Chapter 1: Introduction; principles 8 & 26

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning & Literacy

Chapter 1: 36 Ways to Learn a Video Game

By his own description, James Paul Gee is an educator and researcher, a "linguist interested in language and literacy," and particularly in how we learn. Observing his young son play a video game with what seemed to be an extraordinarily high level of sophistication, he became fascinated with the multi-strata processes of learning that occur in video games and made it a pet project.

Gee explores 36 different learning principles, with the objective of exploring and revealing the power and potential of human learning in sophisticated digital platforms. He refers to the socio-economic phenomenon that Marx dubbed "the Creativity of Capitalism," to explain that when a game--or any learning environment--is well-designed, the learner is voluntarily (and often intensely) engaged, challenged, and progressing quickly. Consequently, "good" games beget more good games, in a progressive pattern of length, levels, and sophistication. (It's important to note that Gee defines a "good game" as effective in competencies like supporting learners on the edge of their "regime of competence;" good does not imply a moral or ethical judgment on a game.) Education, technology, arts, and free enterprise become powerful partners in digital gaming.


Principle 8: The Identity Principle

Video games inherently present a tripartite identity challenge to participants: These three identities are (1) the player's real world identity, (2) their virtual identity, and (3) their projective identity, and learning occurs in interaction with and through all three.

Gee explains that the projective identity is the most complex of the three--and "projective" can be understood via different meanings of the word project: Project, as in the image and identity that one is striving to "put out there," or also project, as in a something one is working on and developing.


Principle 26: The "Bottom-Up" Basic Skills Principle

This principle illustrates that basic skills acquisition in video games is not a matter of practice drills and conscious, deliberate repetition. Repetition in skills acquisition exists in video games as well, but in a well-designed digital gaming environment, the basic skills are learned in an immersion experience, starting from the "bottom-up" and building on one skill set with another. Basic skills in video gaming belong to the genre of game. Gee points out that by the time a gamer becomes aware of what the basic skills required for a particular game are, he has already mastered them.