Reading the Room: Examining the Sociomaterial Geographies and Affective Dimensions of Escape Literacies

• In Event: Making, Playing, Learning: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

Abstract

Building from an expansive understanding of literacies (e.g. New London Group, 1996, Street, 1995), this paper explores the kinds of literacy practices that emerge through participation and play within the escape room genre. Building on the key components of escape rooms—that they are often confined to particular spaces, bounded by a set time limit, and restricted to a relatively limited set of material resources, we perform a modest theoretical experiment. Reading a common data set across two, seemingly incommensurate, theoretical perspectives, we perform side-by-side analyses of play to propose alternative apparatuses for analyzing the gaming literacy practices of escape rooms.

Authors

• Jon Michael Wargo, Boston College

• Antero Garcia, Stanford University