Although I have been playing video games for almost 29 years, I spent a lot of time watching others play games. Before YouTube, I would spend hours watching my grandpa playing Super Mario 64 and GoldenEye 007. I would also watch as my mom played games like Silent Hill while I looked up hints. Now that YouTube is available, I don’t have to wait until my family has free time to play games for me. My go-to gamer is theRadBrad, but in my quest for black women run media, I have found some black girl gamers who I think we should all know. Here they are below, in no particular order:
Not only does GlitchxCity play games like Pokemon and Overwatch, but she also remixes the game music and it is truly wonderful. If you want to watch her play live, go to her Twitch Stream.
If you’ve been trying to find a retro game player, then you should check out Rabbit Plays Games. Some of her videos are walkthroughs of games she has played before, but most are blind. Currently she is playing Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth, but her other playthroughs include Whomp ‘Em and Ghost House.
If you’re a fan of The Sims like I am and need more videos of Sims looks, then you should check out NotBreeBree. She has videos for Create a Sim and Sim Lookbooks. She also has gameplay for Seasons 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead and Michonne.
If you want a grab bag of videos, then you should check out The Phoenix Queen. What I like about the channel is the variety of videos she has available. She has vlogs, horror games, and livestreams.
Storymode Bae has one of my favorite games on her channel which made me like her instantly. If you have not played or watched gameplay of LA Noire DO IT NOW. Her channel is fairly new (June of 2017) and she uploads a new video every week. She has South Park, Resident Evil 7, and Until Dawn to name a few.
TayciBear
I couldn’t create a list of Black Girl Gamers on YouTube without adding yours truly. My channel is at the first stage of infancy with two videos, but I expect to add a new video at least twice a month. Right now I am playing through Day of the Tentacle Remastered and Assassin’s Creed Origins and I plan on recording my eldest son and I playing Left 4 Dead 2.
Thoughts
As I searched for more black girl gamers to add to the list, I noticed something that really comes as no surprise. The place I got the most information from was the reddit group r/blackgirlgamers. When I narrowed down the search even more to Mobile Games and became even more frustrated with the lack of results. I found the article The 19 Most Subscribed Female YouTube Gamers and I got my hopes up, but unfortunately they were let down. Zero of the women included on the list were black women (If I am wrong as some did not show their face please, please let me know) and that is a disgrace.
It shouldn’t take doing college level research to find black women who play video and mobile games and there is no excuse for the black women I put in this article or for those I missed to not have a high number of followers.
If we truly want better representation within the YouTube gaming community, those that can must demand more from the powers that be. Progress is gaining traction with other areas of our fight (like in the area of TV and movie representation), but areas such as gaming are often ignored. Whether it's from those fighting for equality not understanding the gaming community or if it's just not brought up, but change needs to happen.
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