Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

Blog post #2 – Catherine Howes

In our classrooms, our students are spending countless hours playing video games. The media has attacked video games and presented them as mind numbing pieces of visual vomit that can affect the violence level of children. This, however, is a very narrow view of the possibilities of video games. Video games in essence are a form of interactive escapist fiction. Many have storylines options that allow the character to participate in episodes or chapters that must be completed before the story can progress. This allows students who have difficulty with the written word a way of interacting with fiction in a way that is tactile and understandable. Video games work when they, like novels, are able to pull the reader/user into the story when they have a certain amount of believability.

Many video game developers are coming out with games that are very similar to the choose your own adventure books that were once featured in my elementary school library. Each user/player is able to “write” their own version of the story and have their own experience with the material. Examples of these types of video games include:

Bioshock

–       You decide whether or not you want to harvest characters called little sisters who contain ADAM in them, which gives you super human strength. The ending of the game is dependent on your choices in the game

Skyrim

–       You choose a character and then choose their:

• race
• faction (gives certain diplomatic advantages)
• appearance
• gender
• skills

–       Each player has his or her own unique experience with the game.

Fallout 3

–       At the very beginning of the game you decide what kind person you want to be a good person or a bad person in the game

• Good: Meet the sheriff, disarm the nuke
• Bad: Meet a stranger who tells you to blow the nuke up

–       Each decision has it’s own advantages and disadvantages

Through these different games, you can see how the game customizes itself for the user/reader. Much like no two readers have the same experience reading the same book, neither do the users have the same experience playing the game.

Video games can also be a great tool in the classroom by looking at different aspects of video games. Some discussion questions include:

–       How do video games market themselves?

• Who are their intended audience and what clues from commercials can tell you whom the game is designed for?

–       What does this video game tell us about a society?

• Why do we have these types of video games?
• Do the games hold the same values that we as a society do?

–       What types of archetypes can you find in the games?

• How does the game play with these archetypes and are their examples that you could link to real world people?

–       Can you plot a video game on a Freytag pyramid?

–       What types of foreshadowing can you see in video games to predict future events?

–       How does the P.O.V change how you perceive the game and your connection to it as a reader/player?

–       What types of characters do you find in the game? Are they flat, round, or stereotype? Are they dynamic or static?

Video games have also been adapted to film. You could watch a walkthrough of a game and compare it to the film version. What does the film keep? What does it take away? Is the film able to capture the essence of the video game? Why or why not? This could be used to help their critical thinking skills by looking at the storyline in the video game and piecing together the different aspects of it that are similar to a novel.