ABSTRACT
How can video gaming-related practices in educational settings be geared toward social change, instead of social reinforcement? In this chapter, I propose a pedagogical topology of critical play as civic participation for art educators, practitioners, and activists to approach video games as malleable cultural artifacts that embody ideological norms and values with students. By integrating research and practice from game and play studies as well as media and arts education, I begin this chapter with a topology of play that review the elements of play and emphasize the potential of play to deconstruct and reconstruct social structures as part of the rules that govern play. Aligning this potentiality with the goal of critical pedagogy, I build on Mary Flanagan's theorization of critical play (2009) to trace how a pedagogical emphasis on critical play can provide opportunities for art educators and students to engage in civic participation by using video games to generate dialogue about and proceed to revise our shared social contexts. By understanding, critiquing, and modifying games through a game-based art pedagogy that focuses on revising existing video games, I argue that educators and students may begin to reconfigure problematic social structures operating in video game cultures.
