The takeaways from today’s articles all sparked similar reactions. Leonard and Mortenson, both with articles from the maybe-less-relevant-to-the-field-of-composition journal Games and Culture point out that representation matters a lot and should matter a lot, and that everything has history and context, respectively. Okay. That’s all well and good. These points are useful, and they’re being used. Cool.

The pedagogical bits in Delwiche’s piece feel even more useful, potentially, for me right now. Looking at games and game worlds to see that “these environments are complex discursive communities characterized by a ‘full range of social and material practices’” (161) is neat, and “MMOs have instructional promise because they immerse students in complex communities of practice, because their immersive nature invites extended engagement with course material, and because they encourage role- playing” (162). Okay. That’s all well and good. And the students learned. Awesome.

I was also glad Delwiche finally got around to including a nod or two about the risks of addiction and life-disruption that go along with some of these games. The way he deals with it feels tacked-on, but I’m glad it’s there. (I just finished reading Felicia Day’s memoir, which includes an account of her own game addiction, and maybe that’s why as I read this article I couldn’t help but cringe a bit, thinking what if some student in this class gets sucked in and can’t get out?)
Bianca has already called out this author for the unquestioning way he seems to accept game spaces and virtual worlds as “safe,” and along with that, and other points that have been made about the pros and cons and complexities of the kinds of courses that can be designed around games, I think we can’t take all the games and gamer-y enthusiasm at face value.  Yes, they are cool tools and spaces. We can learn in and through and around them a lot about composition and rhetoric and society. They have their costs, just like everything else. But onward we go, writing and teaching with all the writing and teaching technologies that make sense to keep using.