Diamond Beverly
Student Bio
I am a Storyteller, Educator, Video Game Developer, and Artist based in Dallas, Texas. Through individual and collaborative projects, I discovered the power of environmental storytelling and the transformative properties of a well-designed game. I am interested in the intersections of culture, communication, representation, and narrative storytelling through the medium of digital games. In my work, I strive to educate and advocate for marginalized voices that are not often represented in mass media. I do this by utilizing digital games as a communicative medium. I center my personal experiences navigating the many spaces I inhabit and seek to capture the nuances of my intersecting identities through creating a complex narrative through the storytelling; while also fostering a sense of self through creating characters and levels that place the player as a central component of the game. I explore the politics of space and gender in different environments, through creating art that explores and experiments with the limitations and affordance of digital games as a different epistemological device. Digital games function as epistemological artifacts that allow me as the game designer and the player to have an open dialogue about the existing relations of power at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality. I center my personal experiences navigating the many spaces I inhabit and seek to capture the nuances of my intersecting identities through creating a complex narrative through the storytelling; while also fostering a sense of self through creating characters and levels that place the player as a central component of the game. I explore the politics of space and gender in different environments, through creating art that explores and experiments with the limitations and affordance of digital games as a different epistemological device.
About
Thesis Title
Affirmations 2.0: The Politics of Liberation and Exploration of Healing in Digital Games
Committee
Dr. Hong-An Wu (Chair), Dr. Josef Nguyen. Dr. Kim Knight
Degree
MFA with Creative Practice
Abstract
Negative thoughts plague the self-consciousness of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and affect how we proceed through our days. Through my own struggle with this, I developed a personal coping mechanism of visualizing and facilitating an encounter with both the negative and positive attributed versions of myself as a Black woman. In previous works in ATEC, I developed a game, Affirmations, representing this personal coping mechanism for reconfiguring my sense of self. As an extension, Affirmations2.0explores the affordance of a digital game as a communally situated coping mechanism and critical making technology for Black women and children. Through the game, the player encounters intrusive thoughts and reflects on how the main conflict within oneself is rooted in the internalization of systemic oppression. In so doing, Affirmations 2.0complicatesplayer’s knowledge of the self and work as a flexible artifact that facilitates critical making, reflection, and self-care for Black women and children. This project directly addresses the concerns of mental health perceptions in the traditionally underrepresented group of Black women and children by highlighting the contributing factors of internalized systemic oppression. This project is grounded in the theoretical framework of pleasure activism and healing as community care work in order to resist neoliberalist perceptions of health as individualistic responsibilities. Furthermore, this project challenges the common oppositional relationship between game designer and player by introducing a collaborative partnership based on critical making between players and game designers. By engaging with the game’s infrastructure as a critical making technology, player will complicate their perception of their internal voice and understand the outside factors that affect individual.
