The Weird Saga of the Gaming Conference Hosting Steve Bannon

The International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, a relatively niche academic symposium in its 15th year, is embroiled in a white-hot controversy over its keynote speaker: Steve Bannon, the former White House Chief Strategist and founding member of the right-wing publisher Breitbart News. According to the conference organizer, Bannon—who has no academic background in computer science or interactive design but whose policy ideas have been embraced by white nationalists—will give a speech about how he believes “economic nationalism” will allow for a higher number of minorities to get jobs in sectors like computer science and gaming. The conference, also known as ACE, is scheduled to take place at the University of Montana in December.

Since Bannon was added to the conference’s roster last week, academics, scholarly associations, and university departments around the world have called for boycotting the conference, including the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University, the Canadian Game Studies Association, and the Australian Digital Games Research Association.

“Nothing of what Bannon can say represents the ACE community, or the games research community at large. His is a marginal discourse that should stay where it is, marginalized. And that’s why we ask our community to #boycottACE,” Miguel Angel Sicart, a games, art and interactive design researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen, told WIRED in an email. Bannon did not immediately return a request for comment.

Another keynote speaker, Peter Gray, also dropped out of the conference. “I have appeared, happily, on the same stage with libertarians and others with whom I disagree on many issues,” Gray, a retired Boston College psychology professor and author who studies children’s play, told WIRED in an email. “But Bannon's alt-right brand is personally odious to me and, more importantly, by association would work against my credibility and that of the causes to which I am passionately devoted.”

"Nothing of what Bannon can say represents the ACE community, or the games research community at large."

Miguel Angel Sicart, IT University of Copenhagen

While he was in the White House, Bannon reportedly helped craft a number of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, including the 2017 so-called Muslim ban. Breitbart, where Bannon was executive chairman, also played an instrumental role in GamerGate, the years-long harassment campaign against progressive figures in tech journalism and videogames. People identifying as GamerGate supporters often railed against the inclusion of more women in the games industry. “It’s stunning to me that this very wide conference would so openly take a political stance on something that seems to be fighting a huge wave of the future—which is female and non-male voices in technology,” says Carolyn Saund, a PhD student at the University of Glasgow who studies social robotics.

ACE is run by Adrian David Cheok, the director of an independent research lab called the Imagineering Institute in Malaysia and a professor at City, University of London. Cheok says he chose to invite Bannon to speak after seeing his talk on YouTube at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Summit last year, which had similar economic nationalism and anti-immigration themes. As a number of researchers pointed out, ACE is not a political or even an industry conference—it’s a scholarly venue meant to provide a place for academics to share their work.

“For a conference like this, the keynote is either a leading academic researcher, or someone from industry who does relevant work,” says Katharine Neil, a French game developer who holds a doctorate in computer science games research. “This is like inviting Ed Sheeran to keynote a microbiology conference. It's unfathomable.”