Program

Overview | Schedule Keynote Speakers:
Widely respected speakers from our network of leaders promising to provide insight, guidance and exciting observations. The event will have 2 opening and closing keynote speakers each day. Confirmed keynote speakers include:

Stanley Pierre-Louis

President & Chief Executive Officer Entertainment Software Association

Stanley Pierre-Louis has served as ESA’s President and CEO since 2019. Stan first joined ESA as its Senior Vice President and General Counsel in 2015, where he led the legal, policy and regulatory affairs function for the association..

Elizabeth Del Valle

Global Partnering Marketing Lead, YouTube Music and Premium

Elizabeth Del Valle is an award-winning marketing leader who focuses on building community and brand and platform loyalty with makers of all kinds, including gamers, developers, media companies, and content creators. With over 16 years of experience, including almost a decade at Google, she has a proven track record of driving impactful marketing initiatives for major platforms such as PlayStation, Google Play, and YouTube.

Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D.

Narrative Director at Twin Suns, is an award-winning designer, writer, and artist of games and comics who was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2018 and inducted into the Global Women in Games Hall of Fame in 2020. Notably, she was the designer and artist of Thunderbird Strike, a lightning-searing side-scroller game which won Best Digital Media at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival 2017. Most recently, she directed and designed When Rivers Were Trails, an adventure game about land allotment in the 1890s which won the Adaptation Award at IndieCade 2019.

Guha Bala

President of Velan Studios, the game studio best known for Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, Knockout City, and the newly released Midnight Murder Club. Before co-founding Velan, he co-founded Vicarious Visions, which he led with his brother, Karthik, for 25 years before its integration into Blizzard Entertainment. Named Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s “Entrepreneur of the Year,” Guha serves on the Boards of Trinity Health of New York, Emma Willard School, the Eddy Foundation, and several high-growth companies. He holds degrees from Harvard College (AB) and MIT’s Sloan School of Management (MBA).

Karthik Bala

CEO, Velan Ventures / Velan Studios, Inc. with his brother are founders of Velan Studios (www.velanstudios.com), an award-winning indie game studio focused on discovery of breakthrough new game experiences. They are also founders of Velan Ventures, an innovation investment firm exploring game and game technologies that can transform other industries such as music & linear media, healthcare, education and more.
Karthik has been making video games for nearly 35 years on a wide range of platforms spanning indie original IP to blockbuster entertainment franchises. As part of Velan Studios, he has contributed to the groundbreaking mixed reality experiences Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, and Hot Wheels Rift Rally, the online multiplayer “dodgebralwer” Knockout City, pinball reinvention in VR with Bounce Arcade and the innovative social party game of hide and seek and shoot…in the dark in Midnight Murder Club.
Previously, Karthik and Guha co-founded Vicarious Visions in 1991 while both were in high school. Over their 25-year leadership of the studio, VV grew to become an industry-leading game developer, with products generating over $4 Billion in sales, helping shape popular culture around the world. The brothers have built and led teams in the development of multi-billion-dollar franchises such as Skylanders, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and more. In 2021, Vicarious Visions became part of Blizzard Entertainment.
Karthik enjoys mentoring entrepreneurs and looking at how game technologies can transform the world. He is on the Board of Trustees of The Strong Museum of Play and holds bachelor’s degrees in computer science and psychology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Conference Sessions

We are thrilled to announce the inaugural BIPOC Game Studies Conference, scheduled for September 12-14, 2025, at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. This groundbreaking event aims to celebrate and explore the rich contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the gaming industry. We invited scholars, developers, and creators to contribute to the conference through the peer-reviewed paper, panel and speaker submission as well as a curated showcase of analog and digital games.
Join us in this unique opportunity to engage with a community dedicated to elevating BIPOC voices in gaming. Whether you're a researcher, developer, or enthusiast, the BIPOC Game Studies Conference 2025 promises an enriching experience for all:

Program Overview

Peer-Reviewed Research Presentations: Engage with cutting-edge academic insights through presentations and panels that delve into themes such as representation, identity, cultural preservation, and decolonization in gaming. We plan to have 25-30 academic presenters sharing their research in the domain in panels and presentations.
Curated Game Showcase: Experience a diverse array of digital and analog games developed by BIPOC creators. This expo-style showcase offers attendees and the public an opportunity to interact directly with the games and their developers.
Industry Speakers: Gain valuable perspectives from invited speakers who are leading voices in the gaming sector, sharing their experiences and insights on fostering inclusivity and innovation.
Unconference: An alternative session to the traditional conference sessions, designed to support community contributions and collaborative exploration of participant aims and interests.
Networking: The program Includes opportunities to network formally and informally as well as a reception open to all registered conference attendees and participants.

Schedule

Conference Schedule

September 12th, 2025:

Playing with Orientalism in How to Host a Murder's Hoo Hung Wu
— Noah Miranda
Clones and their (All)Mother: Postmemory, Techno-Orientalism, and Asian Diasporic Gaming in 1000xResist (2024)
— Joseph Wei
Beyond the Colonial Politics of Recognition
— Gerald Voorhees

Time	Main Theater	Session Room 1	Session Room 2	Food Court/Lunch Room
8:30-10:00				Registration & Coffee
10:00-11:15	Welcome and Opening Keynote (Main Theater)
11:30:12:30		Speaker Session #1: Decolonial Frameworks and Indigenous Voices Theme: Unsettling dominant narratives through Indigenous and decolonial lenses in games “Cultural Threads in Gaming: Indigenous Representation, Knowledge, and Game Development — Kendall Scott, Harley Ceberano, and Diego Martinez Distorting Settler Colonial Space-Time: Space-Time Distortions and Indigenous Counter-Narratives in Pokémon Legends: Arceus — Changie Chang Decolonizing Play: Frameworks for Game Design Free of Colonial Values — Elaine Gómez, Dan Cook, and Roxanne Blouin-Payer
12:30-2:00	Lunch on your own
2:00-3:15		Speaker Session #2: Diaspora and Cultural Tropes in Games Theme: Examining how Asian and diasporic identities are represented—and misrepresented—in games. Playing with Orientalism in How to Host a Murder's Hoo Hung Wu — Noah Miranda Clones and their (All)Mother: Postmemory, Techno-Orientalism, and Asian Diasporic Gaming in 1000xResist (2024) — Joseph Wei Beyond the Colonial Politics of Recognition — Gerald Voorhees	Panel: Diversity, Citational Justice, and Analog Game Studies: A Roundtable Edmond Chang, Aaron Trammell, Evan Torner, Megan Condis, Shelly Jones, Emma Waldron, Beatrix Livesey-Stephens and Luke Hernandez
3:30-4:45		Speaker and Panel Session #3: Identity and Fan Engagement in Gaming Theme: Fans navigating identity, representation, and cultural critique in gaming communities. Expectation versus Reality: Black Millennial Fandom of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game — Taylore Woodhouse The Role of Romance in Shaping Player Interactions in Thedas: Deconstructing Misogynoir and Fan Interpretations of Vivienne — Diamond Beverly-Porter Reclaiming My Controller: Gaming as Site of Black Feminist Intervention — Myranda Bell “I Am Not the Default”: Racialized Experiences of Avatar Embodiment Among Black Social VR Users — Cyan DeVeaux, Eugy Han, Zora Hudson, Jordan Egelman, James Landay, and Jeremy Bailenson
5:00-6:00 PM	Day 1 Closing Keynote Reception in Adams Atrium to follow

September 13th, 2025

Time	Main Theater	Session Room 1	Session Room 2	Adams Atrium	Food Court
8:30-9:00					Registration & Coffee
9:00-10:10	Day 2 Welcome and Keynote			Games Showcase (opens)
10:15-11:15		Speaker Session #4 Race, Representation, and Resistance in Story-Driven Games Theme: How race and resistance narratives are embedded in story-heavy and cinematic games. Racial Representation and Resistance in Dystopian Video Games: Exploring Detroit: Become Human and The Last of Us — Kendal Jordan Procedural Blackness, or How to Read a Loss of Ontological Resistance in Video Games — Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield “I Can’t Lie to You About Your Chances, But... You Have My Sympathies”: Racial Movement Rhetorics and the Interface of Horror in Alien: Isolation — Brandon Blackburn A Greater History of Video Games — Anthony Brave		Games Showcase
11:30:-12:30		Speaker Session #5: Cultural Preservation and Community Memory Theme: Black critical thought and feminist scholarship in the gaming space. Preserving and Promoting Latine Cultural Heritage Through Gaming — Samantha Conde What the Aesthetic and Preservative Functions of Batik in Songs of the Hmong? — Sha Huang Virtual Reality Museums: Redefining Engagement and Understanding in Cultural Heritage — Yuning Gao	Panel: Reckoning with Japanese American Redress: an interdisciplinary, community-engaged design story Lien Tran, Belquis Elhadi, Clara Bergamini, Ashley Cheyemi McNeil and Karen Schrier.	Games Showcase
12:30-2:00	Lunch (on your own)			Games Showcase
2:00-3:15		Speaker Session #6: Educational Innovation and Institutional Change Theme: How games shape education, identity, and institutional inclusion. Black Quare Game Studies: A New Approach to Gaming Education — Kenneth Norwood Expanding Inclusion in Game Development: Creating the HBCU Expert in Residence Program — Krystal Cooper Let’s Intelligame: Spreading Social Good with #ThoughtfulPlay — Josh Boykin	Panel: What is Happening?: Social and Economical Factors that affect BIPOC Game Developers Javon Goard, Kishonna Gray and Latoya Peterson	Games Showcase
3:30 -4:30		Speaker Session #7 Community, Design, and Play Cultures Theme: Using games and game-like media to celebrate, preserve, and educate about cultural traditions We Can Still Revive Rival Schools: Contemporary Efforts to Maintain Arcade Venues and Culture and the Relevance of Competitive Culture in Community Building — Rhys Hall Collegiate Esports: Overcoming Bias, Exclusion, and Misinformation — April Welch Designing a Community Generated Video Game Exhibition — Masaya Heywood		Games Showcase
4:30-5:30	Closing Keynote

September 14th, 2025

Time	Session Room 1	Strong Museum Interactive Exhibits
8:30-11:45	Unconference	Independently explore The Strong’s interactive exhibits to learn more about the history and cultural impact of video games. All conference attendees and speakers will have free access to the museum on Saturday, September 14 and are invited to play, learn, and explore.
1:00 - 3:00 PM	Unconference