PCA/ACA Conference Abstract

Title: Getting Stuck on Level One: Designing a Research Method Appropriate to XBox

This paper reconciles two threads of research; one a textual analysis of gaming genres, and the other a broad search for a suitable research method. Much of my initial work on gaming genres involved evaluating various justifications and denials of the unique status of gaming within the mediascape. From the research on gaming genres, I suggest that X-box games should be primarily understood as virtual pedagogical ecologies that are differentiated by degrees and interplay of performance, transformation and contextualization. This demands that X-box be understood both as a unique media and as a unique site in a transmedia network. This dual status is informed by, and reciprocally informs the methodology of the overall project. The project, tentatively titled, Rethinking Computer Games as a Trans-national Practice utilizes media ethnography, discursive realism and multi-modality to enrich the analysis of X-box games as texts, technologies and practices. Together they enable the development of a research paradigm that conceives X-box games as the hybrid, ephemeral and complex media objects that the textual analysis demands.