Now You’re Playing With Pedagogy: Video Games, Digital Literacies, and Trans-Media Participatory Cultures by Matthew Kelly B.A. in English and Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, 2008 M.A. in English, Pennsylvania State University, 2011 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English University of Pittsburgh 2017 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Matthew Kelly It was defended on June 16, 2017 and approved by Tyler Bickford, Assistant Professor, Department of English Annette Vee, Assistant Professor, Department of English Stuart Selber, Associate Professor, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University Dissertation Director: William Scott, Associate Professor, Department of English ii Copyright © by Matthew Kelly 2017 iii NOW YOU’RE PLAYING WITH PEDAGOGY: VIDEO GAMES, DIGITAL LITERACIES, AND TRANS-MEDIA PARTICIPATORY CULTURES Matthew Kelly, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2017 This projects examines the learning practices of video games and gaming communities while also considering the benefits of incorporating game-based projects in to the writing classroom. The first several chapters explore how pedagogical strategies in gameplay experiences are capable of creating (and critiquing) epistemological frameworks via real-time feedback mechanisms based on player participation. The author then examines the peer-to-peer teaching practices that characterize several prominent online gaming circle to demonstrate the unique forms of digital literacies cultivated through virtual gamespaces and trans-media participatory gaming communities. The author concludes by discussing my own experiences using video games in the composition classroom and contextualizing new forms of game-based teaching strategies in relation to digitally-focused composition scholarship. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... VIII 1.0 THE ROLE OF PEDAGOGY IN VIDEO GAME SCHOLARSHIP ..................... 1 1.1 VIDEO GAMES AS DYNAMIC SYSTEMS .................................................... 4 1.2 LITERACY, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND GAMEPLAY .................................. 12 1.3 THEORIZING WHAT CONSTITUTES DIGITAL LITERACY................ 23 1.4 USING GAMES IN THE WRITING CLASSROOM .................................... 28 1.5 PRESSING START ........................................................................................... 32 2.0 THE GAME OF POLITICS: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF WORK, PLAY, AND SUBJECTIVITY FORMATION IN PAPERS, PLEASE .............................................. 36 2.1 THE POLITICS OF/IN VIDEO GAMES ....................................................... 39 2.2 WORK VERSUS PLAY IN KNOWLEDGE ECONOMIES ........................ 43 2.3 VIDEO GAMES AS SUBJECTIVITY MACHINES ..................................... 50 2.4 THE RUTHLESS PRAGMATISM OF PAPERS, PLEASE.......................... 55 2.5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 61 3.0 DARK SOULS AND THE ETHICS OF NETWORKED PEDAGOGIES ............ 62 3.1 LORDRAN AND THE SPACE OF NON-ENCOUNTERS .......................... 64 3.2 VULNERABILITY, EXPOSURE, AND ETHICS ......................................... 71 v 3.3 LEARNING THROUGH LORE...................................................................... 79 3.4 THE ETHICS OF NETWORKED PEDAGOGIES ....................................... 89 3.5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 96 4.0 GAMING LITERACY AND PROFESSIONALISM IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM ............................................................................................................................. 98 4.1 MINECRAFT AND AUDIENCE AGENCY ................................................ 100 4.2 BECOMING LITERATE IN VIDEO GAMES ............................................ 103 4.3 WHAT’S SO PROFESSIONAL ABOUT VIDEO GAMES? ...................... 107 4.4 USING GAMING LITERACY TO (MINE)CRAFT PROFESSIONALS . 112 4.5 THE GAME OF CIVIL ENGINEERING .................................................... 117 4.6 THE ROLE OF PEDAGOGY IN PROFESSIONALISM ........................... 123 4.7 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 125 5.0 THE LABOR OF CRITIQUE: USING FUNCTIONAL EPISTEMOLOGIES TO RETHINK THE WORK OF CULTURAL CRITICISM ..................................................... 128 5.1 WHY SO CRITICAL? .................................................................................... 130 5.2 READING AGENCY, WRITING AGENCY ............................................... 134 5.3 WHY SO LIBERATED? ................................................................................ 141 5.4 CREATING FUNCTIONAL EPISTEMOLOGIES AS A FORM OF CRITIQUE ........................................................................................................................ 146 5.5 THE ROLE OF WRITING IN THE DESIGN PROCESS .......................... 156 5.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 159 6.0 EPILOGUE ............................................................................................................... 163 6.1 PLAYING WITH PEDAGOGY .................................................................... 166 vi 6.2 GAINING ACCESS, GAMING ACCESS .................................................... 170 6.3 CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE ........................................................ 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 178 vii INTRODUCTION The first time I ever used video games in my classroom was in my Written Professional Communication seminar at the University of Pittsburgh. This might seem a bit odd for two reasons. First, Written Professional Communication is not often seen as fertile territory for experimenting with new forms of digital media-based learning practices (an unfair assessment that I will eventually discuss in a later chapter). Second, my institution already offered several composition courses specifically dedicated to digital media in the course catalog. For someone who is interested in the learning practices of games and gaming communities, having a course titled Composing Digital Media already on the books seemed like a prime opportunity to explore what happens when students begin to compose through and with video games. Unfortunately, by the time I finally made the commitment to dedicate my dissertation to video games and the learning practices of games and gaming communities—thanks in part to the overwhelming support expressed by my committee advisors—I had already submitted my teaching preferences for the upcoming academic year and was committed to these course assignments. Hence, I was in a situation where I had to temper my teaching commitments with my own research interests, a position that many graduate students often (and, perhaps, necessarily) find themselves in. While preparing for my course, I knew I wanted to use video games somehow but I did not want to simply commandeer this class for my own personal research interests. As many teachers know, a delicate balance is needed when planning a course; we cannot simply reverse- viii engineer a class based on personal enthusiasm for a specific object-of-examination (i.e., radically restructuring a university-wide writing course, which is designed to serve the needs of many students, around the highly-particular, discipline-specific research interests of a single instructor). Conversely, we cannot introduce a new set of texts to pre-existent curricula without questioning how the introduction of new media or formats might radically shape the type of projects and social interactions that structure a class (i.e., taking an “add X and stir” approach to curricula design that overlooks the nuances and actual impact of new material being assigned to students). Consequently, the nagging two-fold question remained: how can video games help evolve and expand the goals of my course and, equally important, how can the goals of my course help further explore the themes and principles underlying a game or gaming community? To quickly jump ahead, I decided on using Minecraft as the common territory for my Written Professional Communication seminar, and I will discuss my experiences using Minecraft in a later chapter. For now, though, I want to reflect upon the process of negotiating the risks and rewards of introducing video games into a specific class. My personal anxieties surrounding how I might use video games in an upper-division writing course that satisfies a university-wide requirement can be re-framed as worries about the space and locations of learning. That is to say, my concerns about balancing institutional obligations in writing courses and personal interests in video games were actually responses to the questions: how do the virtual spaces of games— along with all the discursive practices and algorithmic processes that sustain these spaces—adapt to, manipulate, or even challenge the power relations that are calcified in literal or metaphorical institutional infrastructure? Conversely, how are traditional educational spaces—not