Recently, James was on a panel talking about gaming literacy
And it got him thinking
what does it mean to be literate in the medium?
Is it something we've already achieved in games?
And if not, is it something we need to achieve?
When talking about media literacy I think it helps to break it up into two different types
Basic literacy
The type of literacy that's required just to read the text in the first place
and advances literacy
the type required to dig beyond the surface level and really analyze a work
and neither of these is binary
each exists on a scale
we all have varying levels of basic and advanced literacy in the different kinds of media we consume
you don't just achieve advanced literacy in a medium and instantly understand the full depth of every work within it
and both of these literacy types
become even more complicated
when you apply them to games
LIKE OKAY
lets start with basic literacy
have we achieved basic universal literacy for games?
well, clearly not
when we talk about somebody's ability to 'read' in out medium
what does that mean?
does it mean simply being able to play a game at all?
or does it mean the ability to play a game start to finish?
Completing it like you might a book
or does it sometimes mean one and sometimes the other?
after all, we might say that you have experienced Super Mario Brothers
Even if you've only played the first few worlds yourself
you've seen enough to have a conversation about the game
we can discuss it
and unless we're getting into very specific details
you can hold your own, add to, and get something out of that conversation
but would we say the same thing about bioshock or braid?
Can one say that they have experienced bioshock
if they've only played up to the first big daddy fight?
Can you really have a complete conversation about braid
if you don't know the twist?
and this question isn't even as simple as if first appears
I mean, when considering this myself
my initial assumption was
oh this only applies to narrative heavy games
the kind which might require you to experience the whole narrative
to understand the piece
just like any other narrative medium
but that assumption is incorrect
because, this isn't just a narrative thing
there are plenty of games that don't fully reveal their mechanics till you're deep into the game
I mean, imagine trying to talk about frog fractions
to someone who's only played the beginning
and besides
not all narrative heavy games
neccecarily require you to play all the way through
to have sufficiently experienced them either
take the Witcher Three
it focuses on telling a variety of small self contained stories
often, allowing the central narrative arc to take a backseat
you can argue that
somebody who's only gone through even as little as the bloody baron quest line
has experienced that game
and can, on the broadest level, talk about it meaningfully
so, clearly
finding a comprehensive definition for what game literacy is
is a puzzle we're far from solving
but for right now
lets just assume the lowest bar possible
and simply say that basic literacy is
the ability to play a given game at even a novice level
so, by that metric
have we achieved universal basic game literacy?
not
by
a
longshot
there are a lot of people who,
essentially, don't know how to read when it comes to video games
because they've never learned the unique skills necessary to do so
if you've ever handed a controller to a parent or grandparent
who doesn't really play games
and watched them stare at the thing in bewilderment
as they hold it all wrong
you know what I'm talking about
in games
things like
understanding how a controller works
or, being able to navigate simulated 3D space
is like being able to sound out words
and having at least enough vocabulary to know what most of them mean
these are the sort of basic skills
required to access most texts in this medium
which means that many people still aren't even nominally literate in this medium
which in some ways, holds us back
BUT
even this basic literacy
the ability to experience a text in the first place
is even more complicated than that
because, its not just something you have, or don't have
it's a scale
some books are harder to read than others
not harder to deeply understand, mind you
I mean literally harder to read even at even a basic level
some of us would have no problem reading your average Drizzt novel
but would be completely frustrated trying to read Ulysses
games are the same way
i mean, heck
I have spent my whole life doing this
and I don't even think I'm literate enough to play Europa Universalis III
I know literally over a dozen people
who have picked up dwarf fortress
and did the gaming equivalent of
picking up a book that you think you want to read
getting a few pages in
and then putting it down forever
and this is a strange thing, because
with the way our medium works
there are people who have been playing Madden nonstop for years
but, sit them down in front of a tactics game
and, you might as well be asking them to read french
and, whats more
we have built up so much internalized vocabulary
over years of playing
that, jumping in as a newcomer to our medium now
is even more difficult
I mean, if i showed you a game character with a little red bar over their head
you would instantly identify that as a health bar
right?
you and i are so used to that
we basically never even bother defining it any longer
but, that's not always the case for people just entering games
and that's not to say we should just
change all out games to accommodate those who are just getting started but,
we don't even have a great place for them to start
if you were to google 'books for a beginning reader'
you would get a fairly consistent set of recommendations for where to start
the few places that have even attempted to make similar lists for games
frequently contradict each other
based on the list makers preferences and personal play habits
so, we have a ways to go before
we achieve or even facilitate a basic universal literacy in games
NOW
Why is this important?
well, because universal literacy in other fields created an explosion of creativity
as new voices, who had never been part of the conversation before
provided us with new ways to look at that media
and created works that changed the very foundations of what we thought was possible with them
weather this be in traditional literature or in fields like music
where, expanding who was basically literate in the field
led to jazz and rock and rap
this expansion of literacy
has always led to new work, and new thought
It's also important because a higher level of basic literacy
allows creators to do more
for example
when film started to become popular
the audience didn't innately and instinctually understand what a 'cut' meant
we, instantly read them as
basic jumps in time or place today
but early audiences had to learn that
today, the level of basic literacy among filmgoers has risen to such a degree that
even the most pablum commercials use cuts without worry
and because filmmakers can now rely on that tool
and use it liberally without any explanation or introduction
they can present us with works that would be impossible to comprehend without that universally shared knowledge
I would love to get to a point where we can cut down on most of our tutorials
and never had to drop features because they require a level of audience literacy
that we can't yet one hundred percent guarantee
on top of all of that
the modern triple-A industry's focus on sequels
makes developing basic games literacy even more complicated
imagine a world where almost all of the major books published each year were part of an existing series
if you're just starting to learn how to read
on top of that struggle, now you're wrestling with being thrown into the middle of
every story
with a bunch of characters, jargon, places, and past events
that you're just expected to know
that's what we do
except we're doing it with narrative, and mechanics, and systems
marking it that much harder
luckily, games have one advantage
our entire medium is designed to be engaging
and this means that many people, of then when they're very young
just, struggle through all of this, and learn on their own
because they so want to be literate
they want to have access to all the things this literacy grants
but even so, we as a community should think about games literacy
how much does it matter to us to expand who is literate
how much does it matter to us to increase the average level of basic literacy amongst players?
so that designers can do more with our games
how much does it matter to us
that we achieve that universal literacy
so our games can be used in schools
i know that's a lot to puzzle through
and we kind of introduced more questions than we answered
but, sit tight
we haven't even started into advanced games literacy yet
join us next time to learn what it means to be games-literate on a higher level
see-ya then