Conclusion
Video games provide players with the opportunity to reinvent themselves as they take on the roles of heroes and heroines. Similarly, fan-fiction affords writers with the chance to rewrite stories and characters to which they can better relate. Players and writers no longer need to feel marginalized or oppressed by institutional authorities when they engage in gaming fan-fiction. They can create characters tailored to reflect their own identities and ideals, establishing a world where they have control and power. Instead of being limited to a weak princess in a castle, gamers can create a princess that fashions her own escape. And instead of playing a young boy who has to pray for salvation at the end of the game, players can rewrite a version where their character can actually use his psychic powers to defeat the “Embodiment of Evil.” [1]
Yancey’s 2004 CCCC Chair’s Address challenged writing instructors, “to focus on… developing a new curriculum for the 21st century, a curriculum that carries forward the best of what we have created to date, that brings together the writing outside of school and that inside” (p. 308). By incorporating the growing literacies of gaming to the literacy practices of fan-fiction writing, composition teachers would be able to successfully combine “outside” and “inside” writing for students, effectively modernizing the way the field looks at writing in the 21st century. Students could gain experience in the outside world of transnational internet users, while still being supported by the inside world of the classroom. Their experience would grant them “real-world” composition skills as they interact in this virtual world and take a first-hand look at what it means to write and communicate in the digital age.
Using multiple literacies, writers of gaming fan-fiction can easily revise their roles and take charge of their digital identities. Their experience with gaming literacy offers them an easy route into the community of fan-fiction writing since they already possess the “social languages” (Gee, 2001b, p. 718) of community engagement and collaboration. Furthermore, writing these kinds of stories and gaining digital writing experience in the formal setting of an academic classroom grants students a greater opportunity to develop 21st-century writing skills, including non-expert guided collaboration, audience awareness, and technology proficiency.
In the 21st-century landscape of multimodal communication, gamers occupy a space that places them at the center of multiple literacies. Their expertise with multiple mediums and community awareness enables them to become proficient communicators in the digital age. Tapping into their literacies and working within overlapping communities like fan-fiction writing has the potential to unveil a new literacy force that will be governed by invention, collaboration, and multimodality. If composition instructors can tap into these inherent literacy skills of gamers as they write fan-fiction, then the instructors will be able to better prepare their students for communication in the 21st century.
Game on.
Notes
- The “Embodiment of Evil” is one of the names for the final boss in the game EarthBound. This boss is defeated when all of the characters in the final gaming party pray for his destruction (Ape & HAL Laboratory, 1994).