Critical Game Literacies and Critical Speculative Imagination: A Theoretical and Conceptual Review

Matthew Coopilton's article "Critical Game Literacies and Critical Speculative Imagination" (published in gamevironments in 2022) argues that games can serve as tools for imagining and rehearsing futures free from systemic oppression. The central thesis holds that critical game literacies, the skills to play, analyze, modify, and design games in ways that challenge oppressive structures, can nurture a "critical speculative imagination." This capacity is grounded in abolitionist movements against policing and prisons, and the work synthesizes sociocultural learning theory, abolitionist Marxist theory, and the Afrofuturist Development framework into a conceptual model supported by a brief literature review rather than new empirical data.

The conceptual core treats play, games, and metagames as sites where players can challenge existing systems and co-design alternatives. Drawing on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and the work of Gee and Squire, the author positions play and game design as developmental activities that persist into adulthood, and characterizes game-making as inherently future-oriented. The framework also introduces ten principles of Afrofuturist Development for Black youth learning in technology-enhanced environments, emphasizing Afrofuturistic selves and Black joy as means of resisting disposability.

The review identifies several gaps in existing scholarship: the separation of play from design, the limited attention to Black liberation and abolitionism in game research, and the scarcity of work that simulates liberation rather than oppression. Constructionist studies show gains in computing interest and metacognition but rarely address race or culture, with the Skins program among the few exceptions. Research on critical game literacies has largely centered on gender, while Black, Latine, Indigenous, and working-class participants have nonetheless used games to contest racism, police violence, and colonialism. The author accordingly argues for integrating play and design, and proposes student-created "ideological gameworlds," game jams, and abolitionist game design as concrete practices, including the author's ongoing Critical Game Jam project, while acknowledging that empirical testing of these claims is only beginning.