Revolutionizing Games: Glow Up Games' Quest to Bring Black Stories and Hip-Hop Culture to the Forefront

As a pioneering all-women-of-color game development company, Glow Up Games has secured over $1.5 million in funding, a milestone achieved by only a handful of similar companies. At the DICE 2024 conference, co-founder Dr. Mitu Khandaker reflected on the studio's five-year journey, emphasizing the importance of learning and growth in game development and creative vision. Khandaker noted that the lack of diversity and representation in the gaming industry was a driving force behind the creation of Glow Up Games. The company's mission is to tell its own stories, create the kind of representation its founders want to see in games, and bring about change not only on the screen but also behind the scenes. The love for games, the desire to be seen, and the passion for underrepresented cultures are the core values that guide Glow Up Games. One of the unique challenges the studio faced was developing a rap mechanic for Insecure: The Come Up Game, based on the popular HBO show. To tackle this challenge, the team collaborated with Dr. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, also known as Sammus, who served as the chief rap officer. Despite the progress made, the development team encountered another obstacle: replicating the nuances of rap and capturing the voice of various artists. The use of AI-generated content was explored, but it proved to be limited in recognizing and understanding the complexities of rap. Co-founder Latoya Peterson explained that rap-based games are scarce, with only a few releases over the years, and that hip-hop is often misunderstood by investors as a niche genre. Peterson emphasized the importance of showcasing the cultural impact and uniqueness of hip-hop, citing the success of the HBO show Insecure and its lead actress, Issa Rae. The development team worked on various prototypes, creating large datasets to improve the game's ability to predict nuance and language from player choices. However, AI development tools still struggled to recognize and comprehend the complexities of rap, particularly African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The founders, with their backgrounds in AI and machine learning, were aware of these limitations. While resources like ChatGPT were helpful, they were limited in understanding the nuances of AAVE. The studio acknowledged the commodification of hip-hop culture and its artists across entertainment mediums and aimed to approach game design with a focus on marginalized gamers, incorporating a black feminist disability framework and hip-hop feminist sensibility.