Chapter 3 The Video Game
Aesthetic by Eric Zimmerman
Conventional thoughts on literacy
were confined to reading and writing, then later branched out with media
literacy through music, film, and television.
The advent of the computer and the internet gave rise to a new form of
literacy: Gaming Literacy, which the author states will become important in
this new century.
The Magic Circle, as it applies
to games, is an idea that during play, the game exist within this circle, with
its own rules and beliefs, that is apart from the world without. When applied to video games, the magic circle
is more permeable, meaning that the game can be used to see the world outside;
how we play learn in the game is applied to the real world.
The author is quick to point out
that gaming literacy is not:
about serious games (to teach
about math, science, etc).
about persuasive games (to
deliver a message)
about training game designers.
Gaming literacy is the ability to
understand and create meanings based on systems, play, and design.
System - understanding the
individual parts and how they relate, or work with each other, to create the
whole. In gaming literacy this pertains
to the underlying rules of the game through algorithms and subroutines.
Play - the action that follows
understanding, and sometimes changing or modding, the rules of the game.
Design - the meaning imparted to
the game player through the virtual world of the video game and the
possibilities that existed within.
The author concludes that games
are one way to become literate for a future that is leaning more towards
technology and how it relates to information, communication, and learning. Gaming literacy is but one avenue, with which
the experience and learning is applied to the outside world.
In Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, I watch as my daughter navigates her garden, planning which parts will have the pinata animals and which will have plants; I watch how she manages the choclate coins (the in game currency), deciding items to buy, and how much to save to aquire the more expensive ones. In Minecraft, my daughter wants to build a treehouse next to the home I have built in the side of a mountain. For this game she is planning, on a piece of paper, how to build that treehouse based on the in-game mechanics and she is learning how to allocate the in-game resources for her goal.
There is a lot learning in games, video games is just another way to play.
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