About the ‘White Play’ research project
White Play is a FWF-funded Hertha Firnberg research project which looks at white norms in European video game culture. As part of our everyday life, games also have a social responsibility to address structural problems such as racism and xenophobia. The role of white norms in game development and game culture is still strongly underrepresented in the European research context.
The White Play project addresses this issue by investigating discourses and unconscious biases around whiteness in European game development. This is intended to deepen our understanding of the relation between games, structural racism and white dominance. The goal is to develop critical strategies for challenging these forms of societal oppression. White Play is a politically motivated research project and is carried out as a cooperation with activist and research partners, including Anti-Racist Forum Finland.
The research covers four topics, (1) the white bias in European game theories, (2) the representation of white identity in European video games, (3) racial self-narratives of European video game developers and (4) strategies for confronting white dominance in the European game sector.
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Sabine Harrer
Dr. Sabine Harrer (they/them) is the Principal Investigator of the Hertha-Firnberg White Play project, affiliated with the University of Vienna Austria. Sabine is also a senior lecturer at the Game Design Department, Uppsala University, Sweden. Previously, they have been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, University of Tampere (FI), and have taught games and culture at BTK Berlin and ITU Copenhagen.
Their research focuses on critical game studies, HCI, and creation-based knowledge making. They are the author of Games and Bereavement (transcript 2018), and a co-designer of the environmental satire board game Kyoto (2020).
