Games R Lit
Video Games in ELA
Explore how to engage with video games as literature with your students. This section describes youth lens, narrative-based games, and ludology.
Adolescence and the "Youth Lens"
Our deliberate selection of games featuring young-adult protagonists required a critical playthrough procedure drawing from research on adolescence as a cultural construct (e.g., Lesko, 2012) and approaches to analyzing young-adult texts like the youth lens (Petrone, Sarigianides & Lewis, 2015). The youth lens, for example, encourages readers of texts catering to young-adult audiences to analyze the ways in which dominant ideas about adolescents/ce (e.g. as being emotionally unstable, as fitting into narrow categorizations like jock/geek, as in a constant state of “becoming” until adulthood is reached, etc.) are either reinforced and/or subverted through that particular text.
Ludonarrative Harmony
Ludonarrative Dissonance/Harmony in Young-Adult Games
Definition: When a game’s narrative and ludology intersect, you can experience either ludonarrative dissonance or harmony (Hocking, 2007).
​
Ludonarrative dissonance: When the game’s narrative is at odds with the game’s ludological features.
​
Ludonarrative harmony: When the game’s narrative is in harmony with the game’s ludological features.
​
Guiding questions to consider:
-
When considering the intersection of the game’s narrative and ludology, are there any notable dissonances or harmonies?
Narrative in Young Adult Games
Definition: A game’s narrative consists of components merging to create an emergent storyworld. From general plot, themes, and characterizations, to dialogue, game atmosphere, and music.
​
Guiding questions to consider:
-
How does the game’s narrative represent adolescent characters or youth in general?
-
What role does narrative play in reinforcing and/or subverting dominant ideas about adolescence?
-
How do components of the game such as setting, themes, and characterizations contribute to these representations?
Ludology in Young Adult Games
Definition: A game’s ludology consists of the game’s playable qualities, like game rules, game play, abilities as a player, and game world.
​
Guiding questions to consider:
-
How do the game’s ludological features entrain you into performing youth in a particular way inside the game’s storyworld?
-
As you develop agency and plan strategically throughout gameplay, how is your experience of adolescence altered?
-
As you participate in the unfolding of the game’s emergent narrative and experience an embodied emergence into the game world, how are you able to actively reinforce and/or subvert dominant ideas about adolescence?
Key Readings
Caracciolo, M. (2015). Playing home: videogame experiences between narrative and ludic interests. Narrative, 23(3), 231-251.
​
Hocking, C. (2007, October). Ludonarrative dissonance in Bioshock. Click Nothing. Retrieved from https://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html
​
Lesko, N. (2012). Act your age! A cultural construction of adolescence. New York: Routledge.
Petrone, R., Sarigianides, S. T., & Lewis, M. A. (2014). The youth lens: analyzing adolescence/ts in literary texts. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4), 506-533.