As I read the Kishonna Gray piece a few weeks ago I found myself considering the lack of empirical research in much of the gaming studies and computer based readings from this semester. Arguably, this absence could be the fault of writing studies’ fraught relationship with research methodologies, but the absence of research could also be understood in a lighter way–writing studies is always under development. The field is always looking to the next new cool thing to establish its relevancy and value to each new generation of writers and research. This is how we come to discuss interdisciplinary topics such as film, advertising, music, and video games in the English department.  Our field’s turn to new media (including the typewriter and computer, as readings from early in the semester revealed) is therefore a reflection of rhetoric and composition’s desire to become part of the “masses.” Near the end of the chapter “New Media Publics,” Lisa Gitelman says “the social meanings of new media are not technologically determined in any broad sense” (56).  She provides this statement after presenting a chapter about tin foil and under-appreciated sound devices that seemingly have nothing to do with writing, composition studies, or play as we have  discussed all semester, but the conversation Gitelman presents connects us back to the presentation of mass media and teaching the masses. Gray’s desire for more diverse and realistic representations in video games also reflects an acknowledgement that “the masses” has also changed. Perhaps it is time our fields caught up to these new publics.