There exists the distinct possibility that Wendy is a stealth illness vector. Dana is feeling run down and a bit spacey. Last night, she was knitting a doll for the girl—a doll complete with bellybutton, an extra that will no doubt send the child into a round of poking everyone in the bellybutton and exclaiming, “Beybuh!” This will force us to hike up our shirts to croptop level, making us feel self-consciously like we’re re-living certain moments of junior high before we were sent home for shirts with better “coverage.” A moment that made us reflect, as teens, on the ways that news and clothing overlap.
But we were also waiting for Marianne and Dave to arrive for
some gaming. I’ve been brushing up on the rules for Zooloretto, the 2007 SdJ
winner (photos by MikeHulsebus). The first time we played this game, in 2007, I believe, I was still new
to Eurogames and their rules. We were hosting a game night with a group of
friends that was splintering, and that particular night was punctuated by the
cries of a toddler for which we were woefully ill-prepared. Or simply woefully
prepared. Our ill-preparation has been reversed by now, as you might have
suspected if you’ve been reading along as these adventures have unreeled. So. I
was rattled as a game instructor, and the rules seemed tricky and complicated.
Three years later, not so much.
Dana might be struggling to defeat Wendy’s cold and knitting with great skill, but what I haven’t revealed about her is that she’s a powerlifter. Which isn’t true, so we’ll continue. In fact, she’s a literacy scholar, a sort of intellectual powerlifter given that she’s working on an advanced degree. Years ago, when both of us were teaching—she continues that practice while I have retreated to office work—we assigned literacy narrative essays. And, again, she has continued the practice. The assignment, and the whole of literacy studies, turns on a larger definition of literacy than most people outside the academy use. Literacy is widely understood to be a way to talk about the skills needed to work successfully inside the various kinds of conversations taking place within a field or community. These skills, or their lack, is what marks you as you go to the bank for a loan or the repair shop for your car. There are ways to fake literacy and ways for the community to suss you out.
In the middle of this thinking, Dana said that she heard someone at the door. No one was at the front door, but then in the midst of our pause we heard someone pounding on the back door. So off we scampered. Marianne and Dave had biked through the heat and parked their rides behind our small shed.
Zooloretto and a couple bowls of snacks (a nut-and-raisin
mix and some Japanese rice crunchies) were waiting. Dana kept knitting as we
developed our zoos. It’s a cute, fun game with some definite thinking involved.
The loading up of trucks, the taking and dispersal of trucks, and the shifting
of animals around the zoo goes pretty quickly, especially with only three
people. Marianne was the clear winner, Dave and I were neck and neck for second
and third.
We had a bit of time, so I suggested that we go through a game of Castle Panic. They had never played a cooperative game, and CP goes very quickly. The key to co-op games, mechanically, is how the bad stuff comes at you. In CP, the bad stuff comes from a bag of monsters—angry cartoon monsters. Poor Marianne felt the anxiety of the monsters coming toward pretty keenly, which is a good way to judge the effectiveness of a co-op game’s design. And, of course, her anxiety was well-founded: we lost. Damn the trolls!
Afterward, we talked about gaming literacy. How that concept applies to familiarity with rules (in fact, when I first played Zooloretto, I had a hard time figuring out how the game worked), with game mechanisms, and with the kinds of conversation that take place around games. Dave mentioned trying to figure out how to play Mexican Train Dominoes with his family, all of whom are highly educated (there may have been an issue with the slippages that can disjoint translated rules, there, he suggested, but still). It’s clear to me, though, that I have become a better reader and interpreter (in a different sense than moving from one language to another) of rules. I can read them more quickly and accurately, and I can identify trouble spots that are actual trouble spots and not simply complex moments in the game’s design. During this month, I’ve also worked on my teaching skills, because teaching a game is very different from teaching people how to write. In the latter, you’re teaching expanded—and ever-expanding—concepts of literacy and practice. With a game, you’re teaching a very discrete set of practices that are somewhat arbitrary.
I could go on and on, and probably will at some other place and time, but I wanted to return briefly to the literacy narrative. Frequently, the assignment asks for a student to reflect on how a particular event or practice has influenced their reading and writing. For a broader assignment, you might ask how a particular even or practice has influenced your participation in a community and that community’s conversations. Why did you decide to participate more? Did the conversations deepen? When? How? Let’s say…games. What conversations are taking place? Among which people? Where? Are you still playing games? More interesting games?
Not an assignment I can assign anywhere but here. If you like, you can add yours to the comments. Or send them to me by whatever means are at your disposal. I will award experience points.
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