This bibliography aims to acquaint rhetoric instructors with articles and books on video games and pedagogy. It should provide a helpful resource to instructors who would like to incorporate video games or similar technology in their rhetoric classrooms. Some citations contain links, all of which should be accessible through the UT library’s online database.
de Zengotita, Thomas, et al. "Grand Theft Education: Literacy in the Age of Video Games." Harper's Magazine (Sept. 2006), 31-39. http://harpers.org/archive
This article is a conversation between four people: two gamers and two teachers who discuss the pros and cons of using gaming in instruction in the classroom. The article goes over the basics of gaming and how learning goes on in video games—that you learn not just content of the game, but how to maneuver it, how to read directions for it, etc. Essentially, that video games are a set of literacies, not just old style read and type kinds of know-how. The article goes over how current gaming styles could be applied to writing and other forms of literacy. Points made that are interesting include the point of games and the stakes that kids have in them (not much, mistakes are forgiven); the utility of creating game guides; use of plot; lack of usefulness of story arcs; likelihood of kids going to read other literature in order to get ahead in game. This last part touches on an issue that I have with the use of games in classrooms: kids are going to figure out quickly that the quest is a way to “connect” to youngsters, and it’ll become work rather than a game. Developers should be careful about the payoff not being worth the time put in. One alternate idea that comes to mind for this review is to consider making gaming coincide with the type of thinking behind the LRO portfolios—that is, students are doing the games, and even if they know it’s for class, they are putting together a packet of information over time, a sort of portfolio based on the game. Follow up on this might prove interesting.
Faria A., and Wellington, W. “A survey of simulation game users, former-users, and never-users.” Simulation & Gaming, 35, 2 (June 2004), 178-207. http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/35/2/178
Faria and Wellington sent an email survey to 14,497 business faculty members. The survey asked questions concerning simulation video games such as Markstrat or The Beer Game including how and why such games are selected and developed to how to teach with video games. The goal of the survey was to actually determine and eventually prove that video games could be a valuable tool for teaching. This survey could serve as a useful tool in the classroom by having students and instructors in RHE 306/309 answer questions about video games and rhetoric.
Faria and Wellington’s survey includes answers from both users and non-users. They wanted to determine who uses these simulation video games and what benefits these users take from playing these particular games: “Once logged in, respondents were asked seven classification questions designed to stream them toward one of three questionnaires. One questionnaire was intended for current simulation game users, another was intended for former simulation game users, and a final questionnaire was intended for those who had never used a simulation game” (180). This could be a good strategy in the classroom since the answers could reveal what attracts different video game players. According to their survey, Faria and Wellington found out that “The three primary reasons simulation games are first adopted, according to both current and former game users, is that simulations (a) provide decision-making experience, (b) allow for theory application, and (c) allow students to see the integration of the functional business areas” (202).
In the last part of their article, Faria and Wellington address the results found in the survey concerning the non-users of the games: “Although simulation supporters could provide more information about business games and their benefits that would certainly induce the adoption of business games among some never-users, it is unlikely this action alone would result in a significant increase in overall simulation game usage” (205). It is therefore crucial that non-users, whether they are teachers or students, be trained in order to make the application of the game in the classroom a success.
Fisher, David. "CMS-Based Simulations in the Writing Classroom: Evoking Genre Through Game Play." Computers and Composition, 24, 2 (April 2007), 179-197. Available at http://www.sciencedirect.com
This article describes how a course/content management system (CMS) can be implemented in the classroom to stimulate students’ learning. Using Clark Aldrich’s methodology, the author has created a CMS based on a business environment in which students analyze, create, and manage their writing with an end goal that mimics real life business transactions.
The system, called MyCase, “enables instructors to create scenarios that include multimedia elements” (5) such as information sources (documents, videos of meetings) and collaboration tools (discussion boards, surveys) which students use while trying to reach their goals. The goal for the creators was to develop situations that give students the feeling of what it’s like to work in the workplace. Or put another way, students would be learning a broader, more widely useful set of professional writing skills that they could see themselves putting into practice in the genre of the “real” world.
Students acted as employees of a company called Omega Molecular, and had access to different fabricated company documents, emails, statistics, etc. that a company would have. The students were given different tasks, in one having to construct arguments on the same topic (pricing of product) but different audiences (insider managers vs. media). The idea is that students learn different genres of writing through “real” writing rather than writing that is good for academia but not elsewhere.
The idea in this article is useful as an alternative to fantasy play. It would be more interactive (read: labor-intensive) for the professor, but the benefit to students is worth the effort put in, especially if the effort is joint and workable over the long-term. The scenario can be created without gaming graphics and the documents needed for it would be easier to create by non-gamers. One reservation for this reviewer is the assumption that the “real world”—and the impetus that is to inspire students—is a corporate environment. However, the CMS could also be structured as an alternative work environment such as a self-owned business, or a non-work environment such as a non-profit organization, a campaign for a local cause or politician, or a grass-roots petition drive.
An RHE workgroup (or any group of interested AIs) could create the basic setup for the game and other teachers could add in pieces that fit their own needs. A mix-and-match type collection of files would be the best so that different 306 books and 309K topics could be incorporated.
The ideas, however, can be put into play without the whole scenario being set up. Instead of having students write just for a random audience, or even for a specified audience, the point would be to write for a purpose. The stakes, the audience, the method of production and publication would all be determined by the student in accordance with the proposed scenario. Teachers could offer two or three situations that groups in the class could work on with their issues. Each of the three (or however many) papers would address a different piece of the puzzle along the way. For example, a teacher could propose [situation A], and students would decide how to address the situation. Upon returning the papers, the teacher would report that [scenario B] had happened, and the second paper would need to address that situation. Again the same for scenario C.
If done well, each of the different scenarios would have the same “response” situation, cutting down on teacher occupation with creating new scenarios for each group/student. The grades for the papers would of course be based on the effective handling of the situations given. This type of setup would then cut down on the risk of students passing along papers from semester to semester.
Gay marriage example:
Situation A: Students are asked by a local minister to write an op-ed piece for his church’s newsletter informing parishioners of the current state of the gay marriage debate, and the students’ position against its legalization. Provided documents could be other church newsletters that the student can access to learn about the tone needed for that parish. [teacher looks for language and reasoning appropriate for religious newsletter, pathos appeals, refs to what parishioners might do]
Situation B: State senator Smith sees the op-ed piece in her church newsletter and asks the writer to help her prepare the case she will present to state senate hearings on the issue. Emails and documents from Smith and the Senate hearings would help students by giving them ideas on how to structure the argument (e.g., if other arguments have already been made to the Senate committee, student would need to “fill in the gaps”) [more formal language, possible charts, video, guest speakers, etc]
Situation C: writer is asked to head the campaign for a marriage amendment in the state, and the first task is to create a campaign using at least two different media outlets. A popular vote is approaching in two months.
These examples show one way of scaffolding the tasks: in the first, the audience and the medium are designated. In the second, the audience is not as specific: the writers are “talking” to the senator, but about how the senator will present the case. The medium is more open—students could advise her to show statistics, to bring in local issues, people, etc. The final situation leaves both the medium and the audience open: are they convincing people to change positions? To go out and vote their conscience? Etc.
Flower, L., and Hayes, J. “The cognition of discovery: Defining a rhetorical problem.” College Composition and Communication, 31, 1 (Feb., 1980), 21-32. Available at http://www.jstor.org
Flower and Hayes devote their article to how poor and good writers differ in their approach to writing and responding to a rhetorical assignment “by studying the way writers initiate and guide themselves through the act of making meaning” (22). Flower and Hayes conducted a study where a sample of students and subjects were asked certain questions and encouraged to verbally and orally expressed how they viewed and developed their writing process. They used the results of the survey to prove that writing includes a process of discovery of the writer him/herself. Each writer should develop and solve questions in order to answer their assignments while at the same time not losing from sight the importance of their audience, whether immediate or extended. Thus, Flower and Hayes come to the conclusion that:
Good writers respond to all aspects of the rhetorical problem. As they compose they build a unique representation not only of their audience and assignment, but also of their goals involving the audience, their own persona and the text. By contrast, the problem representations of the poor writers were concerned primarily with the features and conventions of a written text, such as number of pages or magazine format. (29)
If good writers are precisely good because they take into account a multiplicity of factors in their writing process, then poor writers could be helped by an environment such as a video game, since it requires – with less stress and in a playful manner – an attention to multiple factors as well. A quest involves a question to be solved but not through a direct path. It reflects the process of writing and learning. Poor writers are either too precipitous in their writing process or single-goal-minded. Therefore, Hayes and Flower’s article could be applied to the development of the video game as a way to improve poor writers’ skills
Howard, Jeff. “Designing Interpretative Quests in the Literature Classroom.” ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium on Digital Games. Boston, MA (30 July 2006). Forthcoming in Proceedings of Sandbox Symposium 2006. Available at http://portal.acm.org/
In this paper, Howard presents a strong defense of an assignment he used with success in his sophomore-level English class entitled “Literary Contest and Contexts.” The originality of the assignment lies in the fact that Howard asked his students to transform literary narratives into interpretative quests. The quests are created under the format of a video game where students design challenges and puzzles through what Howard stresses as “enacted meaning and meaningful action.”
By asking the students to translate certain aspects of the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon into a video game, Howard encourages active creativity instead of passive incorporation of knowledge. The assignment was divided into two parts. First of all the students needed to write a six-page design document describing the components of their game, underlining how the player will interpret the game. The second part consisted in creating the game. Howard provides an exhaustive and impressive list of the software he made available for this assignment. Moreover, he also presents which software were the most satisfactory.
Howard also takes into account the main theories developed by scholars of video games about the quest. He acknowledges the two antagonistic approaches: narratology—studying games as storytelling—and ludology—studying rules and simulation present in games. However, Howard does not see these two theories as ontologically incompatible: “Despite the differences between quests and narratives, literary narratives can be transformed into quests, combining the ludic virtues of player interactivity with the dense meaning traditionally associated with literature.” Therefore, Howard endeavors to bridge the gap between the two concepts for the sake of students’ interpretative abilities.
This paper provides wonderful strategies for a dynamic literature class where students contribute to creating meaning rather than only passively absorbing it. The quest format demands a strong and motivating knowledge of the literary works and Howard stresses how a diversity of literary works could be used for this purpose. For a video game project, the paper also underlines a crucial interactivity within the classroom.
Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free P, 1997.
In her book, Murray defends the presence of computers in the classroom and their incredible potential to develop fantastic literature courses. Because she is talking to a 1997 audience, Murray takes into account the various reluctant attitudes that she foresees from more traditional colleagues. Due to the fact she had been teaching in an overtly computer-friendly environment at MIT, Murray is able to appreciate the possibilities and the need to apply technology in literature and in the humanities generally. Technology should not replace books and written literature in general but should contribute to a continuation of creativity: “I am not among those who are eager for the death of the book . . . nor do I fear an imminent event. The computer is not the enemy of the book” (9).
Interestingly, Murray keeps on making references to major works of literature such as Jane Eyre, Hamlet, and King Lear. She is trained as a Victorian literature professor whose love of literature is certainly not incompatible with an appreciation for technology. She is definitely trying to convince her colleagues who might not potentially take her seriously and attack her on her lack of scholarship. Even though, more than ten years later, some of the academic difficulties that Murray had to face might no longer exist, the book still provides a strong platform to engage scholars who are not necessarily comfortable with the presence of computers in the classroom. Instead of being threatened, these scholars could be reassured of what computers and technology could provide in their classrooms and what these new devices can bring to students since this “new narrative world with such extraordinary spatial depth and temporal continuity is more immersive, more reinforcing of our belief, than a conventional play” (159).
Divided into four parts, Murray’s book accentuates what professors and students alike can achieve and convey thanks to the presence of computers and technology in the classroom. Creativity can be enhanced, and literature and narrative are not necessarily put to the scaffold. The book proves useful for projects involving video games in the classroom as it aims at provoking and challenging the creativity of the players/students.
Tosca, Susana. “The Quest Problem in Computer Games.” Proceedings of the First International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment TIDSE ’03. Ed. Gobel, Stefan et al. Darmstadt: Fraunhofer IRB Verlag. http://www.itu.dk/people/tosca/quest.htm
Tosca’s article addresses what she sees as common misrepresentations or misinterpretations of what constitutes the concept of quest in video games. According to Tosca, the reasons lying behind them are not only due to a lack of clear theoretical framework but also because there is no clear definition of the quest itself. She proposes to define clearly what quest means in the context of video games. She dwells on her experience of video games in order “to challenge certain widespread ideas such as: quests equal linearity, quests equal goals or objectives, or that they are only a feature of single player games.” Like Howard, Tosca wants to show how dynamic the concept of “quest” could be in the classroom. She, however, argues that quests in video games are not about storytelling but about character advancement; Howard sees quests and storytelling as more compatible. Likewise, for Tosca games are not narratives; whereas once again Howard thinks that they could be in the context of the classroom.
Tosca turns to definitions of quests outside the video game context as she cites Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948). The quest involves three parts: the call, the journey and the return. Then, Tosca offers her own definition of quests as “they incarnate causality at two levels: a semantic one (how/why actions are connected); and a structural one (plan of actions, interaction of objects and events).”
It seems that Tosca does not really believe that video games can provoke creative activity in the player. She stresses numerous times her prejudice for the more traditional “pen & paper roleplaying” since the quest is not as predetermined as in videogames. Pairing this article with Howard’s can prove very fruitful as both writers provide fascinating and different approaches to the use of the quest in/for video games.
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004.
In First Person, the editors have made a valid effort to establish a conversation about the implications of computer games and new media in the scope of writing. Not bold enough to provide an answer, they nevertheless have decided to organize their book in an original and challenging manner. Indeed they present the various articles they have included in the book as being a virtual conference with virtual panels. Each writer, theorist, or virtual presenter’s essay is completed by a response to it.
Moreover, the virtual conference and panels are also available on a website mirroring the book. Like a video game, the content of the books try to engage the reader in a similar interactive manner.
Divided into eight parts, the book gathers the main thinkers and practioners of new media theories as from Janet Murray (author of Hamlet and the Rolodeck). The first part “Cyberdrama” and “New Readings” appear to be the most useful for instructors interested in this kind of new pedagogical approach, especially for those who are not necessarily familiar with the most advanced discourse on video games and new media. Indeed, a summary of the main current thoughts of each subfield is given as a preface to each part, which is indeed helpful but not necessary enough for less informed instructors.
Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007.
Second Person provides a much more enjoyable reading than First Person. The book is divided into three parts that each illustrate the conversation that the editors propose to have on game playing theory. Section I is a collection of essays about fictions playable structures; section II is concerned with computer-based playable structures; and section III displays a discussion of virtual communities of massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
Academic discourse alongside specialists of the field of videogames punctuate the book, which is useful and beneficiary for both professional and neophyte gamers. Section I, entitled “Tabletop Systems” is especially fantastic since it contains a variety of articles that offer intelligent and clear strategies in order to break down elements that are crucial to creating video games. In particular, one can read the well-articulated article “Structure and Meaning in role-Playing Game Design” by Rebecca Borgstrom. Borgstrom provides a breakdown on how to design video games. It was helpful to see what kind of elements need to be included when one writes a story to design video games. In comparison to First Person, Second Person is much more easy and accessible to understand since it is a collection of interesting and engaging articles that does not alienate non-experts on video games.