For the first time ever, the NAACP Image Awards are getting into gaming.
The 57th NAACP Image Awards kick off a two-day stream of its virtual awards portion Monday at 8 p.m. on Youtube. Among the multiple digital content creator categories that will be announced out of the stream is Outstanding Digital Content Creator – Gaming/Tech, an honor that will go to one of five nominees: Berlin Edmond Jr., Cory Kenshin, Jay-Ann Lopez, Khleo Thomas or Gerard Williams, better known to fans as HipHopGamer.
“So I personally spoke with Derek Johnson, the president of the NAACP Image Awards, and he said it clear as day,” Williams told Variety ahead of Monday’s awards show livestream. “He said, yo, look, let me tell you right now, we wanted to open up this category — because he realizes that there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of minorities, there’s a lot of Black people, period, that’s also in this area that we need to reach out to, that we need to talk to. And the only way that’s going to happen is we got to meet them where they are. So it was ideal to open up this category for the 57th NAACP Image Award. So that’s one of the reasons why they opened it, and also they understand the power of gaming and tech, AI, where everything is going. They need to be a part of that conversation as well, so they can have a lot of opportunity in the space, too.”
Williams first became interested in gaming when his late grandmother, Margaret Williams, introduced him to the hobby when he was a small child growing up in Brooklyn. Today, he’s known for his gaming journalism and weekly syndicated show with Hot97, as well as his community outreach, including Playmakers, a partnership with Chase Bank to expand financial literacy through gaming in New York City schools, and a Denzel Washington-backed gaming-focused rehabilitation program for inmates at Rikers Island.
Williams recently debuted as a character in the “Mutant Football League 2” video game, featuring his likeness, music and his own team, which includes some of the students and released inmates he has worked with.
“Being nominated for the first time ever that this category even exists — just this moment alone, it makes me just go right back to grandma when I was four years old,” Williams said. “That kid spirit just comes right out saying it was an honor. I was actually in a hotel in Vegas for something else and I got the email. I was jumping on the bed. It was crazy. It was very overwhelming.”
Up next, Williams will be the host for the Games Beat Summit at the GDC Festival of Gaming in March in San Francisco, and looking further ahead, his longterm aspirations include landing a Men’s Health and becoming a gaming anchor on “Good Morning America.”
Win or lose — though Williams is very clear he would love to win — at the NAACP Image Awards, Williams is so grateful the gaming category exists at all and sees it as a step toward more acknowledgement of the Black community’s presence in the gaming industry.
Williams recalls attending his first E3 (a now-ended but formerly impactful gaming convention) back in 2008, and the poor reception he received from some in the predominantly-white gaming journalism community, despite his self-proclaimed exuberant and friendly attitude.
“I got this big championship belt on me. I’m from East New York, Brooklyn, and I don’t code switch, meaning that I’m me wherever I go. This is what you get, but I know my stuff,” Williams said. “The way it was 15-20 years ago, oh my gosh, listen — it was bad. One of the reasons why I learned business so much so fast within the gaming industry is because I was met with racism, too. It’s crazy. But one thing about me, I don’t complain, I create. Period. Because you can get caught up in all of that racist stuff and be all mad, and then at the end of the day, you can only control what you can control. And if you allow the negativity to control your energy, then you become what you hate.”