Layering Literacies and Meta-Gaming in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: An Ethnographic Study

• In Event: Gaming and Literacies: Implications for Equitable Futures

Abstract

Objectives
The aim of the present paper is to explore what literacy practices unfold through and beyond gaming, how metagaming is conceptualized and how metagaming shapes the players' view and relation to their literacy practices with a particular focus on the first-person shooter game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).

Perspective(s)
This study combines the theoretical frameworks of gaming literacy (Bourgonjon, 2014; Zimmerman, 2009), layered literacies (Blinded, 2015), and metagaming (Boluk & LeMieux, 2017) to account for the various practices in and around the videogame CS:GO. Metagaming–or using pre-existing, current, and new knowledge from game plays, as well knowledge and information from online and offline literacy practices—enables players to counter opponents through fluid forms of optimal or unexpected tactics and strategies that go beyond the rules of the game. Examining the semiotic domain of CS:GO, this research includes gamers’ ability to produce meanings to solve problems and the ways their literacy practices help and empower them to develop their metagaming.

Methods and Data Sources
The complex nature of literacy practices in gaming environments requires the exploration of rich data; thus, the current study embraced the philosophy and combination of various ethnography and virtual ethnography methods (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; Hine, 2000). Over 9 months, I observed four young Cypriot gamers, aged 16–17. Data included video recordings of the participants, game play video-screen recordings, field notes, field interviews, post-field diary notes, and a semi-structured interview per participant. Inductive coding of literacy practices (Saldaña, 2015), along with frame-by-frame analysis of screen recordings, provided insight into the intersection of metagaming and layering literacies through 7 practices: (1) solving problems in a multimodal literacy space, (2) using situated communicative patterns to be effective for implementing metagaming strategies in the limited time, (3) watching live tournaments to learn of better tactics and strategies for metagaming, (4) exploring gaming sites and forums, (5) watching and discussing tutorials and co-players’ game plays, (6) sharing articles, texts, and game play highlights on social media, and (7) speaking with local gamers to further develop their gaming literacy.

Findings
Players self-engage in a cycle of layering literacies within and around game play (online and offline) as a means to improve their metagaming, or a critical practice including tactics that are both collective and individual, long-term and short-term, fluid and bounded, as well as anticipated and unexpected. Players layer their literacies as they solve problems in the game, watch live tournaments, explore gaming sites and forums, observe co- players’ game plays, discuss tutorials, speak with local gamers, and share articles, texts, and game play highlights on social media.

Scholarly Significance
This paper brings together layering literacy practices and metagaming to offer a new perspective for literacy education, namely one that includes a more student-oriented, socially situated and dynamic learning environment that can prepare learners to be critical thinkers and solvers of real-life problems in effective ways, something that is not fully achieved in education.

Author

• Elisavet Kiourti, European University Cyprus
  Presenting Author