Game studies has done a good job of figuring out what exactly constitutes a game and creating methodologies to interpret games but I don’t think we’ve done a good job of focusing on pedagogy. And let me be clear, by pedagogy I do not mean the educational potentialities of game technologies – those of course have been well documented by James Paul Gee, Constance Steinkuehler, Yasmin B. Kafai and many others. What I mean is how do we as game studies scholars teach students how to read and interpret the games themselves, along with the surrounding discourses and paratextual industries that accompany games? Ed Chang has written an excellent article offering one answer to this question theorizing textual analysis of gameplay or, to use the term he creates,  how to “close play” in a similar vein as close reading. I would like to offer another possibility using an example of how I teach game analysis, more specifically the analysis of gamic race, using the famous Leeroy Jenkins World of Warcraft (WOW) machinima.

In my classes, I do not have the curricular freedom or the technical capability to have students play a game like World of Warcraft (my classes are standardized introductory composition). However, most students are aware of the game and a short in-class demonstration of gameplay and further explanation usually affords them a basic understanding of how it works. With that background I then explain how a lot can be gained interpretively from looking at how game texts are appropriated, discussed, and remixed by the players. This builds on another lesson I often teach that I have blogged about previously that makes the point games must be analyzed not just in terms of what they represent visually, but also acknowledging the game technologies that are implicated in that representation (this is connected to Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort’s platform studies series at MIT). Therefore, by looking at the Leeroy Jenkins video and the surrounding player and media discourses students then get a more complete picture of all the different levels of meaning at work and available for analysis in a game.

Drawing on much of my argument put forth in “Blackless Fantasy” published in Games and Culture earlier this year, I then give them an overview of character creation systems in MMORPGs and the seemingly progressive push towards more options for visualization in order to facilitate more diversity. Students usually respond favorably to these changes and view them as the right thing to do given their familiarity with the rhetoric of multiculturalism. Once that is established I point out that even with these options available MMORPGs are predominantly whitewashed environments where blackness is viewed as abnormal and when black or brown avatars are present in MMORPG space they are often lampooned as incongruent with fantasy or sci-fi convention. (But that does not mean blackness is not of central importance to the game itself since high fantasy is obsessed with racial others.) My goal in discussing character creation is to expose the inherent problems of liberal multiculturalism since it understands social equity to be achieved through visibility and not deeper structural changes.

This is a fitting transition into the Leeroy Jenkins video which is representative of how blackness is understood within the context of the world by the players. I show the video with only a short explanation of its narrative purpose in order to illicit a more natural reaction to the humor of the video thus making the exposure of its racial logics more impactful.

After the viewing, we discuss the semiotics at work in the video and how Leeroy, a rare black avatar in WOW, is coded as black. Students often take note of the voice used by the player of Leeroy (a stereotypical 70s blaxploitation voice), the signification of the name as, once again, fitting with blaxploitation, but they often do not take note of the role played by Leeroy within the dynamic of the group.

The bumbling fool that is trying to fit into the predominantly white MMO space but ultimately screws it up for everyone is an example of the Zip Coon minstrel archetype. Demonstrating this to the students shows how these representations have a historical lineage and have undergone many permutations.

In order to counter common reactions to this reading by viewers—reactions that may be circling the classroom—I then have the class look at a Wikipedia discussion that questions the potentially racist content of the video. Please note, this discussion has since been deleted from Wikipedia.

Original Comment:

Am I mistaken, or is this whole character a giant racial stereotype? HELLO?! –yuletide

First Reply:

I’m confused. He’s a character in a game. He doesn’t have a race. I’m white and I love chicken. I would lord my possession of good chicken over anyone I met. I would especially use it to deflect or downplay blame. Maybe the person who is racist is you. Megan 02:24, 20 March 2006

Second Reply:

Maybe it is, why would that be so remarkable? The video is nothing but a bit of comedy after all. 132.162.213.109 05:00, 13 March 2006

Third Reply:

I think you’re mistaken. Why’s it a stereotype? Because of the chicken comment? Even if it is, so what? Surely in some countries people are still free to say what they want, whether or not some folks will be offended by it. Sukiari 22:03, 14 March 2006

The discussion is representative of the common responses to claims of racial insensitivity within and without videogame culture and therefore it educates students as to the contours of the surrounding discourses. It is also productive in that it shows the importance of these issues and usefulness of the critical methodology.

While the students never analyze the game itself, by analyzing a machinima that mediates the game, students are shown how the politics of representation in videogames extend far beyond the character selections available to players and whether they adhere to or subvert dominant stereotypes.

I also like to conclude by pointing out how Blizzard, the game company behind WOW, has  dealt with the potentially offensive content of the video by nullifying race while embracing the marketing potential of Leeroy Jenkins.

I have used MMORPG character creation tools as one example of how race is quantified and mapped into a set of options that presents the illusion of choice while adhering to a identifiable set of logics about racial difference. I have also had the students read David Leonard’s “Virtual Gangstas, Coming to a Suburban House Near You: Demonization, Commodification, and Policing Blackness” in order to understand how Grand Theft Auto can be interpreted as a metaphor for the necessity of policing race. I also tend to extend these discussions of Grand Theft Auto to analyze its satirical content and how it presents a critical view of racial antagnoism in American city by exposing the spatialization, hiearchicalization, and inequity of space.

However, it has been challenging to demonstrate, given the difficulty of bringing game consoles into the classroom, how racial representation is coded into the game world via easily identifiable population algorithms which fill the streets with what are considered the appropriate denizens of each sector of the gamespace. This recorded gameplay video of a member of 4 Player Podcast on Justin.tv solved my problems. In the video, the player enters an internet cafe in Grand Theft Auto 4 and encounters a glitch that causes the cafe to be filled with what he calls “heavy set black men.” The point of the video is not to expose some kind of hidden racism but to show students how the game’s technical architecture is a crucial component in understanding how race is manifested in the gameworld. The appearance of heavyset black men in a certain area of the game is not an entirely random effect but a programmed operation with both a technical and cultural logic at play that should be interrogated.

Twitter is the current hot social network and, for once, I think it is justified. As others have pointed out, what makes Twitter useful is its adherence to simplicity in design and features and the ability to be followed but not follow, or, its asymmetry.

Academics have been especially intrigued by its functionality in the classroom and many have been employing it in novel ways. Dave Parry does a good job of summarizing these various uses and a colleague of Dave’s, Monica Malkin, is featured in a video that demonstrates her use of Twitter as a backchannel.

A backchannel is a networked discussion that occurs behind, but in conjunction with, some kind of primary presentation of material. Twitter is an excellent tool to facilitate such a discussion as evidenced by the video above.

This quarter I am a teaching a standardized and regimented composition course at the University of California, Riverside which I have modified as much as possible to focus on technology and have titled “Culture Machines.” For the first time I have decided to run a course Twitter account and have required all students to sign up and complete a very simple assignment. The idea is to just introduce them to the service and allow them to use it as they see fit. I, however, have been using it extensively as a way to extend the classroom and post interesting links, provocative questions, and announcements.

Students, as expected, had no experience with the service (I believe only one, when surveyed, had tried it) and they were very slow to use it. Twitter tends to have this puzzling effect on new users who find it to be inferior to Facebook or too abstract. Having went through this phase myself, I recognized that what really got me hooked on the service was finding some likeminded friends and entering into conversations (using @ replies) around a central topic – for me it was the 2008 election.

Therefore, to recreate this situation I decided to initiate a backchannel discussion during our week long screening of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

I had every student follow everyone else in the class in order to receive all of the backchannel content. To do this I recommended they look on the course Twitter account before class and follow everyone I (the course twitter adminastrator) was following.

I recommended anyone with a laptop bring that to class and use it. For those with iPhones or G1 phones, I recommended they download an application. For others, I instructed them, if they had a good texting plan, to set up their phones for text use with Twitter. This is very easy and the Twitter website provides guides for this sort of thing. It’s important that they have a good texting plan otherwise it could be expensive.

I designated a hash tag for the class to use (#cmact2) so we could all group our tweets together and find them later via a search.

Most students had access to one of the two and set themselves up without any issues. I was suprised by how smoothly that went.

BENEFITS

• Students seemed to take to this concept instantly and enthusiastically. As you can see if you check our feed, many students were participating, responding with each other, and making insightful observations as well as answering each other’s questions. Regular class discussion tended to be dominated by five students but via the backchannel students who had never participated before were very active.
• The backchannel, in a 10 week/50 min./3 days a week class, allowed me to contextualize and provide a commentary for the film during valuable classtime that otherwise would be without any critical discussion or instructor guidance. I loved the ability to, as the film was being screened, point out key moments or potential readings.  I am certain this enhanced the students’ understanding of the film, their investment in it as a critical object, and allowed me to shape their thinking of it, in real-time, in order to match the focus of the assignment (which was a gender analysis of the film)
• The backchannel not only allowed quieter students a more comfortable environment in which to interact and contribute, but also leveled out the divide between myself and my students.

PROBLEMS

• Clicking and typing noises were a little bit distracting in our relatively small classroom (set up for 30-40). Although I did tell everyone to silence their phones, there is really nothing that can be done about the clicking. A good sound system that can overpower this background noise is key.
• Some students, although I had not heard any complaints, might feel a bit alienated by not participating in the feed. To alleviate this I would encourage those students to check the feed after class and contribute. There’s no reason the backchannel cannot be extended to after class.
• The final screening’s backchannel was disrupted almost completely by Twitter’s scheduled maintenance. Unfortunately, Twitter is subject to frequent outages.

POSSIBILITIES

• Some of our classrooms have two projectors and two screens. This would be the optimal set up for a backchannel. The instructor could screen the film on one screen and have the course Twitter feed on the other. This would also help those students who cannot contribute to the feed still feel like part of the activity.

FINALLY

Add me on Twitter! ]]> http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2009/05/twitter-in-the-classroom-backchanneling-a-film-screening/feed/ 0