Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

James Gee began as a linguist then turned to the field of education. He published What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy in 2003 following two works of his, Social Linguistics and Literacies and The Social Mind. These two previous works argued that our perception of mental achievement in literacy and thinking fails to recognize that the achievement is “primarily social” (1). Gee claimed in these books that “when you read, you are always reading something in some way,” you are reading from your experiences interacting with social groups and their values (1). In writing What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy, Gee has a desire to say about learning what he said about reading and thinking in the previous two books. He states 36 learning principles that are “relevant both to learning in video games and to learning content in classrooms” (197). Most of the examples he shows carrying over from video games to good learning practices are set in the science classroom, where Gee seems to have spent much time.

This book is primarily interested in challenging the value of “skill and drill” teaching methods that dominate our country’s primary and secondary (but certainly not limited to) educational systems; he suggests that educators have a lot to learn from good video games in how they apply knowledge and lessons, and provide trial and error learning that allows students to recognize patterns. While some students trust and thrive in a “skill and drill” classroom setting, many do not who are very intelligent and capable, perhaps those who prefer hands-on, learn from experience setting. Furthermore, His book argues how approaches to teaching could benefit greatly from understanding the nature of “good games” in how they encourage and exhibit applied, active learning, rather than passive “skill and drill” that is encouraged by the “current standardized testing regime” (200). As science lessons in schools adopt simulations, projecting real identities into virtual or practice identities, and hands-on learning, so do many video games that are good. Lessons such as these allow students to practice the ideas and concepts in a low stakes, low-risk environment while still attaining practical experience, witnessing real world relevance, and building confidence in their problem solving skills. However, science courses (his common academic reference throughout the book) spend a great amount of time on “skill and drill” lessons and in disciplines outside of science it’s even more common in the classroom. Gee suggests there is much to improve in shaping our lessons as educators and video games, despite their notoriety, hold great potential in helping us understand learning, the importance of practicing concepts and taking risks in the classroom, and how to successfully captivate our students.

Chapter two (as Gee calls the first chapter), Semiotic Domains, asserts that “in the modern world, print literacy is not enough…” because of the existence of semiotic domains which involve symbolic or representational resources (19). It claims that people must be able to adapt to learning new semiotic domains throughout our lives because “our modern, global, high-tech, and science driven world…certainly gives rise to new semiotic domains and transforms old ones at a faster rate” (19). In studying the family of semiotic domains known as video games (family of genres) and citing specific examples within, Gee works to build a perspective on learning, literacy and semiotic domains that apply to domains outside of video games.

Gee uses the game Pikimin, a game played by his the six year old son at the time, to show how a game models good learning opportunities and why games can go beyond just ‘wasting time’.

The game encourages him to think of himself an active problem solver, one who persists in trying to solve problems even after making mistakes; one who, in fact, does not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for reflection and learning. It encourages him to be the sort of problem solver who, rather than ritualizing the solutions to problems, leaves himself open to undoing former mastery…(44).

Furthermore, Gee’s son worked outside his real identity, customizing and playing with a projected identity as a problem solver. While learning no content is “wasting time” as critics argue, they overlook the importance of how games like Pikmin stress active and critical learning, and how that emphasis has a lot to teach educators about the limitations of passive learning or having students group information into “lists” without a clue about the internal design grammar. For example, knowing modernist architecture because it was on a prescribed list, or because you understand the attributes that are instrumental to modernist architecture (30). However, active and critical learning in games relies heavily on internal design (as Pikmin provides), but more importantly, people around the learner encouraging “reflective metatalk, thinking, and actions in regard to the game” or other semiotic domain (46).









The game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? not only teaches content (geography, history) to young learners, but also influences them to become active problem solvers much like Gee’s son playing Pikmin.

In Chapter three, Learning and Identity, the role playing game Arcanum provides the example of how video games deal with three identities: virtual, real-world, and projected or “James Paul Gee as the virtual character ‘Bead Bead’ in Arcanum” (55). This games ability to allow players to first customize and name their characters provides the real-world identity (Gee) with the opportunity to project his values and desires onto the virtual character. This “tripartite play of identities” in good games transcends identity with characters in movies or novels because it is both active and reflexive (unique player-virtual character identity shaping), and it “is at the root of active and critical learning in many other semiotic domains, including learning content…in school” (59). The application of this for educators is to build bridges for their students between their real-world identities and the virtual identity at stake in the classroom.

Educators often bemoan the fact that video games are compelling and school is not. They say that children must learn to practice skills (“skill and drill”) outside meaningful contexts and outside their own goal: it’s too bad, but that’s just the way school, and indeed life is, they claim. Unfortunately, if human learning works best in a certain way, given the sorts of biological creatures we are, then it’s not going to work well in another way just because educators, policymakers, and politicians want it to (68).

Real world identities as learners previously damaged by being “failures” must be fixed if there is to be much success in trying on any virtual identity in the classroom that leads to any impressionable, meaningful projected identity. Much like how Gee is intimidated by real-time strategy games:

1. The learner must be enticed to try, even if they already have good grounds to be afraid to try.
2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if they begin with little motivation to do so.
3. The learner must achieve some meaningful success when they’ve expended this effort. (61)

These issues about identities in education that are as Gee finds, unfortunately “left out of most of the current debates about education” (62). Furthermore, it is in video games where education can learn good practices with identity and learning because the virtual worlds and identities captivate students. “If the virtual world and virtual identity at stake in learning is not compelling to the learner, at some level, then little deep learning is liable to occur…” (63).

Chapter four, Situated Meaning and Learning uses the example of a combination FPS and RPG called Deus Ex to display how games provide “situated, experiential, and embodied forms of learning and thinking” (76). What he means by this is that games like Deus Ex have many different ways to solve one problem, and making decisions to solve them in a particular way can have an effect on how you face the next problem or series of problems later on. Gee finds that this type of simulation is quite similar to how learning, thinking, and problem solving actually occur in the real world. It also fosters the idea that learning and mental achievement are social and it’s okay to contribute to a new solution even if one is already found. Furthermore, good games embody learning because the “stories are embodied in the player’s own choices and actions” (82). Player’s get emotionally invested in the games’ problems, which leads to a very compelling virtual identity through which they form meaning.

Receiving information and discussing it apart from real consequences is much the state of classrooms and has likely led me to state over and over, “I’m a hands-on learner.” I have to go and make mistakes a couple times, try on new identities, reshape my hypotheses and test them until I feel I have really “learned” something. Gee’s example in this is that knowing what “democracy” is in a textbook definition will not prepare you think critically of a claim about the impact of wealth on democratic elections. Furthermore, abstractions arise from embodied experiences (research, testing hypothesis), so how can we expect anyone to retain information if they do not engage in embodied experiences in the domain they are learning about? Gee argues further showing how video games create good, embodied, situated learning because meaning is made through multi-modalities you can interact with rather than just words.






Chapter five, Telling and Doing, discusses how games give directions or rules on how to play, but will let you go outside the directions or rules and even reward you for it from time to time. In this way, games challenge our assumptions about the world and ourselves. Gee also introduces ideas about transfer in which successful problem solving in one domain aids or informs it in another, but more importantly that it requires some tweaking or modifying to fit it (127). Gee explains this in how he adopted a strategy from a game he played earlier to one he was stuck on at a later time. Understanding how transfer and modification of transfer between domains we encounter is essential to problem solving in the real world; games tend to foster this while schools generally do not.

Chapter six, Cultural Models, explains the power of video games in how they create worlds where players take on various identities (139).

Cultural Models about Learning Principle
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about their cultural models of learning and themselves as learners, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves as learners (166).

To explain, Gee held a cultural model that “when faced with a problem to solve, good learners solve it quickly or soon thereafter. If you have to try over and over again, this is a sign you are not very good at what you are trying to learn.” (164) However, playing video games that allow you to ratchet up the difficulty or that contain level gatekeepers or bosses who are meant to be defeated after several attempts and failed hypotheses showed Gee that there is more to his cultural model than he realized. This was also evident when he played the game “Operation Flashpoint” a military game which is far from the individual heroics modeled in games like Wolfenstein 3-D or Duke Nuke ‘Em. Gee found that military operations are actually boring, a constant state of paranoia, interdependent, unpredictable, and “manly” behavior “gets you dead quickly” (157).








Gee found this game (OF) provides a cultural model unlike many first person shooter games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein because it models how war is boring, exciting while at the same time confusing, unpredictable, and a constant state of paranoia among other things. This far from the Rambo, one-man army, romantic notions of war found in most other FPS games, as well as what many believe war is like based on movies.



In Chapter seven, The Social Mind, the game EverQuest is used as an example. This game is played online and has no end. What intrigues players, is that it is an enormous virtual world shared by hundreds of thousands of other players. What is interesting about the game is that there are all sorts of social predicaments from virtual players with greater skills picking on those with little to no skill in order to advance themselves, to insults IM’d from other players, to players trying to hack the game server in order to manipulate the environment to their liking or other’s inconvenience. Games like EverQuest encourage “affinity groups” (http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/index.vm). What’s unique about EverQuest is that it has internal affinity groups as well. Not only are there real world social groups who spend time talking about the game online or calling each other and really care about how others are doing in the game, you can also form guilds of virtual identities within the game and work together with very large groups of people. This type of social modeling carried over to the classroom has many positive applications.

In his conclusion, Gee states that what people are learning in video games is not always good, but what they are “doing when they are playing good video games is often good learning” (199). Gee emphasizes, again, that projective identity is what video games model well, and educators need to carry that model over to the classroom so learners value their own experiences in interpreting and solving problems within unfamiliar domains while also putting the lessons into action. Gee finishes by claiming that games have a lot of evolution to undergo still, and with that may come a rise in canonical games which lend themselves “to elevating the aspirations and imaginings of all people for better and more just worlds” (205). Nonetheless, without adopting the learning strategies in current good video games and preserving the standardized testing regime, the education system will continue to “think poor children should be content with schooling for service jobs” (205).

While I found Gee’s assertions to be very useful to helping the broken state of education in our country, and I realized how good games actually do provide many effective teaching strategies, this book came off as redundant and confusing at times because so many examples were given on certain concepts, especially in chapters three, four, and five. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to say something new about the concept or just making sure that all readers were absolutely clear. Nonetheless, it was a book where I found myself zoning out and losing interest in because of the repetition that didn’t develop the concepts any further (perhaps this was my misunderstanding). Also, every school example was based in a secondary science classroom or lesson which made me feel ostracized. Finally, I found some textual errors that were seriously minor and did not affect the text to the point where I couldn’t plug in the correction, but it made the book less credible, especially when it proposes such radical changes for the education world (Pages 61, 100, 123, 149, 165). Another minor error was false claims about an example of his, Sonic the Hedgehog, originally appearing on Sega Dreamcast.