Jermaine Anthony Richards is a critical scholar of computational, digital, and interactive media (video games, virtual worlds, and immersive experiences) and the systems and networks of institutions and stakeholders that shape power and economic dynamics around them.

Richards is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, with a dual affiliation at the School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media & Games Division. His dissertation — advised by Robeson Taj Frazier (chair), Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Henry Jenkins, Cristina Mejia Visperas, and TreaAndrea M. Russworm — examines the "social impact games" industry.

He holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc, Global Media) and USC (MA, Global Communication; MA, Communication), supported by the Advertising Club of New York Presidential Scholarship and the LSE–USC Annenberg Global Media Research Scholarship, and earned his BS in communications technology with studio art from York College at The City University of New York.

Richards is Senior Producer and Research Manager at the Radical Play Lab, USC School of Cinematic Arts, led by TreaAndrea M. Russworm, where he executive produces interactive media work across the BFA and MS programs, leads research design for lab studies, and co-manages a student–industry pipeline with the Los Angeles games industry. He entered the advertising industry in 2008, as a ninth grader, through New York City's specialized advertising high school and its Interpublic Group partnership, and later produced games, interactive, and branded entertainment at Wieden+Kennedy — where he led production and designed the interface and experience for Momo Pixel's Hair Nah (credited as Ritchie Richards), a game about the politics of uninvited touch. Hair Nah has been shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, exhibited in the inaugural exhibition of the MassArt Art Museum, and accessioned into the permanent collection of The Strong National Museum of Play. Featured in Vogue and The New York Times and cited widely across the humanities and social sciences, the game circulated amid the national conversation on hair discrimination that produced the CROWN Act, and is taught in university courses including at MIT and the University of Chicago.

As a policy researcher, Richards was a DIGI Fellow at New America, where he led a research project on digital-transformation research for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. He writes publicly on the media, advertising, and technology industries and on critical games and simulation; his work has appeared in Advertising Age, The Opinion Pages, and Fair Observer.