WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND LITERACY James Paul Gee 01 gee fm 3/13/03 12:04 PM Page i WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND LITERACY JAMES PAUL GEE 01 gee fm 3/1/04 2:47 PM Page ii WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND LITERACY Copyright © James Paul Gee, 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in hardcover in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillan First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ paperback edition: May 2004 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1-4039-6538-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gee, James Paul. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy / James Paul Gee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4039-6538-2 1. Video games—Psychological aspects. 2. Computer games— Psychological aspects. 3. Learning, Psychology of. 4. Visual literacy. 5. Video games and children. I. Title: What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. II. Title. GV1469.3 .G44 2003 794.8’01’9—dc21 2002038153 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letra Libre. First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN paperback edition: May 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. 01 gee fm 3/13/03 12:04 PM Page iii vvv I dedicate this book to my six-year-old son, Sam. I originally tried to play his computer games so I could teach him how to play them, but in the end, things worked out just the reverse and he taught me how to play. More, he taught me to take learning and playing games seriously, all the while having fun. I also dedicate the book to my twenty-two-year-old son, Justin. He didn’t play computer or video games much as a kid, though he had no trou- ble thoroughly trouncing me when we last visited an arcade. Justin’s early fascination with StarWars was my first guide, Sam’s with Pokemon, my second guide, to the powerful and creative learning people can bring to the aspects of “popular culture” with which they choose to identify and which they often choose to transform for their own ends. The children, teenagers, and neotenic adults, including my identical twin brother, and now myself, who play computer and video games were my third. vvv This page intentionally left blank 01 gee fm 3/13/03 12:04 PM Page v CONTENTS 1. Introduction: 36 Ways to Learn a Video Game 1 2. Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a “Waste of Time”? 13 3. Learning and Identity: What Does It Mean to Be a Half-Elf? 51 4. Situated Meaning and Learning: What Should You Do After You Have Destroyed the Global Conspiracy? 73 5. Telling and Doing: Why Doesn’t Lara Croft Obey Professor Von Croy? 113 6. Cultural Models: Do You Want to Be the Blue Sonic or the Dark Sonic? 139 7. The Social Mind: How Do You Get Your Corpse Back After You’ve Died? 169 8. Conclusion: Duped or Not? 199 Appendix: The 36 Learning Principles 207 References 213 Index 221 This page intentionally left blank 02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 1 1 INTRODUCTION: 36 WAYS TO LEARN A VIDEO GAME I WANT TO TALK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES—YES, EVEN VIOLENT VIDEO games—and say some positive things about them. By “video games” I mean both games played on game platforms (such as the Sony PlayStation 2, the Nintendo GameCube, or Microsoft’s XBox) and games played on comput- ers. So as not to keep saying “video and computer games” all the time, I will just say “video games.” I am mainly concerned with the sorts of video games in which the player takes on the role of a fantasy character moving through an elaborate world, solving various problems (violently or not), or in which the player builds and maintains some complex entity, like an army, a city, or even a whole civilization. There are, of course, lots of other types of video games. But, first, I need to say something about my previous work and how and why I arrived here to discuss video games. In two earlier books, Social Linguis- tics and Literacies and The Social Mind, I argued that two things that, at first sight, look to be “mental” achievements, namely literacy and thinking, are, in reality, also and primarily social achievements. (See the Bibliographic Note at the end of this chapter for references to the literature relevant to this chapter.) When you read, you are always reading something in some way. You are never just reading “in general” but not reading anything in particular. For example, you can read the Bible as history or literature or as a self-help guide or in many other ways. So, too, with any other text, whether legal tract, comic book, essay, or novel. Different people can interpret each type of text differently. When you think, you must think about something in some way. You are never just thinking “in general” but not thinking anything in particular. The 02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 2 2 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v argument about thinking is, in fact, the same as the argument about reading. For example, you can think about people who kill themselves to set off a bomb, in pursuit of some cause they believe in, as suicide bombers, murder- ers, terrorists, freedom fighters, heroes, psychotics, or in many other differ- ent ways. Different people can read the world differently just as they can read different types of texts differently. So, then, what determines how you read or think about some particular thing? Certainly not random chemicals or electrical events in your brain, al- though you do most certainly need a brain to read or think. Rather, what de- termines this is your own experiences in interacting with other people who are members of various sorts of social groups, whether these are biblical scholars, radical lawyers, peace activists, family members, fellow ethnic group or church members, or whatever. These groups work, through their various social practices, to encourage people to read and think in certain ways, and not others, about certain sorts of texts and things. Does this mean you are not “free” to read and think as you like? No— you can always align yourself with new people and new groups—there is no shortage. But it does mean you cannot read or think outside of any group whatsoever. You cannot assign asocial and private meanings to texts and things, meanings that only you are privy to and that you cannot even be sure you remember correctly from occasion to occasion as you read or think about the same thing, since as a social isolate (at least in regard to meaning) you cannot, in fact, check your memory with anyone else. The philosopher Lud- wig Wittgenstein made this case long ago in his famous argument against the possibility of “private languages.” There are no “private minds” either. Does all this mean that “anything goes” and “nothing is true”? Of course not. We humans have goals and purposes, and for some goals and purposes some groups’ ways of reading and thinking work better than do others. But it does mean that things are not “true” apart from any purpose or goal whatso- ever. In the world of physics, as an academic area, if you have pushed your stalled car until you are dripping with sweat but the car has not budged, you have done no “work” (given how physicists use this word), but in the world of “everyday” people, people not attempting at the moment to be physicists or do physics, you have worked very hard indeed. Neither meaning is right or wrong. Each belongs to a different social world. However, if you want to do physics—for good or ill—it’s best to use the word “work” the way physicists do. In that case, they are “right.” 02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 3 v INTRODUCTION v 3 These viewpoints seem obvious to me. They will seem so to some read- ers as well. Nonetheless, they occasion great controversy. Furthermore, they are not the views about reading and thinking on which most of our schools today operate. Take reading, for instance. We know a great deal about the psycholinguistics of reading—that is, about reading as a mental act taking part in an individual’s head. These views strongly inform how reading is taught in school. And there is nothing wrong with this, save that psycholin- guistics is only part—in my view the smaller part—of the reading picture. We know much less about reading as a social achievement and as part and parcel of a great many different social practices connected to a great many different social groups that contest how things should be read and thought about.