Glitch Game Testers: African American Men Breaking Open the Console

This paper presents preliminary findings from the Glitch Game Testers project, a research initiative that seeks to engage urban African American male high school students through paid game testing work and a contextualized computing curriculum. The authors argue that the relationship between video game play and computer science interest is shaped not only by gender but by race and cultural play practices. Drawing on prior observations, they note that young African American males often play competitively and socially, treat games as extensions of sports with an emphasis on sportsmanship, and rarely modify or hack games, which limits their engagement with the computation underlying them. The project was designed to build on these practices by treating bug finding as an authentic, competitive, and socially grounded entry point into how games are constructed.

The project progressed through two preliminary workshops in 2008, an eight-week after-school program that was not successful in recruiting or retaining participants because of transportation barriers and unpaid status, and a full paid summer program in 2009. The 2009 cohort included roughly 10 to 12 students aged 16 to 17 who were paid a stipend, competed through a points-based incentive system, and conducted quality assurance testing for industry partners including Game Tap, Cartoon Network, Good Egg Games, and Last Legion Games. Testers logged nearly 1,000 bugs for Game Tap over six weeks. Students also received instruction in Alice and Jython, with the program drawing on EA training materials for testing methodology.

Evaluation relied on pre- and post-interviews with the 11 participants who completed the program, along with observational data. Preliminary results suggest that six students changed their stated career interests toward computer science, that participants arrived early to play or program, and that most began viewing games as objects to be analyzed and taken apart rather than simply played. Participants also reported pride in their contributions to commercial games. The authors caution that these findings are preliminary, that the analysis is ongoing, and that it remains unclear which program elements drove the observed shifts in interest.