Black Games Studies: An Introduction to the Games, Game Makers, and Scholarship of the African Diaspora, edited by Lindsay Grace and published by ETC Press at Carnegie Mellon University, addresses what its authors describe as the serious under-research of games made by Black creators in the African diaspora. The book argues that scholarship has long concentrated on historical or ancient games, such as Mancala, while contemporary Black game makers have remained largely absent from academic and industry discussion. Its central thesis is that Black game making constitutes a distinct, evolving creative movement that resists the "othering" of Black culture and offers a fuller, more diverse picture of play, with Blackness understood broadly as work borne by or through communities with cultural, ethnic, or genetic ties to Africa.
The book's evidence base spans analog and digital work and combines scholarship, personal narratives, and a documentary catalog. Its content analysis examines 50 games by Black makers, gathered through an open call and media identification, and a catalog of 69 games, over two-thirds of them digital, with release years from 2007 to 2021 and a median of 2018. Most are North American, though entries include works from Brazil, Tanzania, and other countries. The authors cite International Game Developer Association estimates that Black people constitute less than 2% of the game-making industry despite being central consumers, a figure echoed by Black Game Makers Association CEO Lamont A. Harrell II and by creators such as Jonathan Herman Jennings.
Beyond the numbers, the book examines analog design history, documenting the absence of Black figures on hobby magazine covers from 1965 to 1995 while highlighting Black designers who have shaped tabletop culture for decades, including Mike Pondsmith and Julia Bond Ellingboe. Its personal accounts, from figures such as Allen Turner, Neil Jones, Boris Willis, and members of Black Card Revoked, emphasize how racism, economic barriers, and platform impermanence shape Black creators' careers, while also documenting persistent resilience. The volume concludes that Black games are under-documented and under-celebrated, and it frames archiving as urgent, given the vulnerability of digital works to obsolescence.
