326 Midterm, fountain of knowledge

Chapter 3: This chapter focuses on Gee's experience witht he game Arcanium. He played as a character called Bead Bead a half-elf female who had several abilities such as intelligence and persuation that made her different than the other characters in the game. Gee spoke about three forms of identity: real, virtual, and projected. Real indentity refers to his identity as James Gee, in the real world as a video game player playing as Bead Bead. His values, memories, and personality are all part of this identity. His virtual identity is that of Bead Bead, the half-elf female. Her abilities and the way she interacts in the virtual world in which she dwells is her identity, yet also it is Gee's virtual identity as this magical creature. The projected identity that Gee speaks about is the link between his real and virtual identities. Although he does seem to lose himself in the virtual identity of Bead Bead, his real identity can't help but project itself on the motivations and actions of the virtual character. Gee is trying to arrive at the point that when we play video games, we are never separate from outselves in our virtual worlds. We may have a character that we act as, but we are still ourselves and our identities will be translated onto that character. Thus, Gee sees the virtual world of gaming as something we attempt to lose ourselves in, but can't ever truly do so.

Design Principle- Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience. This principle focuses on two aspects of semiotic domians: Design grammars in both the internal and external sense. Internal design grammar means the principles and patterns in terms of which one can recognize what is and what is not acceptable or typical content in a semiotic domain. External design grammar is the principles and patterns of which one can recognize what is and what is not an acceptable or typical social practice and identity in regard to the affinity group associated with a semiotic domain. Ex: modern art and what counts as modern art= internal. The social practices of those who are in the field of modern art would be the external design. Being able to identitfy games as first person shooters is internal design grammar, yet the social aspect of discussing the games themselves and the public’s understanding of them in the external design grammar.

Multimodal Principle: Meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, words, symbols, interactions, designs, sounds,) not just words. The multimodal principle is concerned with the fact (clear in all of the discussions about video games in this book so far) that, in video games, meaning, thinking, and learning are linked to multiple modalities (words, images, actions, sounds) and not just to words. Sometimes, at a particular point in a game, multiple modalities support each other to communicate similar meanings, sometimes they communicate different meanings, each of which fits together to form a larger, more meaningful and satisfying whole. For example, the sounds that the game produces indicates the danger of a situation along with what is seen and the emoitons you connect with the moment. Learning is not simply achieved through words and description but with the connection made to the moment of interest.