About Me

Matthew E. Perks is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo in the department of Sociology & Legal Studies. He is a research assistant affiliated with SSHRC-funded project Indie Interfaces.

His research focuses on the socio-economics of the video game industry and how these inform and alter the design decisions and identities of video game developers. His interests surround community management & moderation, platform capitalism, and labour within the video game industry. In his doctoral work, he focuses on the increasingly embedded nature of community management in game development and how this impacts media creation and developer identity.

Outisde of his main dissertation work, Matthew is currently interviewing video game developers on projects about gender diversity policies in federal arts funding and cultural intermediary work in the creative and cultural industries.

His previous studies during his Master’s degree focused on data and gamification of pro-environmental behaviours in the Canadian population, utilizing aggregate population-level data across Canada. Matthew previously worked for the Public Health Agency of Canada where he aided in the Health Inequality Reporting Initative with the Social Determinants and Science Integration Directorate.

• Perks, M. Cease and Desist, Citizens of Azeroth: Vanilla WoW Servers and Copyright Law.

• Perks, M. Regulating In-Game Monetization: The Implications of Regulatory Pluralism on Games Production.

• Perks, M. and Parker, F., “Balancing Emotional Labor, Autonomy, and Integration in the Cultural Intermediation of Indie Games,” Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, September 2019.

• Perks, M. and Parker, F., “Are game streamers cultural intermediaries?: Perceptions from independent game developers,” Canadian Sociological Association (CSA-SCS) Conference, June 2019.

• Perks, M., “Regulation in Modern Virtual Economies: Regulatory Pluralism and Capitalism in Monetization,” Canadian Game Studies Association Annual Conference, June 2019.

• Perks, M. and Whitson, J., “Counting, Categorizing, and Representing: Gender Diversity Initiatives in Canadian Game Industry Funding,” ReFiG 4.0: Places and Spaces, October 2018

• Perks, M. and Whitson, J., “Refuse, Remediate, REFIGure: Making Games Sustainable for Women: Indie Interfaces,” Digital Games Research Association Conference, July 2018.

• Perks, M., “The Modern-Day Patch Note: Technical Communication to the Configuration of Player Communities,” Digital Games Research Association Conference, July 2018.

• Perks, M., “The Role of Criticism in Shifting Monetization of Video Games,” Canadian Game Studies Association Annual Conference, May 2018.

• Perks, M., “Gambling in Modern Virtual Economies, Unknowable, Unregulated, Unaccountable,” Canadian Game Studies Association Annual Conference, June 2017.

• 📰 Where is the “Authentic” LGBTQ Content in Games? on Fanbyte (May 8th, 2019)

• 📰 Creating and Queering Space with Player Housing on First Person Scholar (April 24th, 2019)

• 🎙 I Dream of Daddies: Questioning the Queer Logic of Dream Daddy on First Person Podcast (March 2nd, 2018)

• 📰 Why a conversation around loot box regulation, responsibility, and harm needs to be happening on Medium.com (October 17th, 2017)

• 📰 Limited Edition Loot Boxes: Problematic Gambling and Monetization on Medium.com (October 11th, 2016)