The most interesting idea that James Paul Gee mentions, for me, is the idea that ‘literacy’ extends beyond reading and writing; that there are different kinds of literacy. This is not a new idea to me, but one that I was happy to encounter here, as it is not an idea seen very often. Video games have their own kind of literacy, a system of operating and language unique to them as both a semiotic domain and as individual games.
On a broader level, we encounter any number of different ‘languages’ in our daily lives and manage them with very little trouble because we’ve learned to be literate in them: the ability to understand road signs is a great example. TO someone who’s used to driving (or just encountering on the road) American signage, the system of symbols is perfectly clear and requires very little thought because it’s become second nature. But put the same person in a foreign country (Japan, for instance), and the signs are different and confusing. Some look similar and mean the same thing, some are completely different, and some look the same but mean something else; you become functionally illiterate in an area you thought you understood.
We’ll probably encounter more on this as we get into Nat Turner but reading comics is an entire language in and of itself, requiring a completely different style of reading from, say, a novel. The way information is presented and processed works differently, and someone who had never encountered a comic before might not be able to follow the action from panel to panel.
Getting back to video games, I was literate in them maybe twenty years ago. I could do fairly well at games on the NES or Sega, or in an arcade. I now own an XBox and find myself struggling to master any of the games that I have for it. There are three times as many buttons on the controller, the games are all more complex and expansive than anything I played as a child, and the skills that I learned then have atrophied. These all become factors in my frustration with modern video games, but I continue to try because I value the entertainment they give me, and maybe I just might learn something else while I’m at it, too. Many of the games require complex problem-solving skills, something I’ve always been fairly good at and a skill that is nothing new to video games. Years of playing the various King’s Quest games on old desktop computers taught me the kinds of solutions that are often required in similar games, and that’s knowledge that does transport over to newer games. Similarly, those lateral thinking skills have also served me well in the real world, helping me to “think outside the box” and find creative solutions to problems that I face in more mundane circumstances.