Gamestar Mechanic: learning a designer mindset through communicational competence with the language of games

Abstract

This article presents the results of a three‐year study of Gamestar Mechanic (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash‐based multiplayer online role‐playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation’s digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin‐Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game’s objective is to help children adopt a designer mindset, together with its associated forms of language and literacy in the context of computer game production. Using case studies and discourse analysis, this article examines the ways in which learning ‘the language of games’ provided by Gamestar Mechanic can help even young students learn thinking skills and communication important to learners in the twenty‐first century, and can help transform the way children understand the games they play in positive ways.

Keywords:

• games
• design
• literacy
• language
• dialog
• cognition
• learning
• meaning
• communication
• systems

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the National Academy of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for their generous support of this research and also the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for their continuing support of Gamestar Mechanic.