The Nickel and Dimed Challenge

Abstract

Many people think that games are in competition with books. They believe that, as people play more games, they read less. In fact, gaming takes away the most time and attention from television, not reading (Zane, 2005). In many respects, young people today are reading and writing more than ever. They read and write about the games they play and the interests these games engender, as we saw with Sam and the game Age of Mythology in Chapter 2. A good deal of this reading and writing is technical, involving technical and technological aspects of gaming activities, such as ways to mod games. However, at the same time, fan fiction, devoted to almost any movie, book, or game one can imagine, is flourishing (Black, 2008; Hellekson & Busse, 2006; Jenkins, 2008).