ABSTRACT
Videogames and gameplay, and young people's engagement with them, are of considerable interest to literacy educators and researchers concerned with new forms of literacy (multiliteracies, digital literacies and the like), the place of videogames and digital culture in young people's lives, the literate and social practices that surround them, and the ways in which participation in game play provides an ‘every day arena of action’ for the exploration and performance of identity, values and community. Games and game play provide dynamic exemplars of contemporary communicative forms, and an important forum for the analysis of diverse semiotic systems, the interactions between these, and the ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ practices and understandings needed to play. They exemplify literacy constructed as design. Game play constitutes a powerful form of socially situated textual practice. What young players bring to play, what they know and learn, and how participation in play shapes their sense of self, identity and community are inextricably related, with important implications for how we understand contemporary literacy texts and practices, and the centrality of these in young people's lives. Such matters are very much the business of literacy educators and researchers.
