My presentation at University of Manitoba entitled: "Digital Games, discourses and literacy" exposing some main points of my academic path until now dealing with games. Video related at: http://vimeo.com/17143341

1. Digital games, discourses and
literacy: a trajectory
Luiz Henrique Magnani
PhD researcher at Universidade de São Paulo
Visiting researcher at the University of Manitoba -
Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies
henriquemagnani@gmail.com
http://ideogames.blogspot.com
Nov-2010

2. Early concerns (2004)
Video-games and critical literacy: how can we
play video-games in a critical way?
Proposal/methodology: to explore a game (as
researcher/player) testing their technical limits
and the internal logic of their mechanisms
Game selected: The Sims

3. The Sims
Some technical limits and allowances
observed:
1) Kids cannot work nor do some
domestics labor like cooking;
2) There is no homeless people. Every
“Sim” family has sufficient funds to
buy a regular house and some
furniture;
3) Some direct relations: more
expensive furniture = more comfort =
better mood
4) With more than three kids in a family,
it's almost impossible to play the
game.
-The Sims 1 simulates a U.S. suburban neighborhood.

4. Some major conclusions:
a) Technical limits and allowance are related to designer
discourses.
b) Challenging these limits could expose game's ideology(ies)
c) Exploring and discussing these limits may promote critical
literacy in educational contexts
Some major limits:
a) Focus in the object rather than community practices
b) Risk of determinism (where is the player?)

5. “Turning the game” -
dissertation (2006-2008)
Focus: thinking about potential of digital
gaming for instigate the player to look
critically at his/her own beliefs and value
systems, based on critical education (Freire,
Giroux).
Main proposal: to examine different proposals
of serious/critical games from the perspective
of the author himself, seen as an expert, in
his interaction with the games.

6. Main changes

“Interaction” in its complexity started to be
considered: player creates his own path but
limited by designer previous choices. Designer as
legislator (Frasca, 2001)

Game as cultural artifact: context of production
and external relations of power began to be
considered.

Serious/critical games advent: some
critical/provocative games arise.

7. Ian Bogost's “Airport Security”

8. Some major conclusions:
a) Games themselves can be designed in a “subversive” way
b) We need models to understand how games operate in act of
play and in other contexts
c) Interaction with games operates in a kind of dialogic way
(Bakhtin), but the designer is not present anymore.
d) Designer as legislator is a powerful position: we need to
discuss its responsibility
Some major limits:
a) Focus is still in a particular interaction (researcher's one).
b) Without a contextualized game literacy event, it's difficult to
understand how other players can make meanings of a
game in a concrete situation.

9. Recent perspective – PhD
(2010)
Focus: player's complex meaning-making
process, considering conflicts among
narratives, communities, identities.
Assumptions:
(1) games carry ideological elements which
must be interpreted within their contexts;
(2) the way players construct meanings is not
universal, but conditioned by their own
histories as well as their sense of belonging
to certain localities.

10. Guiding questions
(1) Which strategies can be used for the
construction of meanings at play?
(2) Which relations are likely to be established
between meanings constructed from
videogames and other interpretative contexts
of the world and the others?
(3) Which factors could favor and/or discourage
a critical view and the respect for differences
in such meaning-making processes?

11. Main changes
- Cross-cultural approach: games are produced by and
distributed within and among those local groups and
how they might either promote or discourage dialogues
on difference.
- Truths are built in a complex way. Every cultural artifact
is related with a “local”. (Bhabha, Derrida, Cilliers)
- Narrative as meaning-making: narratives organize and
shape experiences and give us models of the world
(Bruner)

12. Video-games shaping experiences

13. Video-games shaping experiences

14. “Guile’s machete” (name given to a stroke in Street Fighter game)
naming and shaping Rhodolfo’s (a brazilian soccer’s player)
celebration in a synesthetic way.
Video-games shaping experiences

15. Narratives about games
Global / Universal? We? Local? Exotic? They?

16. Some actual questions
How dangerous are the universal claims in video-
games?
How can game’s narratives affect player's
everyday life?
Can subalterns speak in/by games? (Spivak)
Good games: for whom? For what?

17. “Winnitron Jam” experience
“Boys just wanna have fun”

18. Some actual challenges
- What kind of methodology could be proper to
deal with these new practices?
- What kind of literacy (or another) concept
could work to deal with video-games
synesthetic?
- How can we define players localities or
communities when they participate in
different digital cross-cultural “spaces” with
different positions and interests?

19. References
Alcoff, L. “The Problem of Speaking for Others”, Cultural Critique 20 (1991-92): 5-32.
Ayiti: the Cost of Life, video-game. Gamelab, 2005.
Bakhtin, M. Questões de Literatura e de Estética: Teoria do Romance. São Paulo: UNESP/Hucitec, 1988.
Bhabha, H. K. O Local da Cultura. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2003.
Bruner, J.. Making Stories: law, literature, life. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2002.
Chance, K. The right to narrate: interview with Homi Bhabha 03/19/01,
http://www.bard.edu/hrp/resource_pdfs/chance.hbhabha.pdf . Last consulted 20th
April 2007.
Cilliers, P. “Complexity, Deconstruction and Relativism”. Theory Culture Society 22 (2005): 255-267.
Derrida, J. Gramatologia. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1967.
Frasca, G. Videogames of Opressed: Videogames as a Means for Critical Thinking and Debate. Atlanta: Georgia
Institute of Technology, 2001.
Freire, P. e Macedo, D. P. (1987). Literacy : reading the word & the world Critical studies in education series. South
Hadley: Bergin & Garvey Publishers
Giroux, H. A. (1983) Theory and Resistance in Education. New York: Bergin and Garvey..
Spivak, G. C. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Nelson, C and
Grossberg, L, 271-313. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988.
Wright, Will. The Sims, video-game. Eletronic Arts, 2000.