Jonaya Kemper

Last updated
Jonaya Kemper
Occupation(s)Game designer/writer and academic
Employer(s) University of California, Santa Cruz, Carnegie Mellon University
Known for LARP theory of emancipatory bleed
Notable work Thirsty Sword Lesbians co-writer
Awards Nebula Award, ENNIE Awards

Jonaya Kemper is an American game design academic and game writer/designer. Kemper's work includes LARP, tabletop role-playing games, and computer games. Kemper coined the term and developed the theory of "emancipatory bleed." [1]

Contents

Academic work in games

Kemper developed the theory of emancipatory bleed in live-action games [2] [3] [4] as a way of analyzing how players with marginalized identities can achieve political liberation through embodying imaginary characters. [5] [6] Emancipatory bleed includes Kemper's concept of "navigational play." Kim Eggleston for Vox Media summarized navigational play as, "using games to imagine yourself differently, in a way that might feel safer than in your real life." [7] Kemper also developed guidelines to design games for players with intersectional identities [8] and an auto-ethnographic process for LARP research and documentation. [9] [10]

In 2025, Kemper became Assistant Professor of Performance, Play & Design and Creative Technologies at UC Santa Cruz. [11] As Game Design Lead in Carnegie Mellon's computer science department's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, [12] [13] Kemper conducted professional research on human-robot interactions in educational games [14] and racial and gender biases in the design of children's games. [15]

Game writing and design

Kemper co-wrote Thirsty Sword Lesbians (Evil Hat Productions), winning a Nebula Award for Best Game Writing [16] [17] and ENNIE Awards for "Best Game" and "Product of the Year." [18] Kemper wrote a game based on Bram Stoker's Dracula novel called Feeding Lucy in the LARP anthology Honey & Hot Wax (Pelgrane Press). [19] Kemper wrote Tales from the Corner Coven, a short tabletop role-playing game about bodega cats in Brooklyn, for Simon & Schuster's The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book. [20] Kelly Knox for Nerdist called Tales from the Corner Coven "bewitching" and said, "We want to play right meow." [21]

Kemper also wrote the adventure "The Little Mx. Scare-All Pageant" for Visigoths vs. Mall Goths by Lucian Kahn and contributed writing to 7th Sea . [22]

References

  1. ↑ Kemper, Jonaya (2018). “Playing to Create Ourselves: Exploring Larp and Visual Autoethnographic Practice as a Tool of Self Liberation for Marginalized Identities.” Master’s Thesis. New York University.
  2. ↑ Kemper, Jonaya. (2017): "The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity Documentation." NordicLarp.org June 21, 2017. Accessed April 9, 2021.
  3. ↑ Kemper, Jonaya. (2020): Wyrding the Self. In Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen, Jukka Särkijärvi, Anne Serup Grove, Pauliina Männistö, & Mia Makkonen (eds.). What Do We Do When We Play? Helsinki; Solmukohta 2020. Accessed April 9, 2021.
  4. ↑ Steele, Samara Hayley (2021). "'To Larp, or Not to Larp?' Must Embodiment and Code Deployment Reinforce Systemic Injustice across Larp Platforms?". ELMCIP. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  5. ↑ Hollander, Aaron T. (2021). "Blessed Are the Legend-Makers: Experimentation as Edification in Dungeons & Dragons" . Political Theology. 22 (4): 316–331. doi:10.1080/1462317X.2021.1890933. S2CID   233956866.
  6. ↑ Toft, Ida; Harrer, Sabine (2020). "Design Bleed: A Standpoint Methodology for Game Design" (PDF). Proceedings of DiGRA 2020: 1–18.
  7. ↑ Eggleston, Kim (2023-04-06). "What the new D&D movie gets — and misses — about the game". Vox. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
  8. ↑ Koljonen, Johanna; Stenros, Jaakko; Grove, Anne Serup; Skonsfjell, Aina D.; Nilsen, Elin, eds. (2019). LARP Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences (PDF). Kobenhaven, Denmark: Bifrost. ISBN   978-87-971140-0-1.
  9. ↑ Cox, Jason (December 2018). "Documenting LARP as an Art of Experience". International Journal of Role Playing (9): 24–30. doi: 10.33063/ijrp.vi9.267 .
  10. ↑ Kemper, Jonaya. 2018. “More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table.” Nordic Larp. https://nordiclarp.org/ 2018/02/07/more-than-a-seat-at-the-feasting-table/
  11. ↑ "Arts Division Welcomes New Faculty Members – Arts Division". arts.ucsc.edu. Retrieved 2025-11-01.
  12. ↑ "Jonaya Kemper". Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Department. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  13. ↑ "Phipps hosts virtual symposium". The Almanac. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
  14. ↑ Higashi, Ross; Harpstead, Erik; Solyst, Jaemarie; Kemper, Jonaya; Odili Uchidiuno, Judith; Hammer, Jessica (2021). "The Design of Co-Robotic Games for Computer Science Education". Extended Abstracts of the 2021 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. pp. 111–116. doi:10.1145/3450337.3483472. ISBN   9781450383561. S2CID   238992655.
  15. ↑ Odili Uchidiuno, Judith; Solyst, Jaemarie; Kemper, Jonaya; Harpstead, Erik; Higashi, Ross; Hammer, Jessica (2021). "Negotiating Systemic Racial and Gender Bias as a Minoritized Adult Design Researcher". Extended Abstracts of the 2021 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. pp. 203–208. doi:10.1145/3450337.3483479. ISBN   9781450383561. S2CID   238992422.
  16. ↑ Hoffer, Christian (23 May 2022). "Thirsty Sword Lesbians Wins Nebula Award for Best Game Writing". Comicbook. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  17. ↑ Carter, Chase (2022-05-23). "Sapphic and sharp tabletop RPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians wins Nebula Award for best game writing". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
  18. ↑ Hall, Charlie (8 August 2022). "Queer creators win big at Gen Con's Ennie awards for 2022". Polygon .
  19. ↑ "Honey & Hot Wax". Pelgrane Press Ltd. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
  20. ↑ d'Amato, James (2020-12-08). The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   978-1-5072-1286-8.
  21. ↑ "Outstanding One-Page RPGs You Can Play in a Single Night". Nerdist. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
  22. ↑ Black Game Studies: An Introduction to the Games, Game Makers and Scholarship of the African Diaspora. Edited by Lindsay Grace. Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press, 2021. pp. 48
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