Bridging Gaming and Designing: Two Sites of Informal Design Learning [Abstract]

In recent years, games and learning researchers have increasingly become interested in the "affinity spaces" (Gee, 2004) around popular videogames, identifying them as instructional spaces (Squire and Giovanetto, 2008) and contexts in which sophisticated reasoning practices are enacted (Steinkuehler and Duncan, 2008). However, the motivation for participation in these communities as well as the goals of the participants have only rarely come under scrutiny (Duncan and Gee, 2008). How does the notion of "design" (e.g., New London Group, 1996; Kafai, 1995; Hayes and Games, 2008) help to explain the ways that players are increasingly engaged in productive, informal communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) around commercial videogames? In this presentation, I propose to elaborate the development of a "designer identity" among gamers by focusing on activities within two of these spaces -the official forums for the massively-multiplayer game World of Warcraft (WoW), and the design activities around a popular "YouTube for Flash games," Kongregate.com.