“A Real Effect on the Gameplay”: Computer gaming, sexuality, and literacy

Abstract

During the summer of 2004, two of my former students, Mike and Michael, insisted that I play Final Fantasy XI (FF11) with them. FF11 is a massively mul-tiple online role-playing game (MMORPG) that’s fairly typical of its genre: players select a character, join “parties” of other online players, kill various creatures, amass experience points to “level up," and chat, often voraciously, with their fellow online warriors and gamers. Part of my gaming experience with my two students involved periodically setting up a “LAN party," in which our various computers and Play Station 2 game consoles (PS2s) were all in the same room. We would play for hours, sometimes all night, conversing both with each other and with online friends from around the country and sometimes from around the world.