Growing up in Harlem, the promise of an education is an Olympic triathlon event littered and loitered with various spectators in the form of educational accreditation policies, impossible stages/ grade levels in the form of standardized exams, and historical racist hurdles in the fabric of the curriculum that prevent many from accessing education in traditional means --- only to drown during the multi-kilometer swim. No wonder kilometer is pronounced "kill-o-meter" to mark the ways in which schooling commits, in the words of activist-scholar Bettina Love, "spirit-murder" to students in the name of education. It is this dominant educational "survival" complex that stands in the way.

In fact, it is the "traditional" education that serves to remove educational opportunity from many in our communities. Thus, we turn to videogames as a way to imagine and engage in conversations on alternative possibilities whether fighting the final boss with the legendary armor or applying to scholarships to avoid the perils of student debt. MosDef said it best in his song "Mathematics:"

"Young bloods can't spell but they could rock you at PlayStation"

However, Education is too a game. It is not only a CD that one can insert into a PlayStation; rather, it is a set of colonial knowledges inserted into people and communities. There is no multiplayer mode in this singular dominant education game with the controls of profit and power that dictate what may be considered possible for the people in my community, where a family needs to literally win a lottery – yet another game – to enter new charter schools of educational opportunity. We have seen systemic forces of the multiple forms of racism and antiblackness "play games" in our communities.

Current dominant education is like a strict choregraphed dance (students raises hands, walk in single file, take exams, memorize, and repeat to next level). These dominant educational choreographies stand in the way of imagining liberatory education. The current education reality does not come from the Henry Ford quote "You can have any color car as long as it’s Black;" rather our remix " You can only have freedom as long as you are in prison."

Our central question for this education project on pixelated videogames as a site of advocacy and mobilization arises from the remix

***In what ways can we (continue to) question and refuse education's "choregraphed apparatuses of coloniality, its methodologies, its origin stories" (ife, 2021) via pixelated videogames?

***Where are some examples of pixelated videogames that critically engaged in both refusal and critical conversations on societal structures, while worldmaking?

***In what ways can we curate a community of independent videogame developers reflecting on education and collectively imaging the possibilities not confined to educational domination?

Recognizing tangible outcomes of the "invisible" hand of racial capitalism, we created "Playing ideas" to encourage reflection and conversation on our lived experiences with education via pixelated videogames stories.