Workplace Literacy within the Esports Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future

• In Event: Revisiting James Paul Gee’s “What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”: Critical Perspectives for the 21st Century

Abstract

This presentation explores literacies developed within competitive collegiate esports and challenges norms associated with traditional understandings of literacy and data collection in an era of AI and big data. Two decades of research indicates that videogaming provides opportunities for diverse literacy practices (Abrams, 2009; Author, 2008: Author & Colleague, 2011; Author & Colleague, 2021; Apperly & Beavis, 20007; Gee, 2003; Gee & Hayes, 2010; Steinkuehler, 2007). In particular, early frameworks examined gaming and literacy from spaces and environments that could be indicated as informal and hobby-driven (Gee, 2003). Gee’s (2003) original work into the gaming and literacy connections through affinity space frameworks is indicative of how early scholarship approached the study of literacy and gaming: literacies inside informal spaces. However, gaming has shifted into a formal professional arena, and, to-date, little research examines the workplace literacies born out of the rapidly evolving esports ecosystem (Author, 2017; Author, 2022; Author, 2023; Reitman, Cho, & Steinkuehler, 2018), indicating the importance for studying these spaces.

Significance Point One addresses research centering on the professionalization of gaming. Drawing from a five-year ethnographic examination of a competitive collegiate esports team, and guided by the theoretical perspectives of connected learning (Ito, et. al, 2010) and distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995), data stem from interviews, observations, artifacts, and digital data. Findings indicate that the workplace community is a vital source of establishing practices that allow for the coproduction of vodcasting, shoutcasting, moderating, and spamming. Implications from this longitudinal research suggest that workplace literacies born from esports communities transcend and overlap meaning making experiences—both within game, in the moment, and outside of game, in reflexivity.

Significance Point Two examines shifts in research methodologies and frameworks that allow for organic and iterative data collection methods that harness the power of big data and artificial intelligence within qualitative frameworks for meaning making (Author, 2022; Author & Colleagues, 2017; Author & Colleague, 2018; Author & Colleague, 2017; Colleague & Author, 2018; Author & Colleagues, forthcoming). In light of the aforementioned data, the researcher critiques aspects of contemporary research methodology, and challenges the norms associated with what are noted as “uncontrollable” data points, such as API data and generative AI, and overlays portions of data from the longitudinal esports study that are natively digital (e.g., API data) and examines how the human (e.g., the researcher) reads AI-generated data to understand and make meaning of the data set.

Significance Point Three interrogates early frameworks for gaming and literacy in light of esports workplace literacies research and posits core questions for the audience, namely, “what is workplace literacy in an age of artificial intelligence and big data?” and “how do we as scholars design, develop, and disseminate research that captures the ethos of literacy development, workplace and informal, in a digital era?” In turn, these questions should help scholars grapple with how digital data born from videogame environments, namely esports environments, can be useful to educators, policymakers, and developers interested in qualitatively understanding contemporary literacy in an age of AI and big data.

Author

• Hannah R. Gerber, Sam Houston State University