As we hit ISSUE FOUR I must say that I am having a ball editing each edition of THE GAME, no lie. Where else can I get an assorted group of human beings to riff on what the word game means to them? Or the game of life? Where else can I get pieces about being Chicano; or an ancient Japanese/Chinese game Americans readily play not realizing its journey to these shores; or the feminist/womanist origins of Centipedes; or a father who is also a son writing tenderly about what video games have meant to his life as a man, as the son of a dad who did not understand gaming back in the day? This is the magic of the games people play, or think of playing. And then there is my fellow New Jersey native, comedian and actor Bill Bellamy, spitting truth for our Leaderboard section about the big meanings of game. Read on, readers, read some more, and share. This is THE GAME. It is yours, and it is us.

Kevin Powell, The Game Editorial Director, is a GRAMMY-nominated poet, humanitarian, author of 16 books, filmmaker, and writer of forthcoming biography of Tupac Shakur.

Nightfall is upon us, and as is our usual night time custom, my son regales me with the lore of his newest game and his newest conquests within. I valiantly fight the inevitable drift into sleep, knowing fully how important this moment is. This is the time when he gets to share his meaningful influences and insights from his day with me, in the informed hopes that I’ll meet his excitement with that of my own. He knows that I too was once a video game enthusiast, part of the generation that lived through and championed the birth and rise of the gaming industry.

In 1988, I was the kid with the mullet, taking the grown-up’s quarters playing Street Fighter at Marion’s Pizza. I remember clearly being the best video game player of my friends, school and immediate foreseeable universe. In that era, however, the cultural expanse of gaming barely eclipsed the living room. “No one is gonna pay you to play video games,” proclaimed my parents. Alas, they were just too far separated from it, and couldn’t see video games as any more than a distraction and potential harm. In their most elaborate visions, they could never anticipate a time when there are multiple billion dollar verticals within gaming including Esports, YouTube and other non-participant viewership and fanship engines.

Gaming has evolved into an astonishing cultural delivery mechanism. My son and his friends have never seen Squid Games, Family Guy, or any clips of Shaq playing basketball.

However, they are fully aware (and fans ) of these series and celebrities, because they are featured as characters you can “play as” in games like Fortnite and Roblox.

Gaming and the discussion around it has become the primary entry point for children into pop culture.

A game of any kind, at its most basic level, has a built-in layer of safety and equality via the construct of rules: the structure of righteousness.

You can be led, challenged, grow, and achieve expertise. This makes a game a natural, safe place for a child to connect with his parents.

My father and I used to have these same conversations at night about sports. We’d talk endlessly about players, stats, reviewing box scores, and playing “All-Star Baseball”—an antique spinner-based game that simulates at bats. I can viscerally remember the feeling of the flicking metal spinner, the grinding sound it made and the smell and texture of the thin paper player discs. My father and I were cohorts in wonder and fantasy, as we shared a love for the games themselves, albeit games he introduced to me.

On this night though, my son successfully flipped the structure around games I had with my father. In a lull in the half-awake conversation, he says, “Dad, can I have $15 dollars for my birthday?” Surprised at the modest amount, I said, “Sure, buddy; what would you spend it on?”

 “I want to buy Hollow Night (his game of the moment ) for you, so you can play,” he replied. Completely blown away by his selflessness, I asked, “Do you think I’d like it?”

He became positively alight, and replied effusively, “Oh yes, and I’m so excited to coach you and teach you how to be good at it!”

The rush of emotion I felt immediately transported me back to the times I would try to share my gaming achievements with my father and I realized why it hurt so much that he didn’t understand. I wanted him to see that I was indeed good at something on my own, that I was worthy of being taken seriously. With my parents recently divorcing, I desperately needed that validation from my father, as I was subconsciously developing an internal blame and self-hatred that would inform the next 37 years of my life. Sure, we connected via sports, and it was wonderful. I now realize however, that with video games, I wanted to be the one introducing my thing to my hero, in the hopes he would validate my interests, and me as my own individual with my own significance and importance. 

“Look dad, I’m a hero too.”

So as tired as I am in this moment, and as impossible as it seems to make time as a 47-year old with a full-time job to play video games, my answer is, “Absolutely, I can’t wait!”

My son is already my hero, but he will know intrinsically that in my eyes, he is valid, worthy and enough. I will now press start, and let him help me level up.

Justin Herman is a 27-year design/creative storyteller and team leader, husband, son and father. He sees creativity as a spiritual function and an act of service, constantly seeking new methods and opportunities to use creative formats to help others.

I remember coming up during the 1990s. I was a Chilean American kid that worked with student activists at the University of California Berkeley and at the University of California San Diego in the student organizations, MEChA and Raza Recruitment and Retention. Through these experiences, and the experiences growing up in the South Bay of San Diego, I came to identify as Chicano. 

I even helped found the Chicano poetry group, The Taco Shop Poets. As artists, we wrote and performed pieces that reflected the turbulent 1990s in California. From Proposition 187, which criminalized undocumented folks, to Prop 209, which eliminated Affirmative Action, to Prop 227, which removed Bilingual Education in public schools, we felt and learned from our mentors in the Chicano Movement. 

It was interesting and shocking to hear that our colleagues across the border in Mexico came to make fun and critique our identifying with Chicanos. I remember one renowned Tijuana author publishing in a glossy magazine a piece called "What's up with lo Chicano!"

These attitudes were echoed on the streets where many of the first-generation parents would warn their children about "the Chicanos" in schools. Shoot, as a board trustee, I walked precincts in the South Bay where Mexicano entrepreneurs disdainfully looked at the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s. They often verbally put down Chicanos and Chicano identity as not "real" enough. 

This while the Chicanos from the 1960s to the 1990s would warn our communities that the anti-immigrant sentiments of Prop 187—and an even older time periods like “Operation Wetback”—were still there.

Fast forward to today. Guess who is protecting immigrants being disappeared by ICE? Chicanos. Chicano groups like Union Del Barrio and other "veteranos/as" of the Chicano Movement, are fighting through community patrols, civic response, and policy advocacy to challenge and brunt the force of President Trump's raids and goons. 

For the first time in a long while, folks are seeing the importance of Chicano identity. I think youth are starting to connect with it again, as they are on the front lines and they are fighting.

As a Chileno Chicano, I know that this work is the real work. The unseen and important job of Chicano activists. I just hope our gente across the border see and understand it and never forget it. 

Adrián Arancibia is a professor, author, and critic from San Diego, California. He has published four collections of poetry and is active in his community.  

Paper, Scissor, Rock is a hand game that is universal. You can travel pretty much anywhere in the world and people know how to play it.  You don’t need cards or objects or a field. It’s so easy. All you need is your hands. There’s also not a lot of rules, skills or score keeping involved. While it doesn’t take physical strength, it can entail a little instinctual strategy to anticipate the other person’s choice.  But mostly winning is just plain luck.  

As a Japanese American kid we shouted: “jan ken po! ai kona sho!” as we made the hand gestures. The words were part of the game.  Hawaiians play a faster, more complicated version with more lyrics.  We accepted the game as part of our Japanese culture. No one told us they started playing it in China in 206 BC?!  It was strange for me to see non-Asians play the game which first emerged in Europe in the early 1900s, then in America around the 1920s. They called it Paper, Scissor, Rock, and they didn’t say “jan ken po!”  For me, that took the song and the soul out of it.  

Jan ken po is useful in making quick decisions, solving disputes, or deciding who goes first.  As a kids game it can grow hot with excitement as energy grows and voices mount. But there was always laughter, whoever won. No one felt like a failure or carried a grudge just because you lost.  It was just fun to play.   

As a young mother raising my kid, I began seeing JAN KEN PO as a way of instilling some good values.  As a songwriter it inspired this song:

Jan ken po, ai kona sho – jan ken po -- ai kona sho (repeat)

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

it’s just a simple game you try to choose

Sometimes you up, sometimes you down

Next time you play the game…you gonna turn it all around

Now, this verse tells how to play the game, but I tried to squeeze a little teaching in it.

The rock so hard that it can break the scissors

But the scissor turn around and it can cut the paper

Now the paper seems so delicate, but don’t you underestimate

The power that the soft can get, when it wraps around      

A yoi yoi yoi, Jan ken po, ai kona sho - jan ken po—ai kona sho

Okay, here’s the kicker:

What does it matter after all, whether you big or if you small

sometimes you rise and then you fall, but the winner never takes all

You got nothing to lose and everything to gain

It’s all about the spirit with which you play the game

(repeat last two lines)

Jan ken po – ai kona sho…jan ken po – I kona – you kona – we kona show!

Okay, that’s my little reggae teaching song. Don’t you think it would be a better world if we played this game of life like JAN KEN PO?

Nobuko Miyamoto is a songwriter, movement and theater artist whose recent memoir is Not Yo’ Butterfly (University of California Press).

In the early 1980s, the arcade was a place of exclusion, sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken. Girls were largely nudged to the sidelines, or chose to hover over boys’ shoulders as they played, which is its own kind of sidelining. At a certain point I couldn’t summon the confidence to play. Why squander babysitting money to bankroll my own humiliation? 

But Centipede.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Centipede was co-created by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg for Atari in 1981. It was designed to appeal to a broader audience, specifically targeting a female demographic. Bailey was one of the few female game programmers and software engineers in the industry at the time, and the only woman in Atari's coin-op division. 

Centipede was a tremendous success. It’s appeal was undeniable. It wasn’t just a game; it was a masterpiece of intentional design. It was pixelated impressionism, pop art that rejected the militaristic drabness of the era for vibrant magentas, violets, and greens, radiant against a black canvas. It gave me permission to play. 

At first, the centipede’s descent was beautiful and hypnotic, but as the game rolled on, it became a relentless looping force. It attacked with fury, splitting itself into fast angry little pieces that were impossible to avoid. But this game introduced a new secret weapon to still the chaos: the trackball. Unlike the rigid, limiting joystick, the trackball invited an intuitive knowing. It was smooth, sweeping, unlimited motion that promised something more. As the trackball spun under my palm, I felt a shift. Mastering the game came easily to me, my scores ticking higher and higher. I was navigating between the molecules. There was only flow and freedom. 

Once my skill became common knowledge, the boys from my middle school made their descent. They either feigned indifference or outright mocked me while I played (a sadly familiar dynamic at the time). They challenged me repeatedly, and repeatedly, they lost. Their subsequent denouncement of the game as “lame“ only served to prove what I already knew: I could rock Centipede like nobody else.

My initials continued to hover at the top of the leaderboard, unbudging but for an occasional upset. I fed Centipede my quarters week after week, continuing to hone my skill. It was beautiful. I was the girl in the corner of the room playing a long game, unapologetically claiming my space. This was my quiet victory, my gleeful act of resistance. It was my secret weapon. My smiling fuck you. 

Tracy MacDonald is an Emmy and Gold Telly award-winning public television producer and journalist, most recently serving as the Executive Producer of Arts and Culture at Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s radio.