To celebrate the release of Issue 4 of the VGA Reader, we will be featuring one article from the new volume with every zine for the foreseeable future. Click through to see the second article, currently hosted by Amherst College Press and available open source on fulcrum.org.

“This essay seeks to trace the historical articulation of Blackness in the FGC against the meritocratic principles of and the demand for hype spectacles. In this, I hope to contribute to understandings of articulations of racial identity and how they are altered in the spaces surrounding fighting games. It is important to understand exactly how Black Americans may engage with fighting games; how gamers and, to a certain extent, games understand racial identity; and how race factors into constructing a competitive space based on a meritocracy.”

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