashiki a white Greek
man, but also that he had been removed from another group for having meltdowns and ver-
bally attacking Black women. When this news came to light, Gold, Babatunde, and two other
moderators confronted Dashiki with the information. They held a synchronous ad hoc trial
through text chat for his behaviour, posting screen shots Gold had collected from another
group. Faced with this, Dashiki admitted his wrongdoings. He claimed that he joined Black
groups because he didn’t feel at home in his Greek community oine, saying he was often
mocked for being too pale compared to other individuals in Greece. Thus, he figured Black
people would understand what it felt like to be ostracized so he joined BPD. He bargained that
he would change his picture and name as penitence, and surprisingly the admins let him stay.
Flabbergasted by the decision, I spoke to Gold privately about it, where he admitted to me that
he did not trust him at all, remarking: “Oh, he’s crazy for sure.”
But it was in this conversation that Gold told me that he planned to leave the group. He
remarked that running a group was a lot more work than he imagined, and he planned to pass
it down to the most active member, Babatunde. By the end of that day, Gold announced his
departure and said his goodbyes. With that, BPD went from being a Black space to one that had
a white owner overnight. I never spoke to Gold after he left the group as he did not log back
in, but I did stay to witness the aftermath of the transition of power. First, Babatunde realized
that it was inappropriate for a white person to own a server named Black People Discord,
so he changed the name along with his own username. This catalysed the remaining Black-
identifying members to leave the group. Slowly the transformation was complete— BPD was
no longer a Black space but instead became a hangout for white and other non- Black users with
a completely dierent name. While it did not share the same fate as the servers I had found at
the start of my search, it joined the “dead Black space” in a dierent way, one that despite its
continuing existence, left no trace of the Black community it once was.
While this was as solemn moment, it was one which displayed the ways the MCW worked
to remove Blackness. Its tactics were not found just in the aggressive and consistent berating
of Black online users. They also worked through the co- opting of space, the acts of deceit
which made Black members question their space, and the inundation of behaviours which
simply exhaust Black communities. Simply put, the MCW is not a space simply maintained
by random acts of white racism, but is instead the culmination of racists behaviours, anti- Black
histories, and an adherence to whiteness as default. It is a space which like many other social
formations centred in whiteness, has come to be informed through an interlinking of mul-
tiple cultural spheres which make up and empower it (Delany and Yanagisako 1995). Most
frightening of all is how within the MCW, BPD became a source for white pleasure, a game
within a gaming space, both for those who attacked, and those who came to claim their joy
within Black space.
Black Girl Gamers, the Black Spoil Sport, and Possibilities within the
MagicCircle of Whiteness
With a history of gaming as a white player space (Newman 2017) and an industry which
struggles with diversity and inclusion (Brock 2011, Russworm and Blackmon 2020), I came
to worry if anything could properly disrupt the MCW. After all, BPD was not unique in its
problems as many Black gamers have echoed the issues of anti- Black discrimination in their
gaming (Gray 2020). This was made worse by the realization that these attacks were happening
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unprovoked, as this harassment was not targeting a specific behaviour, but rather the identity
and idea of Blackness itself. However, it was from this reality that I developed the concept of the
Black Spoil Sport, to help explain why Black individuals were being targeted just for existing.
As Huizinga writes:
The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a “spoilsport”. The
spoilsport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to
be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle.
It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to
the spoilsport. This is because the spoilsport shatters the play- world itself. By
withdrawing from the game, he [sic] reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-
world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its
illusion. … Therefore, they must be cast out, for they threaten the existence of
the play- community.
Huizinga 1938: 11
In this way, Blackness and Black individuals become the spoil sport within the MCW, just as
the spoil sport shatters the illusion of the magic circle, so too does the Black Spoil Sport shatter
or disrupt the idea that gaming is an inherently white space. Simply put, the Black Spoil Sport
through their mere existence becomes a type of “gaming other” and a wrench in the idea that
gaming spaces are fundamentally white, thereby unsettling the status quo. This can be seen
clearly in the outrage towards the addition of Black characters in video games where many
claim that they “break the immersion of the game” or that they make games “too political.” By
this logic, in a medium with talking dragons and blue hedgehogs, Black people become the
most unbelievable factor. This underlines the reason Blackness comes under attack in white
gaming spaces, as Blackness shatters the “immersion” of white space, and thus must be attacked,
cast out, or absorbed in ways similar to those causing the demise of BPD.
However, this is not all that the Black Spoil Sport is, as Black gamers aren’t just passive
participants in gaming spaces, but are actors who develop their own space, communities, and
joy. This is something I would fully realize in the conversations I had with my participant
Sapphire, as she and her group BGG accomplished what BPD could not— they managed to
create a sustained Black gaming group and existence online. But this did not happen over-
night, and in fact took years to grow into the popular space it is today. Created in 2015 by a
Black woman named Jay- Ann Lopez, BGG is a multi- platform community and organization
that seeks to enact change within the larger gaming community and industry (Blue 2021). It
began as a safe space for Black women to find friends, hang out, and game, and was created
in response to the immense amount of anti- Black/ misogynoir harassment Black women faced
in gaming (Gray 2018). Harassment which caused many, including Sapphire, to change the
way they played, often choosing to mute their mics and limit interaction with others, lest
they be attacked if anyone discovered that they were women or Black. For this reason, BGG
operates on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Discord. Where the group utilizes
the connective nature of the internet to expertly create both public and private spaces to first
find members, and then provide them with safe spaces. By managing features in Facebook or
Discord, members build boundaries to ensure that only Black women are allowed into the
space. These boundaries were even extended toward me as a Black man, as Sapphire made
clear that I would not be able to enter their private Facebook or Discord group. Sapphire did
welcome me to follow their public work posts on Twitter and Twitch; a request I was happy to
oblige, after witnessing what had happened to BPD.
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It was because of these boundaries that BGG was able to maintain their space. As with BPD,
many would try to invade the BGG spaces. Sapphire noted that as BGG grew, they started to
get a lot of requests from men and white women who wanted to join their space. This reflected
the need for their boundaries, as anytime Black individuals wanted to keep something to them-
selves there was consistently a force trying to take it away. This resulted in strict moderation of
their private spaces including checking every profile that requested access, surveying current
member activity, and assigning and rotating jobs to avoid moderator fatigue, all in order to
maintain a space where their members felt safe and welcomed. This was one of the benefits of
creating Black community online: By establishing boundaries and checking systems, they were
able to keep out anyone that might harm the space, allowing BGG to flourish into the prom-
inent organization it is today. After all, since 2015 BGG has evolved into a multi- faceted coali-
tion. On one hand, they run a deep private network of Black knowledge, where their members
teach each other technical skills like how to improve in video games, build stream setup, and
how to navigate their respective industries. While, at the same time, they manage a public-
facing brand that has been featured on billboards in New York’s Time Square and partnered
with large companies like Marvel for their “Women of Marvel” event and celebration. This was
in part only possible because BGG members prioritized protecting their space.
While there are many ways to create online Black gaming communities, it is worth
noting how eective BGG is at leveraging the intermediality of games and media. After all,
anthropologists such as Marcus (1997), Ginsburg (2005), and Coleman (2010) have pointed
to the fact that the internet and burgeoning media have expanded what we consider commu-
nity or the “field.” BGG is a prime example of this. By interacting with so many individuals,
games, websites, and digital spaces, BGG has formed an international community. In doing so
they undermine the white gaming hegemony and create spaces which allow for the existence
of Blackness. However, it is this unique management of borders, a deft understanding of media
space, and the ability to navigate and protect one’s community by reorganizing it along those
media lines which fully encapsulates the Black Spoil Sport.
It is this ability to carve out space which disrupts the hegemony of the MCW, which
encapsulates the Black Spoil Sport not just as a passive existence but as what Campt (2007)
and Sojoyner (2017) call “fugitivity.” As Sojoyner writes: “the concept of fugitivity highlights
the tension between the acts or flights of escape and creative practices of refusal, nimble and
strategic practices that undermine the category of the dominant” (Sojoyner 2017: 516). The
Black Spoil Sport can be interpreted as a fugitive identity which through tactics displayed by
BGG (such as turning o their mics, creating spaces which deny whiteness, and utilizing a vast
network of digital spaces to create sites which celebrate Black womanhood both publicly and
privately) shapes itself in ways which resist the practices that hold the MCW together. In this
way, the Black Spoil Sport is not merely a recolouring of Huizinga’s terms, but instead builds
on concepts such as Sara Ahmed’s “feminist kill joy” (2010) and Bonnie Ruberg’s “too- close
player” (2019), to exist as an identity which passively and actively challenges the makeup of the
MCW. After all, Black resistance has taken on multiple forms throughout history, and while
there were times which we have actively resisted deleterious powers, there were also others
where just surviving was a form of resistance. Thus, the conceptualization of Black Spoil Sport
seeks to consider both these realities to display how Blackness and, in this case, Black women
like those in BGG resist the MCW, in which Blackness is often incongruent in white gaming
spaces. After all, “[B] lack women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation,
an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and
their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways” (The Combahee River collection citing
Angela Davis 1971).
377
Black Gamer’s Refuge
Conclusion
While there is much more to be said about these groups and Black community online, overall,
this chapter has provided one way to look at gaming spaces. By introducing the concept of
the “Magic Circle of Whiteness” and the “Black Spoil Sport,” I have oered anthropology
a conceptual framework which seeks to better understand how whiteness as default shapes
interconnected online gaming spaces. Specifically, through my discussion of BPD I recount the
challenges faced by this group and Black gamers at large. This chapter displays how Black indi-
viduals face a bevy of dangers in online gaming spaces, such as verbal assault, racist imagery, and
individuals pretending to be Black, both as a game and a form of harassment. This, in conjunc-
tion with the poor portrayal of Black characters in games and an industry which has been and
continues to be predominantly white, coalesces to form the MCW. Through this concept I seek
to expand our understanding of online gaming spaces— not just as games, but as interconnected
with larger internet media spaces dictated by white logics.
This, however, is just one half of the framework, as Black individuals are not without agency
within the MCW, as no hegemonic force completely dictates the lives of those found within.
While Black gamers may face steady peril within the MCW, many Black individuals have
developed methods to cope and undermine the white logics of the space. It is this ability to
resist and find space within the MCW which I frame as the Black Spoil Sport, exemplified by
BGG. This group has cleverly utilized digital boundaries and multiple media sites to find and
build community within sites of anti- Blackness. At the core of these concepts is the need to
understand how gaming operates as white space and how Black folks come to resist it. As games
continue to rise in prevalence, anthropology at large will need to adapt new ways of looking at
how these gaming communities influence and intersect with media at large. This will require
a transformation in how we look at how we examine at gaming spaces, as video games have
never, and will never exist within a vacuum.
Notes
1 #Gamergate was an online harassment campaign which took place predominantly in the U.S, UK, and
Canada after which it first targeted game developer Zoë Quinn but saw many individuals being attacked
and having their personal information released in a trend called doxing.
2 Servers like these were much more common at the time of this research. Since then, Discord has been
more active at shutting down these servers and many of these have been removed from their system.
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