Gaming Literacies: Spatiality, Materiality, and Analog Learning in a Digital Age

Abstract

The author explored the literacy practices in tabletop gaming communities. Focusing on the role of spatiality and materiality in nondigital contexts, this study broadens how literacies research engages with sociocultural analysis of primarily analog settings. Building on experiences in playing the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the author analyzed how literacies shape the collaborative storytelling and interpretation of complex rules mechanics required for play. The author drew on 26 months of collected ethnographic data, including participant observation of hundreds of hours of tabletop role-playing game sessions, interviews, and textual analysis. Describing how gaming literacy practices are enacted, the findings from this study identify three different spaces in which analog literacies often emerge: in-game literacies, at-the-table literacies, and beyond-the-table literacies. Exploring how participants read, produce, and communicate in ways that move across these domains, the author emphasizes the roles of temporality and spatiality in understanding contemporary literacies. Further, as Dungeons & Dragons is mediated by myriad books and physical objects, such as dice, sheets of paper, and small figurines, the role of materiality in analog literacies differs substantially from digital contexts. At the same time, exploring the cultural practices and talk that shaped play, the author emphasizes that analog gaming remains connected to the digital affordances of online texts, transmedia production, and tools for communication. By considering how seemingly archaic gaming practices recast literacies research around games and learning, the author argues for continued scrutiny of these playful domains.