How the Black Girl Gamers Community Became a Lifeline | WIRED

Jay-Ann Lopez knew she could do better. She was in college, and two of her friends were racking up views on YouTube with a gaming channel that was offensive at worst, mediocre at best. They used African American Vernacular English for cool points, made jokes that turned femininity into a punchline, and generally just churned out one clichéd bit after another. Watching them gain notoriety was disheartening. Lopez decided it was time to start a channel of her own. What she created evolved into a platform connecting Black women gamers all over the world.Born and raised in London, Lopez started playing video games when she was just 6 years old, after receiving her very first console, a Nintendo, from her uncle. She was hooked, but—as with movies and TV—she rarely saw herself represented. “On screen, I hardly ever saw Black characters. When I did, they were there for comedic relief. They were the macho Black man or the Black woman with an attitude problem, the sassy Black woman trope,” she recalls. “Growing up with the absence of [Black characters] in games I liked to play kind of left me feeling like gaming wasn’t for me.” Lopez tried to find a…
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