Gaming literacy is an approach to literacy based on game design that teaches new cognitive, creative, and social skills needed in the modern world. It includes four key concepts: systems literacy, which involves seeing the world as interconnected systems; play, which emerges from rules in an improvisational way; design, which creates meaningful contexts and possibilities; and cultural practices like reading and writing about games. Gaming literacy reverses the traditional view of games by relating them to the real world. It examines how games can help solve problems and think in new ways. Situational game design also focuses on designing meaningful situations for players rather than on arbitrary win states or predefined interactions.

1. Gaming Literacy

2. • What are her problems
with videogames?
• What are most
videogames about?
• What does she want
from games?
• Is the chapter outdated
or still relevant? Explain.
Anna Anthropy
“The Problem with
Videogames”
(2012)

3. • What is literacy?
• “the ability to understand and create
specific kinds of meanings” (24)
• What do traditional models of literacy
teach?
• Traditional literacy: reading, writing,
close reading, textual analysis,
rhetorical analysis, understanding
and creating meaning through text
• What does media literacy teach?
• How to read, write, interpret, and
understanding diverse forms of
media and media expression
Literacy &
Media Literacy

4. “When information is put at play, game-like
experiences replace linear media. Media and
culture in the Ludic Century is increasingly
systemic, modular, customizable, and
participatory. Games embody all of these
characteristics in a very direct sense.”
Eric Zimmerman

5. • What is it?
• “An approach to literacy based on
game design” (23)
• “new set of cognitive, creative, and
social skills” (25)
• Why is it needed?
• Emerging set of skills and
competencies needed to address
changes in world
• How does it reverse traditional
understanding of games?
• Reverses the magic circle, turning it
inside out into the real world
Eric Zimmerman
Gaming
Literacy

6. • Gaming literacy addresses new sorts off
literacies that are crucial in 21st century
• Gaming literacy reverses the magic
circle. It asks how games relate to
outside world.
• What can we learn from game design?
How can games and game design
help us solve problems and think in
new ways?
• Gaming literacy based on three
concepts: systems, play, and design
• Double meaning of “gaming” - gaming a
system (hacking, bending, breaking
rules)
Eric Zimmerman
Gaming
Literacy

7. • Systems
• Systems-based thinking is about
process, not answers
• Play
• Why does play matter? Play is
the “human effect of rules set
into motion”
• Design
• Process by which designer
creates context
• Reading/Writing
• Cultural practices that give
meaning to gaming practices.
Four Concepts

8. Systems Literacy
• What are systems? Systems are groups of interrelated
elements that work together to form a complex whole.
• Systems literacy means having a systems point of view.
Seeing things as systems: understanding the world as a
dynamic set of parts with complex, interchangeable
relationships
• What are the elements of systems?
• data, databases, units, modules, information, interfaces,
relationships, patterns, etc.
• How are games essentially systems?
• With games, there is a clarity of formal system (i.e., the
rules of the game)

9. “Having a systems point of view (being
systems literate) means understanding the
world as dynamic sets of parts with complex,
constantly changing interrelationships—
seeing the structures that underlie out
world, and comprehending how these
structures function.”
Eric Zimmerman

11. Why play?

12. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games (1560)

13. “Systems are important, but if we limit literacy
to structural, systemic literacy, then we are
missing part of the equation. When we move
from systems to play, we shift focus from the
game to the players, from structures of rules
to structures of human interaction.”
Eric Zimmerman

14. “Play is the human effect of rules set into
motion, in its many forms transcending
the systems from which it emerges.”
“Play in many ways is the opposite of rules:
as much as rules are closed and fixed, play
is improvisational and uncertain.”
Why is play necessary for gaming
literacy? What does it add to systems
literacy?

15. Common definition: play is “free movement
within a more rigid structure.”
Play “within a structure,” but “play can play
with structures.
Players do not just play games; they mod them,
engage in meta play between games, and
develop cultures around games.”
Eric Zimmerman on Play

16. “Although play exists outside of games, games do
provide one of the very best platforms for
understanding play—from free play within a
structure to the transformative play that
reconfigures that structure. Any instance of a game
is an engine designed to produce play, a miniature
laboratory for studying play quaplay” (27)
Games and Play

17. Design “the process by which a designer creates a
context, to be encountered by a participant,
from which meaning emerges”

18. “In a game, design mediates between
structure and play; a game system is
designed just so that play will occur” (28)
Design isn’t about a fixed object; “it is
about creating a set of possibilities” (29)
Design

19. • The stories we tell about
games matter
• understanding these stories
should also be part of
gaming literacy
• Skills to assign value and
meaning to games in culture
• Cultural practices of
reading, writing, and telling
stories about games
Reading, Writing, Culture
Narratives &
Stories

21. • Player-centric approach to game
design
• “Instead of focusing on the
actions the player can perform, it
focuses on the situations the
player can encounter.”
• More than interaction. Focus on
anticipation, interpretation, and
introspection.
• Designing and writing situations.
Using constraints to create
situations for players.
Brian Upton
Situational
Game Design

22. “a game can be structured around situations where the ‘best
move’ is not necessarily one that advances the player toward an
arbitrary win state, but rather one that shifts the player’s
attitudes or feelings in satisfying ways”
The core concept of situational game design is (unsurprisingly)
the situation. A situation is an interval of play that contains a
choice.
The notion of the situation gives us a way to break down the
experience of playing a game into small, manageable chunks.
Situations are structured by constraints. When we’re within a
situation we’re offered a range of moves to choose from.
Brian Upton, Situational Game Design
Situations instead of Stories