Delwiche’s article was, overall, an “interesting” read. My first issue, though, was that he didn’t branch out in his references to see what others were saying about the use of games in learning. And by others, I mean he left us SLS folks out and it seems Composition people to. Though his article was published in 2006, researchers like Thorne, Sykes, and Reinhardt in SLA were already looking at the use of MMOs in second language learning/acquisition. They were particularly interested in Second Life and WoW, finding high correlations between learning and playing. The other issue I had was his conception of “Safe” and saying that MMOs are non-harming environments, and contradicts himself by saying not all are created equal. It’d probably be a good idea to unpack what safe means for each student. There are, as we know, plenty of occurrences of harassment when playing MMOs, or any online game where people can critique behind their screens. Students should be at least made aware of these possibilities, especially if the classroom is where they’ll first be exposed. I do like the idea of having students conduct ethnography in a video game as a class project.
Moving on to my man Leonard:
How can one truly understand fantasy, violence, gender roles, plot, narrative, game playability, virtual realities (all common within the current literature), and the like without examining race, racism, and/or racial stratification—simply put, one cannot.
I’ve been trying to find an intersection for all of my divergent (or what appear to be) interests: ESL, race studies, internationalism, identity, technology use, writing instruction, narratives, and, the newly, games studies. It’s not easy finding a place where all of these meet and can be explored interdependently, but it seems that Leonard makes a strong argument for the study of most these within videos and the societal perceptions of stereotypes within them.