ABSTRACT
The world of videogames continues to capture interest from conventional console games like Wii and X-box to more recent smart phone apps. With this popularity, there is an acknowledgement of their merit as learning, problem-solving tools. Videogames demand that players strategize, communicate, interpret context, solve problems, analyze characters, possess hand/eye coordination, have patience, understand semiotic tools, use their spatial sense, and the list goes on. Many scholars (Abrams, 2009; Gee, 2003; Squire, 2008; Steinkuhler, 2007; Williams, 2008) have argued that these same skills can be transferred into literacy learning. Designers and producers of videogames have a veiled knowledge and expertise on learning in gaming environments that is valuable for understanding how we communicate and make meaning with texts. Contemporary learning theorists are increasingly arguing for understanding virtual environments as a way forward for literacy pedagogy and policy (Gee, 2003; Knobel and Lankshear, 2007; Williams, 2008), and videogames and gamifi cation specifi cally have been targeted as models for future pedagogy (Abrams, 2009; 2010; Gee, 2003; Steinkuehler, 2007). These theorists appreciate that gaming skills signal larger communicational skills. To be a competent gamer, you need to navigate through spaces; to move, launch, manipulate objects; and to mediate identities. Likewise, to be competent with modern communications systems, students need to problem solve, to exist within online and offl ine communities of practice, and to use and understand semiotic tools.
