Playgrounds of Whiteness: Confronting Epistemic Bias in European Game Studies

Abstract

Invoking the analogy of playgrounds as spaces designed with particular bodies and pleasures in mind, this paper explores the impact of whiteness on knowledge production in European game studies. Among critical game scholars there is a growing consensus on the Eurocentric bias in games, play. However, the dominant role of Europe in the construction of this bias has been fairly under-theorized. The question motivating this contribution is: What is particularly European about game studies' Eurocentric bias? How has it been fabricated and what are current mechanisms of epistemic violence which reinforce and cement white ways of knowing about games? I explore these questions through a combination of conceptual work and authoethnographic reflection as a eurowhite Austrian games researcher. The first part of this paper explores the relation between learning, knowledge and white bias, demonstrating how white bias as a structural phenomenon teaches us to value and devalue knowledge along racial lines with harmful epistemic effects. Secondly, orientalism, exceptionalism and eurowhiteness are discussed as three features working together to produce particular Euro-style mechanics of whiteness. These mechanics define what gets most valued on the white 'knowledge playground' of European game studies; the focus of the last section. The overall aim of this paper is work towards a language of eurowhite accountability; suggesting that recognizing racial bias in European game studies is a required first step towards the long-term goal of epistemic justice.