This document discusses James Paul Gee's book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" and the concepts within. It covers how learning is a social and situated act, embodied experience, active learning and intertextuality. Game design concepts like semiotic domains, designed experiences, and games emphasizing doing and adhering to a binary structure of activity and inactivity are examined. Different game genres and how they relate to film, television and narrative are also summarized.

2.  Intertextuality
 “a model where literary structure does not simply exist but
is generated in relation to another structure.What allows a
dynamic dimension to structuralism is his conception of
the ‘literary word’ as an intersection of textual surfaces
rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialogue among
several writings: that of the writer, the addressee (or the
character) and the contemporary or earlier cultural
context” (Kristeva 35-36, alluding to Bakhtin)

3. • WhatVideo Games HaveToTeach
Us About Learning and Literacy
(2003) and follow-ups
• Combines situated learning
principles with… <GASP>… video
games?

4.  Learning is not an individual act but a social
one as well (7).
 Situated cognition – Learning “embedded in
(situated within) a material, social, and
cultural world” (9)
 New Literacy Studies
 Connectionism – recognizing patterns

5.  Some learning has little contextualized
meaning (ex. upper level math courses)
 Embodied experience (activity vs. passivity)
 Active learning (back to intertextuality)
 Identity*

6.  Semiotic domain
 Design space
 Projective identity
 Subdomain

7.  Question of approaching this kind of
material- HOW?
 Producing meaning and actions (33)
 The player is an “active problem solver”

8.  Games as “designed
experiences”
 Gamespace as a world
 Situations, actions, con
sequences

9.  Games- cognition as
interaction
 Games as well-defined
problems
 The multiple functions
of games

10.  Based on Steven Heath’s theory of narrative
space in film (1981)
 Player as director (game = movie): “The
presentation of cinematic space is a process of
selective framings and editing that produce ‘gaps’
or jumps in the continuity of the flow of images”

11.  Games emphasize the act of
doing, what Espen Aarseth calls
“ergodic” action
 Games adhere to a binary structure, a
rhythm of activity and inactivity

12.  Media literacy remote
 Five Critical Questions
 Close Readings

13.  Strategy –sociology, economics
 Fighting – backstories, characterization
 FPS (First-person shooters) - adaptation, tie-
ins
 TPS (Third-person shooters) - full cinematic
experiences
 Platformers - from side-scrollers to fully
realized 3D bringing symbolism, some
archetypes

14.  Action / adventure
 Point-and-click adventure
 Narrative adventure
 Adventure RPG
 Dance
 Karaoke / Performance
 Photography
 Exercise
 Sports
 Interactive Sports
 Language learning
 Memory
 Scientific models
 Historical models
 Mathematical
 Writing
 Other simulated learning

15. Games and Film:
GamesAS Film
Video games have
become nearly (if
not entirely)
synonymous with
film and television
in their
production, mech
anics, and
consumption in
our culture.

16.  Batman:Arkham Knight (Trailer)
 Dead Space 2 Opening (Cutscene)

17.  Games developed, marketed, released as “TV
shows”
 Episodic structure
 Multiple seasons
 “Previously on…” AlanWake
 A serial experience of identification renewed
over time

18.  Elias,Amy. “CriticalTheory and Cultural Studies.” English Studies: An Introduction
to the Discipline(s). Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. 223-275. Print.
 Gee, James Paul. WhatVideo Games Have toTeach Us About Learning and
Literacy. NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
 Hobbs, Renee. Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom.
California:Corwin, 2011. Print.
 Kristeva, Julie. “Word, Dialogue, and Novel.”Trans. Seán Hand and León S.
Roudiez. The Kristeva Reader. Ed.Toril Moi. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 34-61.
Print.
 Krzywinska,Tanya. “Hands-On Horror.” ScreenPlay:
Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces. Eds. Geoff King andTanya Krzywinska. NewYork:
Wallflower Press, 2002. 206-224. Print.

19.  Squire, Kurt. “From Content to Context:Videogames as Designed
Experience.” Educational Researcher 35.8 (Nov 2006): 19-29. Print.
 Steinkuehler, Constance A. “Why Game (Culture) Studies Now?” Games and
Culture 1.1 (Jan 2006): 97-102. Obtained at http://games.sagepub.com
 Tong, Wee Liang and Marcus Cheng ChyeTan. “Vision andVirtuality:The
Construction of Narrative Space in Film and Computer Games.” ScreenPlay:
Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces. Eds. Geoff King andTanya Krzywinska. New
York: Wallflower Press, 2002. 98-109.