Like James Gee before them, along with Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher, editors Richard Colby, Matthew S. S. Johnson, and Rebekah Shultz Colby have expanded our disciplinary understanding of the substantial motivational role of gaming literacies in all stages of the writing process. Equally significant, the contributors to Rhetoric/Composition/Play through Video Games create a 'shared space' not only for rhetoric and literacy theorists but also for writing teachers and their students to collectively challenge more traditional definitions of academic writing and positively impact the future of college-level writing instruction.
- Kristine L. Blair, Professor and Chair, Department of English, Bowling Green State University, USA
Here is a smart volume on the practical matters involved in bringing video games, rhetoric, and composition into a shared and vibrant intellectual space. With remarkable insight and subtlety, the editors have assembled a series of essays that are not only accessible and informative on their own, but are also theoretically and pedagogically intertwined with each other. As a result, readers including gamers, students, or anyone interested in modern rhetoric will find here a complex and critique-oriented treatment of the single most important recent development in the long history of rhetoric and composition. There are plenty of books now in circulation about the rhetoric of video games and their place in educational contexts. Here, however, is an anthology assembled and written by native and well-trained game scholars and teachers. Their deep expertise shows and it will surely speak powerfully to audiences who are themselves natives of video game culture and readily able to distinguish posers from players.
- Ken S. McAllister, Professor and Director of the Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English Program at the University of Arizona, Co-Curator of the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive, and author of Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture and (with Judd Ruggill) Gaming Matters: Art, Science, Magic, and the Computer Game Medium.