Preliminary Annotated Bibliography Entries – Understand. Think. Then write.

PAB #8: Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Games

Gaming As Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games

Hendricks, Sean Q. “Incorporative Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Gaming” in Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games (eds. J. Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks and W. Keith Winkler). (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Inc, 2003).

While the majority of my articles thus far have focused on computer-based games, the bulk of my own gaming experience is actually with other forms of gaming – namely tabletop roleplaying games and live roleplaying games. While video games rely heavily on the use of graphics and sound created as part of the game’s programming to establish the atmosphere, tone, and environment, a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) is played, as the name indicates, by a group of players sitting around a table. One of the group members is the Game Master (or GM, sometimes also referred to as Dungeon Master or Storyteller), while the others are players. Random number generation to determine success or failure at combat and other challenges are determined typically by dice, but the bulk of the work to create the game’s world, all communication among characters, as well as communication between players and game master to say what actions the characters are taking, are accomplished through

Fairclough (1992)'s model of discourse analysis — Fairclough (1992)’s model of discourse analysis

speaking and listening. As a result of this, TTRPGs are particularly well suited to using critical discourse analysis (CDA) techniques to better understand the shared world – and therefore consensus – building among the players.

In Sean Hendricks’ “Incorporative Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Gaming,” he uses critical discourse analysis, but also post-structuralist theory to examine the way the participants work collaboratively to create a narrative. While video games, including massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) are frequently competitive, setting player against player (PvP) as well as player against the environment (PvE), tabletop games are typically primarily played with a team of player characters going up against obstacles and foes created by the game master. Hendricks explains that post-structuralist analysis and CDA are predicated on the assumption that “elements of the social space, such as organizations, institutions, social categories, concepts, identities and relationships are determined by language use” and that “individual selves and identities are constantly restructured and repositioned through discourse” (40). As such, TTRPGs and the accompanying books that serve as source material are, perhaps, even more fertile ground for exploration from an English Studies perspective than are video games, given that the world building is collaborative among a group of people, and is created entirely through language, rather than computer graphics.

To put TTRPGs into the contexts I have previously explored in game theory, there is an undeniable emphasis on story, and game mechanics serve purely as a means of conflict resolution when character abilities that involve interaction with obstacles or antagonists arise. There is no game engine to govern movement, for example; the player describes the character’s actions. As such, games of this sort have ludological elements, but are often slanted very heavily toward narrative. Within that, there are games that skew further to one side or the other; Warhammer was

The Warhammer RPG grew out of a miniatures wargaming system, and battles between armies remain a major part of the roleplaying version of the game.

primarily a miniature combat wargame that eventually evolved to have a roleplaying component as well. On the other side of the spectrum are White Wolf’s aptly named Storyteller system games, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Wraith: The Oblivion, and others.

The analytical part of Hendricks’ article analyzes selections of a voice-to-text transcript of a gaming session in which he was the game master, and there were four players. He provides examples of using “discourse to create a shared culture, or set of beliefs and understandings about the fantasy frame” (43), and explores the linguistic repercussions of the way players switch between first- and third-person pronouns when describing their actions, as differentiated from and contrasted with in-character speech. Hendricks address this, stating that “the ambiguous usage of ‘me’ and ‘you’ by players during game play indicates a blending of player and character that can signal a level of extension by the player into the game world” (41).

Even the game’s mechanics and setting are learned through language, often by reading rulebooks and players’ guides which often dwarf the kind of documentation provided to players of computer games, where visual cues and the kinetic experience of interacting with a game controller of some kind allow the player to learn-by-doing, without necessarily translating their observations and actions into written or spoken language. Surprisingly, perhaps, the amount of scholarship on TTRPGs is small in comparison to what has been written about video games, although the comparative popularity of computer games, as well as the sheer economic weight of the industry compared to tabletop games is doubtless a major factor. Prior to the turn of the millennium, games were often not seen as appropriate objects of study for academics beyond the occasional social scientist. However, TTRPG gameplay may prove to be a fertile area for study for those who wish to approach computer game design from an English Studies point of view, or on its own as a way of examining the collaborative process of world building, immersion and engagement.

Further Reading:

For anyone unfamiliar with TTRPGs in general, Crash Course has an excellent 10 minute video explaining the concept, as well as some of the colorful history of the hobby.

James Wallis’s “Making Games That Make Stories” argues that in TTRPGs as well as computer games, “the essential plot and structure of the narrative is predetermined before the game begins and cannot be altered” (para. 1). First published in 2007 in Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, it is reproduced in full on electronicbookreview.com.

PAB #7: From Counter-Strike to Counter-Statement: Using Burke’s Pentad to Analyse Video Games

Bourgonjon, Jeroen et al. “From Counter-Strike to Counter-Statement: Using Burke’s Pentad as a Tool for Analysing Video Games.” Digital Creativity 22.2 (2011): 91–102. Web.

In From Counter-Strike to Counter-Statement: Using Burke’s Pentad to Analyse Video Games, Jeroen Bourgonjon et. al. use rhetorical theory, and

Burke's Dramatic Pentad: Act-Agency-Scene-Purpose-Agent — Burke’s Dramatic Pentad:
Act-Age-Scene-Purpose-Intent

specifically Burke’s concept of the pentad as a methodological tool for the analysis of video games. Rhetorica.net describes the pentad as a series of questions, stating that “Burke believed that all of life was drama (in the sense of fiction), and we may discover the motives of actors (people) by looking for their particular type of motivation in action and discourse.” From the perspective of narratology, then, this provides a useful way of looking at the reasons behind the actions people take in video games. The authors also explain that utilizing the pentad can help the researcher to understand the game from multiple perspectives, including that of the designer (author) and the player (reader).

The authors also use what Ian Bogost terms procedural rhetoric, which they define as, “based on meaning making through the selective simulation of speciﬁc rules. Games do not as much persuade players by telling them things (games as representations), but rather by confronting them with the results of their actions through the game rules” (91). Published in 2011, this shows one of the ways the field has moved past narratology and ludology into a methodology that uses game mechanics, or rules, as a way of communicating meaning, which in turn is given context through the narrative being told by the game.

Ian Bogost, researcher and author of "Persuasive Games" — Ian Bogost, researcher and author of “Persuasive Games”

What is most fascinating about this article is the way in which it applies traditional English studies methodologies and theories as a way of analyzing games. The statements made by early game researchers that games were too important to be left to scholars of other disciplines is squarely put to rest by this, as the authors utilize traditional rhetorical theory, dramatic analysis theory first applied to literature, and Bogost’s procedural rhetoric notion, which was first explained in Persuasive Games: the Expressive Power of Video Games (MIT Press, 2007), which is considered seminal in modern video game scholarship. Procedural rhetoric, as applied to this situation, addresses gameplay as a form of procedure, that can then be applied for rhetorical purposes.

I also found their recap of other existing methodologies (all aligned with the ludology side of the force) for analyzing games especially helpful, as they reference Aarseth, with whom I was already familiar, but also works by Konzack, whose approach focused on the analysis of, “hardware; program code; functionality; gameplay; meaning; referentiality; and socio-cultural aspects,” (98), as well as Maillet who suggested that the analysis of a game may include more than just gameplay, such as walkthroughs, cut scenes, and forum postings, thereby expanding the scope of games as objects of study.

Bioshock, the popular first-person shooter with overtones of Ayn Rand and George Orwell

The authors utilize Burke’s pentad as a way of seeing “ratios,” or relations between different aspects of a game – in this case, Bioshock. In their conclusion, they show how this kind of analysis can be used in education, and to connect the analysis to curricular goals.

Ultimately, this article provides an analysis model that includes both rhetorical theory and traditional literary theory to analyze gameplay and storytelling, using the tools of multiple sub-fields within English studies to better understand one of the most popular games of the last decade.

Additional Readings:

Professor Andrew Cline’s site, Rhetorica.net, defines a number of useful concepts, including “Burke’s Pentad: Dramatism.”

Bioshock is the primary focus of the article, and this wiki entry covers the basics of the game.

Ian Bogost’s website, covering his books, games, and research.

PAB Entry #6: “Game-Based Curricula, Personal Engagement, and the Modern Prometheus Design Project”

Barab, Sasha, Patrick Pettyjohn, Melissa Gresalfi, and Maria Solomou. “Game-Based Curricula, Personal Engagement, and the Modern Prometheus Design Project.” In Games, Learning, and Society: Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age, edited by Constance Steinkuehler, Kurt Squire, and Sasha Barab, Cambridge UP, 2012, pp 306-326.

In “Game-Based Curricula, Personal Engagement, and the Modern Prometheus Design Project,” authors Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, and Solomou explore the possibility of basing an entire curriculum around games. Their ideal curriculum “involves trajectories or missions that include rich storylines, multiple tasks, …and interactive objects…that require the player to make conceptually informed choices” (307). The game that they created is a single player exploration of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which the player is exploring the world of the novel, and must solve problems make both practical and ethical choices that have persistent impacts on the game world.

Key terms they establish early on include intentionality (player choices impact meaningful goals), legitimacy (methods utilized are relevant beyond the context of the game), and consequentiality (player actions have a meaningful impact on the game world). When all these elements are present, they term this kind of participation transactive engagement. This term captures an important element in any immersive experience – the notion of the transaction, which makes the player an active participant and not merely a spectator.

Intentionality is important, because without a context, goals are not meaningful; busy work is work for the sake of work, without a purpose. Legitimacy is something that is gaining widespread attention in education, because if students do not see a real world application for a skill, if it seems like something abstract that just has to be learned because there will be a test, they will not engage with the skill as deeply. If they see transferrable applications, and have the opportunity to use the skill in context, there is a greater potential for deep learning. Consequentiality is something that requires extremely responsive game design, which means time and money on the development side. For that reason, many games do not have persistent environments – but setting a game in a persistent world where player actions can have meaningful, lasting impacts on the environment and the responses from other characters increases immersion and engagement.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the basis for the — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the basis for the “Modern Prometheus” game

While much of the article understandably deals with the specifics of their Modern Prometheus project, it’s iterations and why they made the choices they did in its creation, the part that is the most interesting to me is the way that they establish the educational value of immersion and engagement. They state that “supporting transactive engagement involves fostering a deep sense of immersion in which the learner enters into a situation conceptually and perceptually, has a goal, has a legitimate role, and engages in actions that have a consequence – whereby both the learner and the situation with which he or she is engaged become transformed” (307). By getting the player to buy in to the game setting, rather than remaining detached from it, their choices have context and meaning.

There are many techniques that can be used to create that sense of the game world having meaning and consequences (some of which are also addressed in Extra Credits’ “What Makes Us Roleplay” below), but this feeling can also be fostered by everything from the interface design to the soundscape players hear, and the art style they are seeing. The game’s mechanics also play into this, although these elements are not explicitly addressed by Barab, et al. Ideally, these elements are all so seamlessly integrated into the game experience that they are not consciously perceived, because to do so brings the player out of the experience and makes them aware of the artificiality of the environment. For players, and students, to feel that their choices have meaning, they need to be invested in the game world.

Additional Watching and Reading
The Extra Credits episode “What Makes Us Roleplay” deals with immersion and how games make the player’s choices matter. Roleplaying (taking on the personality of a character that may or may not make the same choices that they would in a real world situation) can be a distraction from learning in some situations, but the design choices dealing with it also create an immersive environment in which the decisions you make impact the game world – the consequentiality described by Barab, et al.

Marshal G. Jones’ (apparently?) unpublished paper, “Creating Engagement in Computer-Based Learning Environments” is what it says on the tin – an exploration of how designers get players engaged and invested in learning games. Jones explains that in this case, engagement refers to “the notion that the program makes the learner want to be there.”

The Education Business Blog has an article on an early iteration of the Modern Prometheus game.

PAB Entry #5: Harrison Pink’s “Can I Borrow a Feeling?”

Pink, Harrison. “Can I Borrow a Feeling?” Gamasutra. 2014. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HarrisonPink/20140303/212088/Can_I_Borrow_A_Feeling.php

While Harrison Pink’s article is written from the perspective of a designer as opposed to a purely academic critic, his practical and pragmatic approach is informed by years of successful game design, as well as an academic grounding in the MFA program in Game Design and Development at the Savannah College of Art and Design, placing him among the rare designers who can speak to both theory and practice with equal credibility. His design process is very similar to that used by designers at White Wolf, a primarily tabletop roleplaying game company where I worked in the mid-1990s, which made it of particular interest to me.

At the SIEGE 2016 conference in Atlanta, Harrison Pink gave a presentation titled “Crafting an Experience: Designing a Game Feelings First.” It was a slightly expanded version of an article he published on the Gamasutra website in 2014, prior to his being hired in his current position at Hangar 13 Games. In both, he presents a new perspective on one of the ongoing debates within game studies – which is more important (or, alternately, which comes first): mechanics or theme?

Telltale Games' — Telltale Games’ “The Walking Dead” forces the player to make difficult choices

Successful games have been developed that began from either choice, though each presents its own challenges. Pink suggests that rather than starting from either of these, the designer should instead start with the question of what feeling(s) they want to elicit in the player. Ultimately, feelings drive engagement, and engagement leads to continued play and increased enjoyment. Pink states that, “Every design begins with the goal of evoking a specific feeling from the player. A game uses both the theme and mechanics to evoke that feeling.” Whether you prioritize story or gameplay more (and most successful AAA titles include both), an understanding of what feeling you want to elicit from the player will guide successful development of both.

Theme - Feeling - Mechanics diagram — Rather than theme and mechanics supporting each other, Pink suggests that both support feeling instead

Pink references the widely praised MDA model of game design explored in “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research” by Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubec, which focuses on Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics. In it, the authors explain that the order in which designers create games using these elements is the opposite of the way that players experience games. In his piece, Pink reframes dynamics as theme, and feeling replaces aesthetics. However, as seen in the triangle diagram above, Pink’s model does not fit the linear format of the MDA framework. This is a somewhat misleading equivalency; dynamics are significantly broader than specifically theme, and have a clearer relationship to mechanics. Likewise, aesthetics can and do strongly influence the feelings that are generated as a result of gameplay, but it would be inaccurate to imply that mechanics and theme create aesthetics. Pink’s reinterpretation of the MDA model, while dealing with similar components, reinterprets the design process and does not address the player experience.

Although I don’t believe that the game design process can ever be entirely simplified down to three components, Pink’s model is a useful one. In many, if not most circumstances, one of the primary drivers for the creation of a game may be market analysis and business expediency, which can lead to early determinations of elements of theme, mechanics, or feelings (though given that the latter is not as easy to quantify in a business analysis, it is less likely to be a stated objective). These business requirements place expectations and restrictions on the development process. Constraints can spur creativity, though, and these requirements may lay out a framework, but the design process is necessary to go from business objective to game concept.

The value of player engagement, and the study of how to create that connection between player and game, is one of the great challenges facing the industry right now, and is an important foundational concept for my own interest in creating educational games. Designing “feelings first,” as Pink puts it, gets the player invested, and students who are engaged with material can achieve mastery much more quickly than if they are learning out of a sense of obligation, resentment, or the threat of failure. Whether or not the reader buys into Pink’s vision of the design process or the more traditional MDA model, his argument about the value of feelings in determining a player’s enjoyment of a game provides an important missing piece in the ongoing struggle between story and mechanics.

Further Reading (and Watching):
From Stanford University’s Interactive Media and Games Seminar Series, Katherine Isbister from the Center for Games and Playable Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz discusses her book, How Games Move Us: Emotion By Design

Wired‘s “Her Story and Papers, Please are changing gaming forever” describes two recent games that are designed to evoke strong emotions in the player.

EDIT: Late breaking addendum! SIEGE just posted a few of their sessions online, including Harrison’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ7pljOIO9Q&feature=share

PAB Entry #4: “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” by Henry Jenkins

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture”. In The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, Ed. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. MIT P, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

In the introduction to “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” Henry Jenkins states that when first presented at a conference, the essay, “provoked strong reactions from the so-called Ludologists and resulted in my being falsely (in my opinion) identified as a Narratologist.” He goes on to explain that his ideas are more centered on game spaces, “ripe with narrative possibility,” while story itself can be deconstructed as “less a temporal structure than a body of information.”

While he devotes considerable time to finding common ground between Narratologists and Ludologists, his primary point is that games are spaces. This is true whether it is the board of Monopoly, which he alludes to, or the vast outer space reaches of the 2016 release No Man’s Sky, with it’s 18 quintillion planets to be explored. While he says that he was “falsely” lumped in with Narratologists, the main gist of his article does deal with narrative – but not necessarily linear narrative. His description of games, or perhaps ideal games, allows for a great deal of player agency to discover a narrative and piece it together on their own, rather than being forced on rails to live the narrative themselves, along a linear path that the author/designer wants them to follow. He explains the game world as “a kind of information space, a memory palace,” if the designer intends a more linear path, or a space in which the player can “explore the game space and unlock its secrets”. Either way, it is about discovery of an existing story, rather than the player character’s own heroic journey.

Screen shot of — Screen shot from “No Man’s Sky” (2016) showing one of the many alien planets that players can discover and explore.

He cites the work of Don Carson, who has written on the lessons game designers can take from the work of theme park designers, observing that “the art of game design comes in finding artful ways of embedding narrative information into the environment without destroying its immersiveness and without giving the player a sensation of being drug around by the neck.” This single sentence encapsulates what is perhaps the most important concept in this article as a whole – the importance of immersion in the experience of a game, the need for player agency in

Image from interior of Disney's — Part of the physical space that Guests walk through in line for Disney’s “Expedition Everest,” demonstrating the storytelling power of detailed space design.

exploring an environment and uncovering the story for themselves, and the reason why standard models of narrative borrowed from literary and film studies are of limited use when applied to (some) game stories. And while some resist (and others embrace) the idea of games as “art”, in a traditional sense, Jenkins is speaking more of artful design – the creation of something functional in a way that is seamlessly integrated into its environment, as opposed to something that stands out as unique within its own context.

Interior of Disney's — Another interior image from Disney’s “Expedition Everest” ride, creating an immersive environment for Guests waiting for the ride.

While some games do have linear stories, and some have no stories at all, if a designer wants to tell a story that is unique to the medium of game design, it is necessary to do so using a framework that goes beyond that of traditional print and motion media.

So while Jenkins seemingly bristled at the idea of being called a Narratologist, his perspective is an interesting middle ground, seemingly doing exactly what Aarseth calls for in his essay “Computer Game Studies, Year One”. While Jenkins is interested in the idea of narrative (with a small “n”), which would cause some to place him in with the Narratologist camp, his concept is decidedly non-linear and as such goes beyond what traditional scholars of narrative could apply existing models to. Just as Aarseth has challenged game scholars to carve out their own niche, independent of existing fields, Jenkins has done just that.

The article situates the field of game design studies as being separate from, but arguably both complimentary and adjacent to that of English studies. While his concept of narrative spaces is unlike the linear narrative structure familiar to scholars of literature, and even that of nonlinear hypertext narrative, English scholars who are open minded enough to look beyond existing theoretical models will find fertile ground in analysis of these narrative spaces. Within the bounds Jenkins sets in this article, he defines a theoretical space between Narratologists and Ludologists, outside of the domains of literary and cinema studies scholars, but also scholars of computer science, animation, and art. His notion of narrative space works equally well to imagine a flag being planted in a new domain belonging to computer game theorists.

Additional Reading
The ubiquitous Extra Credits video I’ve paired with this deals with “Negative Possibility Space” – dealing with player agency and how that relates to the physical space being explored by characters.

Jenkins mentions The Image of the City, a book dealing with city planning and urban design, as being useful for designers in understanding how people live, work, and play in designed spaces.

PAB Entry #3: “Computer Game Studies: Year One”

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies – Year One.” Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. Accessed 20 September 2016.

While relatively short, Aarseth’s article ambitiously sets out to demarcate an official beginning for computer game studies as an “emerging, viable, international academic field”. Aarseth, known for his 1997 book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergotic Literature, makes the case for formalized study of computer games as a field separate from, though drawing on, a range of related disciplines from computer science to anthropology, and film studies to aesthetics.

University of California at Santa Barbara: Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory: Intro to Game Studies

While the article seeks to define computer game studies as being something “too important to be left to” individual fields like English Studies, it also does not exclude scholars of literature, communication, and writing from being a part of the conversation. Indeed, to imply that English Studies has a greater claim on the field than other disciplines such as interface design, computer programming, animation, film studies, or sociology would be both selfish and unproductive, as they all have a role to play in the development of a truly interdisciplinary field. Aarseth warns against attempts by individual departments to stake a claim over Game Studies, pointing out that, “Making room for a new field usually means reducing the resources of the existing ones, and the existing fields will also often respond by trying to contain the new area as a subfield.” However, this seems to ignore the fact that the very sources of funding that make up these resources often come in the form of tuition dollars from students interested in a new major being drawn to a school, as well as research grants – largely absent in the case of English Studies, but more likely in new media fields, especially those with close ties to multimillion dollar industries.

SCAD Department of Interactive Design and Game Development — Savannah College of Art and Design’s stand-alone department of Interactive Design and Game Development

But how does Aarseth’s establishment of this field impact, restrict, or invite the participation of English Studies scholars? He allows that with the development of a new area of study, everyone is a newcomer, stating, “We all enter this field from somewhere else … and the political and ideological baggage we bring from our old field inevitably determines and motivates our approaches.” But should we really consider methodologies, historical perspective, and knowledge of cultural context to be “baggage”? As English scholars, we have much to contribute to this field, whether it is the formalized study of language, a deep and rich understanding of storytelling conventions and traditions, or the ways in which digital literacies inform and shape our verbal and written interactions through the medium of a game. Aarseth’s point is well taken, though; we can bring with us the knowledge and methods that have served us well in the past, but we must enter into the conversation with an open mind, willing to consider and incorporate other disciplinary perspectives that are different from, perhaps even contradictory at first glance to our own.

Just as English Education studies cannot exclusively be claimed by either departments of English or Education, and Cultural Studies will always include contributors from the social sciences, arts, and humanities, Game Studies can prove to be a fruitful and fascinating area for English scholars to explore and contribute to, but we will never have exclusive rights to it – nor should we. Its essence is interdisciplinary and Aarseth’s article helps to define the field, its roots, and the contribution it can make not only to academia, but to the larger community. While it could not remotely be considered to be staking a claim over this new discipline on behalf of English departments, it has established the need for formalized study, research, and (implied, if not explicitly stated) pegagogy.

Additional Resources
A much later contribution to Aarseth’s Game Studies journal, “Game Definitions: A Wittgensteinian Approach” explores the many ways scholars have defined the concept of games.
Showing the way the field of game studies has branched out from Aarseth’s initial definition, “Feminist Game Studies: Defining the Field” similarly carves out a subfield within this new discipline.

“Extra Credits” contribution to the discussion of what a game is – in which Portnow disputes the usefulness of narrow definitions, and claims definitions are “the intellectual version of chasing your own tail”.

PAB Entry #2 – “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation”

Alexander, Jonathan. “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation.” College Composition and Communication 61.1 (2009): 35–63. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

In “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation,” Alexander examines the experiences of two gamers as a way to explore multiple literacies, as well as utilizing games for analysis and as a mode of student writing in the composition classroom. Although much of the article consists of a recap of existing scholarship on the topic, and his incredulity at his subjects ability to juggle multiple technologies at once may strike a technologically savvy reader as quaint, he addresses writing as a means of knowledge production in contexts related to the game but not a part of actual gameplay. The artifacts produced as a result constitute an important paratextual resource for understanding and interacting with the game world.

Alexander’s analysis addressed the many ancillary texts outside of gameplay that are created by World of Warcraft players, which include reading and writing message board posts, strategy guides, and wikis. Students who may balk at a three-page paper for school will often churn out thousands of words for these ancillary texts as a component of their overall gaming experience. It should also be noted that these texts are often highly collaborative, with many people participating in the conversation, and even editing, adding to or subtracting from texts created by others. Alexander describes the planning of a guild raid as an argumentative text, not unlike what students are called on to create in Freshman Composition classes, that these written conversations “are taking place as students are collaboratively working on one text. Again, such collaboration is not uncommon in many professional fields, but I wonder to what extent we in our writing courses are teaching students not just to write but to write collaboratively“.

He cites examples of establishing the credibility of the author, suiting the tone and diction to the writer’s audience, and other elements that we strive to impart to students in basic composition classes, and demonstrates the ways in which students are using them in creating these ancillary game texts.

While I agree with his assertions, and have seen many examples of people who did tremendous research, and even mastered complex skills only tangentially related to a game they were playing, I don’t feel that Alexander drew a clear enough line between what is occurring in games, and how to apply that as part of composition pedagogy. Knowing that it happens is interesting in understanding process and the ways in which students reflect on their writing outside a classroom setting. But how does that impact how we teach? Without the many, many hours it takes to become immersed in a game setting and form a strong bond with characters, and to become effectively subject matter experts, how are these skills transferable?

Alexander states that, “in particular, literacy reflectivity, trans-literacy connections, collaborative writing, multicultural literacy awareness” can be developed through gaming. I agree, and his suggestion of the creation of multimedia texts, for example, can provide students with skills that will serve them beyond the classroom. But most of his suggestions and example deal with students creating these writing assignments and then reflectively drawing out lessons from them that can be applied to other kinds of writing. This is great…if you have a class full of gamers. The time requirement to develop subject matter expertise and passion for the subject matter make the application of what has been learned in this study problematic for the composition teacher. Furthermore, for this to work as Alexander suggests would require a sea change in the way that we approach composition courses – the “transformation” that he alludes to in the article’s title. While this is arguably a laudable goal to work toward, it may not help professors now who have to teach to a set curriculum with little flexibility.
Additional Resources:

Gaming the First-Year Composition Course is a blog posting that is less focused on abstract theory or recapping scholarly literature, but one that echoes some of the same themes. It is more pragmatic, however, in their application.

It’s About the Game Design and the Learning – “In the case of education, it’s about the game and the learning, but the point is lost if the game isn’t fun.”

A nonscholarly post on “4 Things I Learned About Writing from Playing World of Warcraft” for novice professional writers.

PAB Entry #1 – “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing”

Moberly, Kevin. “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing.” Computers and Composition 25.3 (2008): 284–299. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming.

Moberly’s article, written in 2008, begins with the idea that in games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, the written word was becoming scarce. As player communication moved from text-based to voice based, and given that game content was delivered primarily through sound and visuals, it seemed that writing (and reading) were becoming obsolete.

Text from a World of Warcraft chat window

However, Moberly states that, “If writing appears to be absent from these games, however, it is not because the games have evolved to the point where writing is not useful or relevant but because, in order to appear magical, the games must disguise the degree to which their technology is dependent on writing.” Certainly, the writing of design documents and dialogue as part of the game’s design and production is vital, though it is largely invisible to players. But while actual written words may be scarce on the page, the player goes through many of the same processes that a writer does.

Composition is occurring, in that the thought processes required to define a character visually using the symbolic language of the game is much the same as choosing words to describe something to an intended audience. An important lesson that can be applied to the composition classroom, is that “whether reading and writing takes place in the context of a computer game or a research paper, its effects are ultimately not manifested on the screen or on paper, but on the individuals who, in expressing themselves through the surrogate of the screen or paper, produce the discourse communities in which they are involved.”

Rhetoric and communication are happening in MMORPGs, even if they are being done through symbols and game mechanics. The choices players make in crafting identity can be applied as lessons on audience and tone, as well as relation to a discourse community. What impression do you want to give to your reader, or in this case, other players? A scantily clad Night Elf sorceress is going to send a very different message than a stout Dwarven warrior – one which can be deconstructed in terms of gender, race, social standing, and a host of other factors. As a player, are you going to make choices based on that character’s cultural background, or just do what feels fun? How much will you roleplay the character, through your words or actions?

The — Sometimes player dialogue choices are limited

Ultimately, Moberly is addressing one of the elements I feel is fertile ground for study – the ways in which games can help students learn the underlying elements that have to be in place before effective, fruitful writing can be created. In the case of World of Warcraft, issues of discourse community, relation to an audience, and finding a unique voice from which to write from are all inherent in game play. From a pedagogical standpoint, though, students will not necessarily absorb these lessons in a conscious sense – for a game to be applied in a practical way to composition studies, there has to be a teacher to act as a catalyst for students, to see these applications.

Additional Resources:
“Extra Credits” is a web series on game design. In their episode “Symbolism 101,” they discuss uses of symbolism from a design standpoint, and address issues including player identity.

“Narrative Mechanics” addresses how a story can be told through the mechanics – the way that a game works, the rules that govern gameplay.