Introduction: Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century: Literate Connections explores the complexly rendered relationship between computer gaming environments and literate activity by focusing on in-depth case studies of computer gamers in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Building on the popularity of James Paul Gee’s book What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (2003), the volume examines Gee’s claim that good computer games can provide better literacy and learning environments than U.S. schools. Our aim throughout the book is to tell the stories of individual gamers—using their own words and observations—and to offer historical and cultural analyses of their literacy development, practices, and values.