Everyday Literacies

Over the past several months Peter Lang has published three excellent books that look at gaming from complementary perspectives in our New Literacies Series. With a number of new books due for publication soon, this is a good time to bring these books together here.

In chronological order, the first to appear was Myint Swe Khine's collection on Learning to Play: Exploring the Future of Education with Video Games. Following the editor's careful Introduction, the book addresses nine highly relevant contemporary themes:

• Video game design as model for professional learning (Rich Halverson, Christopher Blakesley and Regina Figueiredo-Brown)
• A game-based learning framework: Linking game design and learning outcomes (Jan-Paul van Staalduinen and Sara de Freitas)
• Presenting content information and facilitating instruction: Design techniques for advancing game flow (Atsusi Hirumi and Rick Hall)
• Using digital games and virtual environments to enhance learning Mary E. Green and Mary Nell McNeese)
• Game changer: How principles of video games can transform teaching (Janna Jackson)
• Motivating science education through games (Christopher A. Egert and Andrew M. Phelps)
• Operation KTHMA--Reign of the Demiurge: Game worlds, Greek history and situated learning (Roger Travis and Michael Young)
• "All I know I learned from Zelda": Immersive gaming and learning and why the Legend of Zelda is a perfect learning game (David Squire)
• Digital Game analysis: Using the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework to determine the affordances of a game for learning (Aroutis Foster, Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler)

Simon Egenfeldt Neilson claims that "to push the field forward we need more critical thinking like this book, that will find innovative ways to get us from experiments to practical use in schools".

Next came Mark Chen's full-participant ethnographic account of Leet Noobs: The life and death of an expert player group in World of Warcraft. T. L Taylor rightly describes this book as "a must-read for anyone interested in the rich forms of action, and interaction, in multiplayer spaces". As editors we were riveted and, ultimately, traumatised by the unfolding epic recounted by Mark of what transpired over a 10 month period of involvement in a 40 person raiding 'family'. The back cover statement best describes the contents:

"Leet Noobs documents, for over 10 months, a group of players in the online game World of Warcraft engaged in a 40 person joint activity known as raiding. Initially, the group was informal, a 'family' that wanted to 'hang out and have fin.' Before joining, each player had been recognized as expert in the game; within the group they had to adapt their expertise for the new joint task and align themselves to new group goals. Through their shared activity, members successfully established communication and material practices that changed as they had to renegotiate roles and responsibilities with new situations and as the larger gaming community evolved. Players learned to reconfigure their play spaces, enrolling third-party game mods and other resources into their activity. Once-expert players became novices or 'noobs' to relearn expert or 'leet' gameplay. They became 'leet noobs' who needed to reconfigure their expertise for new norms of material practice. Ultimately, these norms also changed what it meant to play World of Warcraft; some group members no longer wanted to just hang out and have fun, and eventually the group died in an online fiery meltdown."

The most recent publication is Elisabeth Hayes and Sean Duncan's collection Learning in Video Game Affinity Spaces. It is largely concerned with what James Gee calls "the 'beyond games' part of the 'games and learning' movement -- with what people "do with games beyond just playing them".

Bookended by the editors' account of 'Expanding the affinity space' and James Gee's 'Afterword', the book comprises 8 engaging chapters on diverse dimensions of being members of affinities:

• 'Is the Hangout ... The Hangout?': Exploring tensions in an online gaming-related fan site (Jayne Lammers)
• Kongregating online: Developing design literacies in a play-based affinity space (Sean Duncan)
• Learning to mod in an affinity-based modding community (Shree Durga)
• The productive side of playing in the great indoors (Elizabeth King)
• The not-so-secret life of Dance Dance Revolution (Christopher Holden)
• Wither membership? Identity and social learning in affinity spaces (Ben DeVane)
• Specialist language acquisition and 3D modding in a Sims fan site (Elisabeth Hayes and Yoonhee Lee)
• The game of Neopian writing (Alecia Marie Magnifico)

Donna Alvermann describes this book as a "highly accessible text [that invites] readers to use, expand and critique current understandings of learning in affinity spaces". Constance Steinkuehler appraises it as "a powerful empirical follow up on Gee's notion of affinity spaces that asks us to move beyond the view of games as merely a designed object to the view of games as both designed object and emergent culture".

We are thrilled to have these books in the series and thank all those who have contributed to them for gracing our series with their presence.