Place for video games : a theoretical and pedagogical framework for multiliteracies learning in English studies

learning principles) (239). Behaviorism assumes that players of a shooting video game are primarily learning to be better shooters, rather than interpreting a fictional text or playing a role within it. Conversely, the constructivists miss the fact that video games do not just teach players to be better learners in an abstract way, as Bogost describes: “constructivism risks total divestiture of the specificity of a particular videogame in favor of the general, abstract principles it embodies” (241). James Paul Gee fits in the 170 constructivist group, since his work in What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy seeks to uncover the abstract and meta-level principles players use when playing video games. However, I agree with Bogost’s position on the need to revise Gee’s taxonomy, as he notes: “Videogames do not just offer situated meaning and embodied experiences of real and imagined worlds and relationships; they offer meaning and experiences of particular worlds and particular relationships . . . . rhetorical positions are always particular positions; one does not argue or express in the abstract” (241-2). For English scholars, such a view of procedural literacy allows for a fuller discussion of not only the learning principles involved in gaming, but also the specific sociocultural contexts of game narratives and how games are learned and played in those contexts. English scholars can examine how a gaming text helps players learn, but what those players learn is just as important: “The procedurally literate subject is one who recognizes both the specific nature of a material concept and the abstract rules that underwrite that concept” (257). Going back to World of Goo, the player understands the rules of the game and the concepts required (the goo balls must get to the pipe), but a more procedurally literate player must recognize the more detailed aspects of the game narrative and the contexts surrounding it: environmental devastation, corporate power, consumerism, human progress, and computer technology. A multilayered concept of literacy that includes multiple modes of meaning must include procedurality, since it is another way to make meaning (and as Bogost argues, this meaning does not reside solely in video games). Video games like World of Goo develop players’ procedural literacy because they play specifically with an eye toward identifying and interpreting the rules of the system— 171 systems that either reaffirm or challenge students' beliefs and values (their lifeworlds). Players therefore evaluate these in-game systems according to their understanding of real-world systems, and adding a third layer of complexity, students in an English course surrounding video games and other texts (using Multiliteracies pedagogical practices) can interrogate these systems according to specific cultural moments and contexts. In other words, by examining World of Goo in relation to the historical context of its creation, students can gain particular insights about the game system and how it is informed by a particular place and moment. Later, the student hopefully can undertake transformative practices by advocating for systems that promote positive values, or that deal with issues of interest to them. While World of Goo is a video game, it is only partly a game, and partly a representation of systems within our culture; as such, the game’s rules are the culture’s rules as well: procedural literacy is “not just a practice of technical mastery, but one of technical-cultural mastery” and “should not be limited to the abstract ability to understand procedural representations of cultural values” (Bogost 245, 246). Certainly, World of Goo could be understood and evaluated according to its abstract rules (thus removing all of the mise-en-scène and storytelling as well), but a procedurally literate player can examine how its processes tell something about the context of its creation, since they can ask: “What are the rules of the system? / What is the significance of these rules (over other rules)? / What claims about the world do these rules make? / How do I respond to those claims?” (Bogost 258). Implied in these four questions are Multiliteracies pedagogical practices – the first question (“What are the rules of the system?”) deals with Situated Practice, learning the game in a way that details its construction. The second question (“What is the significance of these rules?”) 172 demonstrates Overt Instruction, probing deeper into the concepts of the game and creating metalanguage to understand them. The third question (“What claims about the world do these rules make?”) moves toward Critical Framing, asking how the games’ choices are socioculturally embedded. Finally, the last question (“How do I respond to these claims?”) can lead students toward social transformation, since it implies the Transformed Practice of bringing all of that newfound insight back to Situated Practice. In asking these questions, students studying video games in conjunction with other texts can design social futures, deciding what kinds of texts we will have and what kind of a culture will produce and consume them: “When we create videogames, we are making claims about these processes, which ones we celebrate, which ones we ignore, which ones we want to question. When we play these games, we interrogate those claims, we consider them, incorporate them into our lives, and carry them forward into our future experiences” (Bogost 339). In the next chapter, I describe in detail how we as English instructors can foster this kind of transformed practice through an integrated media course using multiliteracies pedagogical practices. The course would interrogate multiple media, including written texts, films, and video games, in an effort to help students think critiquely, design, or practice critical literacy. My discussion and analysis of World of Goo thus far is meant to demonstrate the possibilities for combining narratology, rhetorical narrative criticism, and multiliteracies perspectives to look at all kinds of texts, encompassing textual meanings as social and contextual meanings, produced by authors, enacted by audiences, and affected by forces surrounding them. Likewise, by interrogating the system of World of Goo as text, I hope to show that all texts work similarly. Metaknowledge of how texts 173 work can only be helpful for students in their future academic, personal, or working lives, since this metaknowledge is about using different perspectives and points of view to create meanings. The final chapter of this dissertation is developed to show how to create the conditions for students to undertake meta-level analyses of texts to transform meanings.