Becoming an assistant professor for the Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies Department at UNC Charlotte back in 2022, Wilfredo Flores has been a promising individual with an already extensive background as a rhetorical scholar and qualitative researcher, acquiring their PhD in the field at Michigan State University. However, another side of their life is something rather unexpected, gaming, which has become Dr. Flores’s favorite pastime activity and something people wouldn’t really expect from such a background.

 

“I remember being four years old and having a babysitter and she would bring her Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to our house and hook it up and play Tetris and Mario,” said Flores. “That got me hooked into video games. I would actually look forward to getting babysat since she would bring her system and I’d get to play it.”

 

Eventually Dr. Flores would get his own gaming system in the form of a discounted Nintendo 64 around the time the GameCube came out in 2001. This is because money was tight under foster care and certain violent games like Mortal Combat were off-limits, meaning Flores honed in his skills with the limited amount of games he had like “The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening” and “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.”

 

Eventually during high school, Flores would start making his own money, purchasing a Wii and using the internet to play with friends on games like “Halo Online” and "Kingdom of Loathing.”

 

Due to being lonely living in the middle of west Texas, Flores would find comfort in gaming once again while earning his masters and eventually PhD in the form of launching a Twitch channel under the name “Perfect Bark.” 

 

“I think as a teacher it helped me figure out how to implement technology and other practices into my classroom,” said Dr. Flores. “When Covid hit, it was basically just me streaming except playing Freshman Comp.”

 

“It shows that he’s in touch with the times. I wouldn’t want to be taught about digital informational literacy by someone who’s out of touch with social media,” said Will Eason, an alumni to UNC Charlottes' WRDS department and a past student to Dr. Flores. “I’ve created a few websites for him.”

 

“I wish people thought about gaming as not just a past-time for nerdy dudes who can’t get a date or something, the incel image, and see it as a dynamic community forming mechanism that it is now,” said Dr. Flores. “It’s a serious medium for talking about things that are happening in our world but it’s fiction and it’s fun. I don’t see why the two can’t be true.”