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CHAPTER

Gaming Literacy

Game Design as a Model for Literacy in the

Twenty-First Century

ERIC ZIMMERMAN

Introduction: Literacy and games from the inside-out

Gaming literacy is an approach to literacy based on game design. My

argument is that there is an emerging set of skills and competencies, a set

of new ideas and practices that are going to be increasingly a part of what it

means to be literate in the coming century. This essay’s proposal is that

game design is a paradigm for understanding what these literacy needs are

and how they might be addressed. I look at three main concepts—systems,

play, and design—as key components of this new literacy.

Traditional ideas about literacy have centered on reading and writing—

the ability to understand, exchange, and create meaning through text,

speech, and other forms of language. A younger cousin to literacy studies,

media literacy extended this thinking to diverse forms of media, from

images and music to ﬁlm, television, and advertising. The emphasis in

media literacy as it evolved during the 1980s was an ideological critique of

the hidden codes embedded in media. Media studies’ scholars ask ques-

tions like: Is a given instance of media racist or sexist? Who is creating it

and with what agenda? What kinds of intended and unintended messages

and meanings do media contain?

Literacy and even media literacy are necessary but not suﬃcient for one

to be fully literate in our world today. There are emerging needs for new

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kinds of literacy that are simply not being addressed, needs that arise in

part from a growing use of computer and communication networks (more

about that below). Gaming literacy is one approach to addressing these

new sorts of literacies that will become increasingly crucial for work, play,

education, and citizenship in the coming century.

Gaming literacy reverses conventional ideas about what games are and

how they function. A classical way of understanding games is the “magic

circle,” a concept that originates with the Dutch historian and philosopher

Johann Huizinga.

The magic circle represents the idea that games take

place within limits of time and space, and are self-contained systems of

meaning. A chess king, for example, is just a little ﬁgurine sitting on a

coﬀee table. But when a game of chess starts, it suddenly acquires all kinds

of very speciﬁc strategic, psychological, and even narrative meanings.

To consider another example, when a soccer game or Street Fighter II

(Capcom, 1992) match begins, your friend suddenly becomes your oppon-

ent and bitter rival—at least for the duration of the game. While many

social and cultural meanings certainly do move in and out of any game

(for instance, your in-game rivalry might ultimately aﬀect your friendship

outside the game), the magic circle emphasizes those meanings that are

intrinsic and interior to games.

Gaming literacy turns this inward-looking focus inside-out. Rather than

addressing the meanings that only arise inside the magic circle of a game, it

asks how games relate to the world outside the magic circle—how game

playing and game design can be seen as models for learning and action in

the real world. It asks, in other words, not What does gaming look like? but

instead: What does the world look like from the point of view of gaming?

It is important to be very clear here: gaming literacy is not about just

any kind of real-world impact—it is a speciﬁc form of literacy. So for the

sake of speciﬁcity, here are some things that gaming literacy is not:

• Gaming literacy is not about “serious games”—games designed to

teach you subject matter, such as eighth-grade algebra.

• Gaming literacy is not about “persuasive games” that are designed

to impart some kind of message or social agenda to the player.

• Gaming literacy is also not about training professional game

designers, or even about the idea that anyone can be a game

designer.

Gaming literacy is literacy—it is the ability to understand and create spe-

ciﬁc kinds of meanings. As I describe it here, gaming literacy is based on

three concepts: systems, play, and design. All three are closely tied to game

design, and each represents kinds of literacies that are currently not being

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addressed through traditional education. Each concept also points to a

new paradigm for what it will mean to become literate in the coming

century. Together they stand for a new set of cognitive, creative, and social

skills—a cluster of practices that I call gaming literacy.

I like the term “gaming literacy” not only because it references the way

that games and game design are closely tied to the emerging literacies I

identify, but also because of the mischievous double-meaning of “gaming,”

which can signify exploiting or taking clever advantage of something.

Gaming a system, means ﬁnding hidden shortcuts and cheats, and bending

and modifying rules in order to move through the system more eﬃciently—

perhaps to misbehave, but perhaps to change that system for the better. We

can game the stock market, a university course registration process, or even

just a ﬂirtatious conversation. Gaming literacy, in other words, “games”

literacy, bending and breaking rules, playing with our notions of what

literacy has been and can be.

Systems

To paraphrase contemporary communication theory, a system is a set of

parts that interrelates to form a whole. Almost anything can be considered

a system, from biological and physical systems to social and cultural

systems. Having a systems point of view (being systems literate) means

understanding the world as dynamic sets of parts with complex, constantly

changing interrelationships—seeing the structures that underlie our world,

and comprehending how these structures function.

As a key component of gaming literacy, systems can be considered a

paradigm for literacy in the coming century. Increasingly, complex infor-

mation systems are part of how we socialize and date, conduct business

and ﬁnance, learn and research, and conduct our working lives. Our world

is increasingly deﬁned by systems. Being able to successfully understand,

navigate, modify, and design systems will become more and more inextric-

ably linked with how we learn, work, play, and live as engaged world

citizens.

Systems-based thinking is about process, not answers. It stresses the

importance of dynamic relationships, not ﬁxed facts. Getting to know a

system requires understanding it on several levels, from the ﬁxed foun-

dational structures of the system to its emergent, unpredictable patterns of

behavior. Systems thinking thereby leads to the kinds of improvisational

problem-solving skills that will be critical for creative learning and work in

the future. In part, the rise of systems as an integral aspect of our lives is

related to the increasing prominence of digital technology and networks.

But systems literacy is not intrinsically related to computers. The key to

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systems literacy is about a shift in attitude, not about learning techno-

logical skills.

If systems are a paradigm for an emerging form of literacy, what is the

connection to games? Games are, in fact, essentially systemic. Every game

has a mathematical substratum, a set of rules that lies under its surface.

Other kinds of media, art, and entertainment are not so intrinsically struc-

tured. Scholars debate, for example, the essential formal core of a ﬁlm—is

it the script? The pattern of the editing over time? The composition of light

and shadow in a frame? There is not one correct answer. But with games,

there is the clarity of a formal system—the rules of the game. This formal

system is the basis of the structures that constitute a game’s systems. More

than other kinds of culture and media which have been the focus of lit-

eracy in the past, then, games are uniquely well-suited to teach systems

literacy.

To play, understand, and—especially—design games, one ends up hav-

ing to understand them as systems. Any game is a kind of miniature

artiﬁcial system, bounded and deﬁned by the game rules that create the

game’s magic circle. Playing a game well to see which strategies are more

eﬀective, analyzing the game’s rules to see how they ramify into a player’s

experience, and designing a game by playtesting, modifying the rules, and

playtesting again, are all examples of how games naturally and powerfully

lend themselves to systems literacy.

Play

Games are systems because at some level, they are mathematical systems of

rules. But if games were just math, we would never have the athletic ballet-

ics of tennis, the bluﬃng warfare of poker, or the deep collaboration

of World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004). Play is the human eﬀect of rules set

into motion, in its many forms transcending the systems from which it

emerges. Just as games are more than their structures of rules, gaming

literacy is more than the concept of systems. It is also play.

There is a curious relationship between rules and play. In the classical

sense of a game as a magic circle, rules are ﬁxed, rigid, and closed. They are

logical, rational, and scientiﬁc. Rules really do not seem like much fun at

all. But when rules are taken on and adopted by players who enter the

magic circle and agree to follow the rules, play happens. Play in many ways

is the opposite of rules: as much as rules are closed and ﬁxed, play is

improvisational and uncertain. Yet in a game, these two opposites ﬁnd

a common home—gameplay paradoxically occurring only because of

game rules.

In Rules of Play, Katie Salen and I deﬁne play as free movement within a

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more rigid structure.

Imagine play as the “free play” of a gear or steering

wheel: the loose movement in an otherwise rigid structure of interlocking

parts. The free play of a steering wheel is the distance it can move without

engaging with the drive shaft, axle, and wheels—the more rigid utilitarian

structures of the car. This free play only exists because of the more inﬂex-

ible, functional structures of the automobile. Yet it also exists despite those

structures. A joke, for example, is funny because of how it plays with the

structures of language, creating subtle ironies, or double-meanings, or

vulgar inappropriateness. The free play humor of a joke exists in oppos-

ition to the more rigid structures of earnest, ordinary language—yet is

utterly dependent on these very structures for its play.

Yet, play is far more than just play within a structure. Play can play with

structures. Players do not just play games; they mod them, engage in meta-

play between games, and develop cultures around games. Games are not

just about following rules, but also about breaking them, whether it is

players creating homebrew rules for Monopoly (Charles B. Darrow, 1933),

hacking into their favorite deathmatch title, or breaking social norms in

classics like “spin the bottle” that create and celebrate taboo behavior.

Although play exists outside of games, games do provide one of the very

best platforms for understanding play—from free play within a structure

to the transformative play that reconﬁgures that structure. Any instance of

a game is an engine designed to produce play, a miniature laboratory for

studying play qua play.

So why is play an important paradigm for literacy in this century?

Systems are important, but if we limit literacy to structural, systemic lit-

eracy, then we are missing part of the equation. When we move from

systems to play, we shift focus from the game to the players, from structures

of rules to structures of human interaction. Games as play are social eco-

systems and personal experience, and these dimensions are key aspects of a

well-rounded literacy.

As our lives become more networked, people are engaging more and

more with structures. But they are not merely inhabiting these struc-

tures—they are playing with them. A social network like Wikipedia is not

just a ﬁxed construct like a circuit diagram. It is a fuzzy system, a dynamic

system, a social system, a cultural system. Systems only become meaningful

as they are inhabited, explored, and manipulated by people. In the coming

century, what will become important will not be just systems, but human

systems.

A literacy based on play is a literacy of innovation and invention. Just as

systems literacy is about engendering a systems-based attitude, being lit-

erate in play means being playful—having a ludic attitude that sees the

world’s structures as opportunities for playful engagement. What does it

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mean to play with institutional language, with social spaces, or with pro-

cesses of learning? When these rules are bent, broken, and transformed,

what new structures will arise?

Play emerges from more rigid systems, but it does not take those

systems for granted. It plays with them, modifying, transgressing, and

reinventing. We must learn to approach problem-solving with a spirit of

playfulness; not to resist, but to embrace transformation and change. As

a paradigm for innovation in the coming century, play will increasingly

inform how we learn, work, and create culture.

Design

The notion of design connects powerfully to the sort of creative intelligence the

best practitioners need in order to be able, continually, to redesign their activ-

ities in the very act of practice. It connects as well to the idea that learning and

productivity are the results of the designs (the structures) of complex systems

of people, environments, technology, beliefs, and texts.

If gaming literacy were simply about systems and play, it would be a lit-

eracy based on games, not game design. But design, the third component

of gaming literacy, is absolutely key, and in many ways helps bring the

traditional idea of literacy as understanding and creating meaning back

into the mix. There are many deﬁnitions of design, but in Rules of Play

Katie Salen and I describe design as the process by which a designer creates a

context, to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges.

Design as the creation of meaning invokes the magic circle: designers

create contexts that in turn create signiﬁcation. Although design comes in

many forms, from architecture to industrial design, games happen to be

incredibly well-suited for studying how meaning is made. Outside the

game of rock/paper/scissors, a ﬁst can mean many things. But inside the

game, that gesture is assigned a highly speciﬁc signiﬁcance, a deﬁned

meaning within the lexicon of the game’s language. The creation of mean-

ing through game design is wonderfully complex. A game creates its own

meanings (blue means enemy; yellow means power-up), but also traﬃcs

with meanings from the outside (horror ﬁlm music in a shooter means

danger is coming; poker means a fun evening with friends).

For a game designer, the creation of meaning is a second-order prob-

lem. The game designer creates structures of rules directly, but only

indirectly creates the experience of play when the rules are enacted by

players. As a game unfolds through play, metaplay, and transformative play,

unexpected things happen, patterns that are impossible to completely pre-

dict. In this way, design is not about the creation of a ﬁxed object. It is

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about creating a set of possibilities. The audience is always at least one step

removed from the designer. Games embody this aspect of design in a very

direct and essential way; even the most straightforward game of chess or

The Sims (Maxis Software, 2000) is about players exploring the possibilities

that they are given by a designed object. In a game, design mediates

between structure and play; a game system is designed just so that play

will occur.

Over and above game design’s aﬃnity for the process of making mean-

ing, it is also radically interdisciplinary. Making a game includes creating a

formal system of rules, while also designing a human play experience for a

particular cultural and social context. Game design involves math and

logic, aesthetics and storytelling, writing and communication, visual and

audio design, human psychology and behavior, and understanding culture

through art, entertainment, and popular media. For video game design,

computer and technological literacy become part of the equation as well.

As an exploration of process, as the rigorous creation of meaning, and

as a uniquely interdisciplinary endeavor, game design represents multi-

modal forms of learning that educators and literacy theorists have been

talking about for years, perhaps most signiﬁcantly in the publications

of the New London Group (quoted at the start of this section, above).

Game design, as the investigation of the possibility of meaning, truly gets

at the heart of gaming literacy, and ties together systems, play, and design

into a uniﬁed and integrated process.

Conclusion: A Playful World

As we arrive in the early years of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the world is

becoming increasingly transformed by communications, transportation,

and information technology that is shrinking our globe, making it a place

of cultural exchanges both constructive and destructive. Existing models of

literacy simply do not fully address reality in the world today.

Gaming literacy is certainly not the only way to understand the

emerging literacy needs I have identiﬁed. But games and game design are

one promising approach, making use of a cultural form that is wildly

popular and wildly varied, both incredibly ancient and strikingly con-

temporary. And intrinsically playful as well.

So how does one take action to promote gaming literacy? At Gamelab,

the independent game development company I founded in 2000 with Peter

Lee, we have begun a number of gaming literacy projects. We are building

Gamestar Mechanic—funded by the MacArthur Foundation and created

in collaboration with the GAPPS group at the University of Wisconsin-

Madison—a computer program that will help youth learn about game

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design by letting them create and modify simple games. We have also just

announced the creation of the Gamelab Institute of Play. With Katie Salen

as the Executive Director, the Institute will promote gaming literacy

through educational programs and advocacy.

What does gaming literacy mean for game players and game makers?

The good news is that games, so often maligned, have much to oﬀer our

complex world. And not just so-called “serious games” with explicit edu-

cational goals, but any game. Gaming literacy can help us feel good about

what we do by playing games, making games, studying games, modding

games, and taking part in gaming communities. As literacy scholar James

Paul Gee likes to say, “video games are good for your soul.”

Gaming literacy turns the tables on the usual way we regard games.

Rather than focusing on what happens inside the artiﬁcial world of a game,

gaming literacy asks how playing, understanding, and designing games all

embody crucial ways of looking at and being in the world. This way of

being embraces the rigor of systems, the creativity of play, and the game

design instinct to continually redesign and reinvent meaning.

It is not that games will necessarily make the world a better place. But in

the coming century, the way we live and learn, work and relax, communi-

cate and create, will more and more resemble how we play games. While

we are not all going to be game designers, game design and gaming literacy

oﬀer a valuable model for what it will mean to become literate, educated,

and successful in this playful world.

No Essay is an Island

The ideas in this essay are not just my own, but are part of a growing

conversation that can be heard across universities, commercial game com-

panies, grade-school classrooms, non-proﬁt foundations, and in other

places where game players, game makers, scholars, and educators intersect.

Although I have been a game designer and game design theorist for

more than a decade, I began to rigorously connect game design and lit-

eracy through my interaction with the GAPPS group (now called GLS), a

collection of scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that includes

Jim Gee, Rich Halverson, Betty Hayes, David Shaﬀer, Kurt Squire, and

Constance Steinkuehler. I was privileged to be invited to a series of con-

versations with this stimulating group, about games and literacy, spon-

sored by the Spencer Foundation. In 2006, during the third of these three

meetings, the term “gaming literacy” emerged from our conversations

as a concept that could reference growing connections between games,

learning, literacy, and design.

I am greatly indebted to game designer, scholar, and educator Katie

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Salen for our ongoing collaborations, including the textbook Rules of Play:

Game Design Fundamentals (Katie also attended that third Spencer meet-

ing). My ideas on game design and learning have also been shaped by my

work with the amazing staﬀ at Gamelab, especially my co-founder Peter

Lee, and former Gamelab game designers Frank Lantz and Nick Fortugno.

Connie Yowell at the MacArthur Foundation also has been instrumental in

bringing together scholars, artists, educators, and designers to exchange

ideas, including the commission of important foundational research by

the polymedia scholar Henry Jenkins. The speciﬁc formulations in this

book were ﬁrst instantiated in a talk I gave at Vancouver’s Simon Frasier

University, in January 2007, and this text received valuable feedback from

Jim Gee, Katie Salen, Kurt Squire, and Constance Steinkuehler.

So thanks to everybody. I go to this trouble to highlight some of my

sources in order to emphasize the newness of these ideas and the collabora-

tive way that they are emerging from a thick soup of scholarship, debates,

and collaborations. This kind of dialog is very much in the spirit of

gaming literacy itself, and I encourage you to take part in the conversation

as well. Some of the best places to get involved include: the Games,

Learning, and Society conference held annually at the University of

Wisconsin-Madison (www.glsconference.org); the Serious Games Initiative

(www.seriousgames.org); the Education SIG of the International Game

Developers Association (www.igda.org/education); and the ongoing dia-

logs about digital media literacy on the MacArthur Foundation website

at http://community.macfound.org/openforum.

Notes

1. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (New York: Roy, 1950), 10.

2. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 304.

3. The New London Group, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures,”

Harvard Educational Review 66, no.1 (Spring 1996): 60–92.

4. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 41.

Gaming Literacy