Game Over: The Perils of Framing Feminist Game Design Pedagogy as Repair versus Transformation

Abstract

Drawing on the experience of a multiyear research project bringing transformative pedagogies to game design education, we provide a critical reflection on the lack of sustainability of the project. Upon examination, we see that some reasons behind this perceived failure are due to institutional systems of power that seek to neutralize transformative feminist pedagogy as performative repair, resulting in the maintenance of existing curricula. Instead of fully engaging with transformative pedagogies, these teaching and learning methods are used as tools to provide a cursory fulfillment of the deep need for social justice education in games. We examine the ways in which structures and systems continually devalue and de-resource pedagogical work, specifically pedagogies that are centered in feminist, anti-racist, and critical approaches, as well as our own complicity within these oppressive structures at times. We draw connections with relevant disciplinary perspectives on higher education, and conclude by offering a framework for understanding the pitfalls that can hamper work with transformative pedagogical aims, characterized by the types of labor used to maintain the status quo, as well as a set of recommendations for moving beyond the frame of repair to sustainably and radically disrupt dominant pedagogies in games and related disciplines.