Arizona State English Department Research Presentation

The Design is the Game:Writing Games, Teaching WritingAlice J. Robison, Massachusetts Institute of Technologyhttp://alicerobison.org

1Sunday, March 16, 2008

Why Design?


Why Design?

Design can be used to think about:


Why Design?


Rhetorical moves, decisions, audiences;


Why Design?



Purposeful constructions of meaning;


Why Design?




Multi-modal compositions with specific contexts, “art with a purpose”;


Why Design?





Literacy practices that move beyond alphabetical literacy and inscribed texts; and


Why Design?





Literacy practices that move beyond alphabetical literacy and inscribed texts; and

Meaning in a variety of technologies, tools, interchanges, instantiations; attention to time, space, movement.


Design is Not an Add-On

Technical stuff: we can now use cool stuff to do the same kinds of things we have previously known; a “physical-industrial” mindset-- individualized, enclosed, product-centered, hierarchical

Ethos stuff: co-existence of physical space and cyberspace; a “cyberspatial, post-industrial” mindset--collective, distributed, decentered, process-focused, change-based

Lankshear & Knobel, 2006


Design is Not Just Form, Either

The internet isn’t something you dump something on. It’s not a dump truck. It’s...it’s a series of tubes.”

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

John Hodgman’s Reply

Ted Stevens Remix


http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=114648&title=net-neutrality-act

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=114648&title=net-neutrality-act

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8

Designs are Literacy Practices



Literacy is therefore not just about consumption (reading, decoding) and production (writing, creating) but also about participation within a context as a result of available means, tools, histories, experiences, communities, affinities.



Literacy is therefore not just about consumption (reading, decoding) and production (writing, creating) but also about participation within a context as a result of available means, tools, histories, experiences, communities, affinities.

Literacy is not just about critique but also about design: doesn’t simply reflect back but also “shapes the future through deliberate representational resources in the designer’s interest” (Kress 2000)


The “New” Literacy Studies


The “New” Literacy Studies

A model of literacy as a social rather than autonomous, never happens in the same way, dependent on situations and context.

“Multiliteracies” vary over time, space, history, experience, tools, access, affiliations, affinities.

Emphasis on “literacy on the ground:” anthropological methods, social interactions, cultural discourses. Attention to the local.

Literacy is “bound up” with social, cultural, and institutional conventions.

Major researchers: “New London Group,” Gunther Kress, Colin Lankshear, Michele Knobel, Glynda Hull, Brian Street, Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis, James Gee, Deborah Brandt, Cynthia Selfe, Gail Hawisher, Webb, Goggin, etc.


New Media Literacies


New Media LiteraciesPlay: the capacity to experiment as a form of problem-solving

Performance: the ability to adopt alternative identities for improvisation and discovery

Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes

Appropriation: the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking: the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as-needed to salient details

Distributed Cognition: the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence: the ability to pool knowledge with others toward a common goal

Judgment: the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation: the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking: the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation: the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and inspecting multiple perspectives


Videogames Enact the New Media Literacies


Videogames Enact the New Media Literacies

Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger)

Semiotic domains and affinity spaces (Gee, 2003)

Identity play, experiential learning that leads to motivation

Active, critical learning; meta-cognition and reflection

Zones of proximal development (Vygotsky)

“Constellations” of literacy practices (Steinkuehler)

Designed experiences (Robison, Squire)


Researching Videogame Design



Given that games, as interactive texts, not only represent cutting-edge theories of learning and cognition but also inspire sophisticated literacy practices, to what degree can we attribute that to their design?



Given that games, as interactive texts, not only represent cutting-edge theories of learning and cognition but also inspire sophisticated literacy practices, to what degree can we attribute that to their design?

What are the literacy practices of videogame designers and developers? What is the context of creation? What are the cultural models and Discourses of videogame designers and developers?


MethodsQualitative ethnography, participant observation, artifact analysis, discursive analysis, thematic analysis; rooted in traditions of the New Literacy Studies (Barton, et. al 2000; Street 1998; Gee, et. al 1996)

Dissertation consisted of:

3 year study, 200+ hours of fieldwork;

more than two dozen independent and commercial designers interviewed and observed on-site;

500 pages of data, artifacts, designer-written publications; and

transcriptions of semi-structured interviews, on-site study of Gamelab (NYC) during the making of “Diner Dash.”


Who makes games? 85% male, 11.5% female

83% white, 2% black, 2.5% hispanic or latino, 7.5% Asian

92% heterosexual

Average age = 31

Average years in industry = 5.4

College degrees = 80%

More than 60% of studios claim that “recruiting diverse applicants is challenging”

International Game Developers’ Assoc.,


Chris on Creating Stories



“You could just look at a game as a time-killing exercise. But that doesn’t feel nearly as worthwhile as creating a game that generates stories between players.... It’s creating those unique and very memorable experiences that are much better than “yeah it took me 60 hours to get my character to that level”




Rhetorical awareness





Social conversations are persuasive goals






Text of game is a catalyst for player-experience, social identity, meaningful play






Text of game is a catalyst for player-experience, social identity, meaningful play

Adoption of identity of player


Chris on the Writing Process



“I start with what I want one person to say to another when they chat about my game. I’m looking for the “you have to play this game because ‘X’... Then I work backwards and build the features which support those statements. Typically I bookend my design work with one global statement about the game (its overall user goal) and various statements about experiences I want players to have and enjoy.”





Social conversations are writing goals







Principles of design used to reverse-engineer experience







Principles of design used to reverse-engineer experience

Literacy practices of players used to frame design work


Merci on PMOG“I feel like you actually feel like the web is a place, not like it’s a series of separate places. But that you are in this one sphere of activity with all of these people at the same time. And this is just surfing of course, not like being on an AIM or whatever-- then you’re just obviously with people online. But this is allowing other players to influence what your experience is like, and influencing the surfing experiences of other players as well.”

Digital literacy ethos-- web is decentered but also a present space

Meaningful co-presence

This is a new way of being, a new model of conversation that’s not just about text

Literacies, meanings, practices are all reciprocal and reflexive

All players are designers of meaningful experiences


My research shows that game designers...



Are writers for a context. Writing is design here because it involves art for a purpose.




Communicate semiotically: signs, symbols, genres, puzzles, problems, practices, identities, win-states, code languages.





Teach players how to play the game and succeed with finishing, winning, understanding, learning.






Expect players to engage in meta-critical analysis of how the game is designed.







Write collaboratively, share authorship, incorporate both professional and personal discourses.







Write collaboratively, share authorship, incorporate both professional and personal discourses.

Purposely create games that are meant to be interpreted and learned socially.


Questions for Teachers Working with New Media

How can you think about the problem or project of designing and developing curriculum as a set of design constraints?

Instead of thinking of writing as skill, can we think of it in terms of experience or sets of practices within particular contexts?

How therefore do we craft opportunities for meaning making practices with new media? What does that afford a student that other forms of composing, reading, and interpreting texts do not?

If we think about writing as literacy--that is, tied closely to reading--what does that mean for working with new media?


Principles for Designing Writing Courses



Conceive of writing as a set of meaning-making practices and experiences that happen both in and outside the classroom, in formal and informal ways, as culturally and socially situated in learners’ contexts.




Allow for social collaboration and meta-reflection on that collaborative experience. Employ opportunities for collective intelligence, distributed cognition.





Understand users of new media as not just consumers and producers but also as participants within particular contexts, media-uses, and media cultures.





Understand users of new media as not just consumers and producers but also as participants within particular contexts, media-uses, and media cultures.

Constructivist models of learning: emphasis on the socio-cultural; problem-based and project-based learning; making power differentials known; community-driven expertise.


Literacies are Social Practices

To view literacy as a neutral cognitive event not only fails to understand how what being learned is a particular way of doing something--a way that indexes particular values, ideological projects, historical events, and beliefs--but, too, how learning is mediated by social variables, in which case, due to this particularity, one’s primary Discourse might inform a ‘way of being’ in the world that is fundamentally at odds with the literacy form one is expected to learn.”

Clinton, 2003


Final Comment


Final Comment

Understanding how media are composed, designed, produced, and consumed by communities of users is the first step in determining models for designing and assessing writing-and-new-media curricula. We have to understand the underlying principles of those practices. We can only know that by working from the inside-out.


Final Comment


We have to see these composing activities as opportunities for making meaning in-context, according to the values of its participants.


Final Comment


We have to see these composing activities as opportunities for making meaning in-context, according to the values of its participants.

As with all planned writing activities, if goals are well-articulated and well-researched, if they are considered carefully and critically, and if tasks are linked closely to their purpose, it becomes less complex to gauge the degree to which the products are valuable at the end of the composing process.


Assessment Principles


Assessment Principles

If new media and writing are treated as literacy experiences based on participation and not simply production, models for assessment become more accessible.

What counts as “good” in these spaces is determined by its communities. Users of new media organize by their expertise and affinities, not necessarily by production skills.

New media, as socially-connected and collaborative spaces, lend themselves well to more organic assessment models.


Arizona State English Department Research Presentation

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