Parallels Between the Gaming Experience and Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory

• In Event: Literacy, Expertise, and Experience in Gaming

Abstract

By viewing video games as literacy, the connection can be made between students’ multimodal world outside of school with the world of literacy they encounter in school. A collective case study was used to examine the gaming experience of participants with three commercial video games. Interviews were conducted to explore the gaming experience in relation to Louise Rosenblatt’s reader response theory. As a way to look at both the text and the experience, a content study examined three mainstream video games to establish literacy content by using Zimmerman’s gaming literacy theory. The analysis demonstrated substantial parallels between the gaming experience and the reading transaction as well as looking at the viability of using gaming literacy theory to evaluate literacy value.

Author

• April Sanders, Spring Hill College