Today’s readings have me looking forward to the presentations as well as the discussion on the topic of video games and embodiment. Gee starts his article by clearly stating what he wants to focus on, that is video games, violent video games, and the positives that come from it. I appreciate that unlike most other reading we have, that this author actually looks at pros of video games more than cons. He dissected new games such as WWC, evaluated it, and showed how theories of cognitive development are expanded. How did we even get to this discussion in game studies you might ask? It’s due to the fact that over the last several years, many people are interested in video games as a site to study learning, human thinking, and problem solving.
Gee speaks on the embodied thinking characteristics of a game which he named the projective stance. Although it’s a way of thinking, It also pervasive in everyday life and social interactions. Gee believes one of the main reasons players of video games gain physical embodiment, is through microcontrol. This gives us the inclination that our bodies and psyches have stretched out into this virtual space and that the space of the virtual and real are joined. Some players control one avatar, a group, or even armies and buildings in some cases. This was my thoughts on Gee’s games and embodiment.
Game Studies 
These readings were fairly easy to read and will be fun to discuss in class. They also apply to the game I am writing about for my final, which is a sports video game. Gee begins with talking about simulations which reminded me of the Bogost reading we had earlier in the semester about sports video games. Bogost defines a sport as, “anything that can be taken seriously as a mental, social, or physical contest”, and variations of the sport are what holds them together (Bogost, 137). Bogost concludes that, “Sports videogames are not simulations of sports but variants of sports. Or put differently, sports videogames are just another way to play sports” (Bogost,138). In my game you can change the virtual world as well, “the player can make a new landscape, a new set of buildings, or new characters. The player can set up the world so that certain sorts of actions are allowed or disallowed”, but similar to real life there exist rules and limitations. Gee sees these model simulators as accumulations of different situations and used in the context of particular situations, prepare people for action in the outside world, and have specific meanings based on their actions. The meanings we attain though these games are what form a part of our identity in the real world.
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Glad you liked this one. Gee is very much in the same lane as Jenkins, as he sees games as a huge tool for learning, literacy, and cultural change, while Jenkins was an early and energetic proponent of games and other digital media as a tool for cultural change. I would also argue that Bogost’s work leans to the optimistic, as identifying procedural rhetoric is the first step in being able to use it for positive purposes. Not being aware of the rhetoric of your game is a site of potential trouble.
I would argue that very few scholars we’ve read have been very negative on games, just critical of certain elements–gaming culture, for one thing, or the naive belief that games are some kind of escape from reality instead of a part of our reality, just as real as everything else, just in a different way. The issues of labor and issues in the game industry are fairly negative takes, I’ll give you that, but they’re also issues we need to understand to get a full accounting of the medium.
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Seems like we appreciated this article for similar reasons. For me, it also felt like a breath of fresh air. Not that the other readings have been negative, but rather looking at things in a perspective that we might not have agreed with. I have a minor in Philosophy, and the way we feel about readings in this class is quite similar to those classes. You have to learn the wrong philosophical beliefs, so you can learn how we got to the modern views of today.
That’s why I thought these readings were much more interesting to me. I feel like this is something that is extremely relevant to today’s view on video games, and that excites me. Great job on your post.
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