KOUT, YACINE, Ph.D. Breaking Down the Enchantment: A Critical

KOUT, YACINE, Ph.D. Breaking Down the Enchantment: A Critical Autoethnography

of Video Gaming (2019)

Directed by Dr. Leila Villaverde. 298 pages.

Video games are flooding our everyday lives from our phones to our schools. Our

understanding of this medium is still developing as it shapes players’ sense of self and

their view of the world. This study contributes to bridging that gap by questioning the

educative power of video games and their impact on our society through an

autoethnographic lens. I analyze my video gaming experiences by journaling, field

noting, and crafting epiphanies that represent my history with this medium. I use critical

pedagogy as a theoretical framework to unpack and dismantle my experiences as a long

standing member of the video gaming community. I use critical themes such as identity

building, meaning making, and oppression to make sense of my data. Through these

themes, I answer my two central research questions: How did I navigate the video

gaming culture as a student of critical pedagogy and in what ways do video games lend

themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy.

Using a critical lens allows this study to deconstruct unexamined experiences that

shape player identities. To answer my research questions, I use the concept of

enchantment to capture the complexity of the stories I have grown up with, both the

power I have drawn from them to build a sense of identity and my naïveté in overlooking,

minimizing, or ignoring problematic and oppressive behaviors tied to these stories. I

share how the wording of my experiences pushed me into adopting a new identity that

reconciled my history as a video game player and my identity as a student of critical

pedagogy. Through the deconstruction of my experiences, I also identified video gaming

tools that lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. I share how these tools

can be used in the classroom to help players/students question their own thinking, name

their prejudice, and identify oppressive social systems. My study echoes Bochner’s

concept of a story of “two selves,” a space that allowed me to better understand the

culture I am part of and my role in it. My moving from an enchanted understanding to a

continuous questioning of my engagement with a medium that holds a central place in my

life constitutes an invitation to examine the stories we have all grown up with. In

identifying both the power they have given us and the power they have over us, we can

assess their impact and meaning, and therefore better understand ourselves.

BREAKING DOWN THE ENCHANTMENT:

A CRITICAL AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

OF VIDEO GAMING

Yacine Kout

A Dissertation Submitted to

the Faculty of The Graduate School at

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Greensboro

2019

Approved by

____________________

Committee Chair

APPROVAL PAGE

This dissertation written by Yacine Kout has been approved by the following

committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at

Greensboro.

Committee Chair ___________________________

Leila Villaverde

Committee Members ___________________________

Kathy Hytten

___________________________

Spoma Jovanovic

___________________________

Gregory Price-Grieve

___________________________

Date of Acceptance by Committee

_________________________

Date of Final Oral Examination

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Merci à Yessica - Gracias a ti por tu amor y apoyo. I could have never done this

without you. You were there day in and day out. No one else knows the depths of my

struggles, joys, and accomplishments. You helped me lift myself up and reach this goal

when I was in the darkest pits. I am forever thankful to have you as a partner and friend.

Merci à Ulysse - You were the first to write and sketch me as “Dr. Kout.” Your

drawing has inspired me and given me courage throughout this journey. You amaze me

every day. Continue to be you, Captain Awesome.

Merci à papa et maman - Vous avez nourri un rêve d’enfant quand vous m’avez

acheté cet Amstrad CPC 464. Aujourd’hui, ce cadeau prend une tournure que je n’aurais

jamais imaginé quand j’y jouais. La graine que vous avez planté continue de porter ses

fruits.

Merci à Sabrina, Farouk, et Nabil - Je sais que je n’ai pas toujours été présent

dans votre vie à la façon dont un grand frère aurait dû l'être mais j'espère que vous verrez

dans ce projet une certaine satisfaction et peut être même une fierté.

Merci à Pierre, Vincent, Benoît, William, Johan, Vincent, Laetitia, et Moujik -

Pour ces samedis plein de possibilités, de camaraderie, de joie, et maintenant de

nostalgie. Ce sont nos amitiés que j’ai cherché à retrouver où répliquer dans les jeux en

ligne. Rien ne remplacera les histoires que nous avons créées ensemble.

Merci à tous de ne pas m’avoir inonder d’amertume quand je suis parti. J’ai mis

un océan entre nous. Il a changé nos relations et nos amitiés à jamais. Pardon. Vous me

manquez tou(te)s.

To Dr. Villaverde - Thank you for guiding me on this journey. Your patience and

vigor made me a more thoughtful/mindful person and student.

To Dr. Hytten, Dr. Price-Grieve, Dr. Jovanovic - Thank you for serving on my

committee. Your feedback and encouragement helped me build myself as a more

complex scholar.

To Revital - Thank you for listening and giving an ear and heart to my immigrant

scholar dilemmas. You helped me till the very last stretch. I hope I can be as good a

friend to you as you have been to me.

To Caitlin, Oliver, Elizabeth, Cristina, Amara - Thank you my friends for

supporting me when I was stuck, for listening to my ramblings as I was making sense of

my work. I hope I was able to support you the same you did.

To Dr. Shapiro, Dr. Casey, Dr. Peck - Thank you for pushing me and supporting

me in this endeavour, whether it was by listening to my complaints, offering me

possibilities, or challenging me to write something I did not think I could do.

To Anna, Leslie - Thank you my friends for showing me that there was a joyful

end to this journey.

To Dr. Blaisdell - Thank you for showing me that I had something valuable to

bring to this world. Your genuineness and sincerity helped me start this journey.

To Kathleen - Thank you for your kindness, guidance, and support. I learned

about ELC thanks to you. You also gave me the final push I needed to get my dissertation

done in time.

To Stephen - Thank you for re-introducing me to philosophy and showing me that

I could be a gadfly.

To my pilot projects participants - Thank you for sharing your time and stories.

To Juan, Troy, Dawn, Emily, Chris - Your work guided me when I was incapable

of imagining my next sentence. I heard your voices as I read your introductions and

conclusions.

To my raidmates - Thank you for slaying internet dragons with me. The space we

created saved me. Looking into my experiences helped me better know myself.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... viii

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... ix

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1

A Thirty-Year-Old Relationship ..................................................................1

A Cultural Phenomenon ...............................................................................3

My ActRaiser Story .....................................................................................6

From Curiosity to Fury ..............................................................................10

A Culture Shaped by Social Issues, A Force Shaping Players ..................13

Statement of the Research Problem ...........................................................15

Research Questions ....................................................................................20

Overview of the Chapters ..........................................................................21

II. BECOMING A STUDENT OF CRITICAL PEDAGOGY:

A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY .............................................................................24

Introduction ................................................................................................24

The Social World .......................................................................................26

The Question of Power ..............................................................................29

What is Knowledge? ..................................................................................32

Critical Pedagogy as Democratic Imagination: Enacting

New Futures ...........................................................................................53

Conclusion .................................................................................................58

III. AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS METHODOLOGY ..............................................61

Introduction ................................................................................................61

Ellis’ Approaches to Autoethnographic Work ...........................................62

Doing Autoethnography: Methods and Processes in

Data Collection, Analysis, and Presentation .........................................66

Conclusion .................................................................................................90

vii

IV. BREAKING DOWN THE ENCHANTMENT:

DECONSTRUCTING A CHILDHOOD PASSION ......................................92

Introduction ................................................................................................92

Chasm Between Identities: How the Enchantment Enabled

Oppressive Forms of Play ....................................................................102

Enchanted Resistance...............................................................................143

Addressing the Enchantment ...................................................................157

Conclusion ...............................................................................................167

V. ASSEMBLING THE CRITICAL CLOCK .......................................................171

Introduction ..............................................................................................171

Identifying the Four Cogwheels...............................................................174

Conclusion ...............................................................................................201

VI. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................203

Summary of Findings ...............................................................................203

Recommendations for Future Research ...................................................205

Implications for Practice ..........................................................................207

Limits of My Research.............................................................................209

Closing Thoughts and Questions .............................................................211

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................214

APPENDIX A. EPIPHANIES .........................................................................................239

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1. Key Points of Anyon’s Study on Social Class and

School Knowledge ..........................................................................................43

Table 2. Coding Data Template .........................................................................................76

Table 3. Evaluation Criteria for Qualitative Work ............................................................89

Table 4. Organization of the Chapter into Metathemes and

Subthemes ......................................................................................................100

Table 5. The Thinking/Entertainment Dichotomy ...........................................................104

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1. A Screenshot of the Epilogue ...............................................................................8

Figure 2. Mr. Charles Class ...............................................................................................34

Figure 3. Cropped Screenshot of My Steam Library Highlights the

Categories I Had Created ..............................................................................106

Figure 4. Wildstar was a Mmorpg Set in a Futuristic Universe .......................................110

Figure 5. The Looking for a Dungeon Interface, also Known as Dungeon

Finder ............................................................................................................116

Figure 6, A Screenshot of the Recount Addon ................................................................120

Figure 7. An In-game Menu Allows Players to See All the Mounts

Available in the Game (cropped screenshot by author, 2018) ......................125

Figure 8. A Graphic Explanation of the Hextech Crafting Loot

System in LoL (Jarettjawn, 2016) ................................................................128

Figure 9. A Side by Side Comparison of the Default Brand Champion

on the Left (Plesi, 2016) and the Zombie Brand Skin on the

Right (leaguesales.com, n.d.) .......................................................................129

Figure 10. The SWL Daily Rewards Interface ................................................................131

Figure 11. A Screenshot of the “About” Section of the Official Discord

Website (Discord,2015) ..............................................................................141

Figure 12. Mysogynic Insults ..........................................................................................154

Figure 13. Braid- a Puzzle Game with 2D Platformer Elements .....................................173

Figure 14. No Pineapple Left Behind ..............................................................................179

Figure 15. A Troubling Consequence of Monika’s Game Hacking

(Joshiball, 2017) ..........................................................................................183

Figure 16. On the Left, a Seemingly Bugged Version of Monika

Stands in Sayori’s Place (Joshiball, 2017) ..................................................184

Figure 17. A Memo Including Reflections on Creating Monsters

from Local Animals (69quato 2018)...........................................................187

Figure 18. A Boy Named Jung on an Empty Playground................................................188

Figure 19. This War of Mine – a Survival Strategy Game ..............................................192

Figure 20. Night of the Living Debt ................................................................................199

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

My project is a critical autoethnographic study on the meaning of video gaming in

my life. This project examines over thirty years of video gaming experiences through the

power of stories. My goal is to gain a better understanding of video gaming by examining

my lived experiences as a student of critical pedagogy. This project was born out of a rift

between the research on video gaming and my experiences as someone who grew up with

video games and sees in them the possibility to address injustice in our world.

A Thirty-Year-Old Relationship

Video games have been a part of my life since I was a boy. Some of my earliest

memories take me back to my vacation in my uncle’s house in Algeria. There, I would

skip trips to the beaches of Algiers to play dinosauric games with rectangles and squares

for graphics. In my middle school years in my native France, I remember staring at the

clock eager to rush to my local arcade. Sometimes I would bring a bag of chips

bolognaises to munch on in between ‘game overs.’ There, my friends and I would team

up in Double Dragon (Technos Japan, 1987) to karate kick and baseball bat our way

through waves of ‘bad guys.’ When I did not have money to play, I would head there

anyway and watch strangers play to learn from them or offer them all the wisdom an 11-

year-old player could muster. In that circle, some of my friends started calling me YAC

as there were only three spaces available on the high scores list. Video gaming became an

identity.

In the mid 1980’s, my parents surprised me with a gift that to this day I consider

the best present I ever received: an Amstrad CPC464. This European machine played

games by loading cassettes, a process that lasted several minutes and produced a horrible

screeching sound. It took years of saving for my parents to afford that computer. Even

though I received this cassette computer when 3½ floppy disks machines were out and

cassettes were becoming a technology of the past, this computer is one the fondest and

most significant memories of my childhood. I knew this was a financial sacrifice for them

then. This gesture is all the more meaningful now, that I too am a parent.

In my high school years, my younger brother Farouk and I created our own

competition format in Street Fighter 2 (Capcom, 1994). I had to pick every single

character available once, whereas he was free to pick whoever he wanted however many

times he wanted. That format created a handicap for me as my skill level was above his.

These days are long gone. Today, he plays in national competitions and destroys me in

every version of that game.

More than thirty years after I first slid a five franc coin into an arcade machine, I

still play video games. For example, I am a member of a megaguild, a community that

counts thousands of players who mainly play World of Warcraft (Activision Blizzard,

2004). I am also a gold ranked player in League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) for the

second season in a row. That rank places me in the 11.66% to 37.73% percentile of

ranked accounts. I also own over 100 games in Steam (Valve Corporation, 2003), a

popular online “entertainment platform” where players buy games, form communities,

and share creations such as player-created levels. Many of these games I binge bought

during sales and have not had time to play. Today, some of my favorite games embed

social commentary in their narrative or gameplay. In that category, the games that

marked me include Soldats Inconnus: Mémoires de la grande guerre (Ubisoft, 2014)

which critiques war by offering different perspectives on World War I, Papo y yo

(Minority Media, 2013) which deals with child abuse, or Tacoma (Fulbright, 2017) which

addresses labor issues among many others. Video games are a passion of mine. I play

them. I make friends through them. Playing games is an important part of who I am.

A Cultural Phenomenon

At the beginning of my video gaming life, video games used to be confined to

specific spaces such as arcades, living rooms, or recess discussions. Over the last ten

years or so, video games have sprung out of these spaces. They have merged into our

everyday life. They have become a cultural phenomenon. People play on computers, cell

phones, and through Facebook. Video games have also expanded to other media,

markets, and cultural spheres. Minecraft (Mojang AB, 2011) has its own line of toys. The

Tomb Raider series has a duo of high caliber Hollywood movies starring Angelina Jolie

(Baird & West, 2001; Heath-Smith & de Bont, 2003) and another Tomb Raider movie

released in 2018 (Crevello & Uthoag). The Angry Birds series has an animated feature

movie (Hed, Maisel, Kaytis & Reilly, 2016) and a TV series focusing on The Secret

World Legends is in development (Fahey, 2017). Players of every age wear clothing

emblazoned with video game characters or logos such as Link (Nintendo, 1987) or

Freddy Fazbear (Cawthon, 2013).

In addition to the sprawl of video games into other media and markets, the video

gaming culture has also provided a conduit for other enterprises to make money and

increase their visibility. Toys like Barbie and comic book heroes such as Spiderman have

their own video games or video game series. The military, both the US Army (United

States Army, 2002) and the British army (Publicis, 2009), have developed video games

for military recruitment. Corporations have introduced advertisements within games,

such as Chevrolet ads on the sidelines of the FIFA 17 soccer game (EA Vancouver,

2017). Many industries and enterprises have taken advantage of the video game

phenomenon and thus they have further contributed to its expansion and normalization.

The sphere of e-sports, video game competitions, is also on the rise. In 2014,

more viewers watched the world finals of the League of Legends championship than the

NBA finals (Dorsey, 2014). In Asia, e-sports have been popular for years. There, some

players make a living out of winning. Faker, one of the most famous League of Legends

competitor, has earned over $1 million dollar in 4 years (Grubb, 2017). In the USA,

e-sports is still catching up to this level of popularity, but collegiate e-sports is gaining

steam. Several game companies have created collegiate championships. My very own

school, UNCG, placed second nationally in the World of Warcraft Great Collegiate

Dungeon Race (Blizzard Entertainment, 2017). Some schools, such as Robert Morris

University, even offer scholarships to attract video game players (Touchberry, 2017).

Video games have become unavoidable. The video game culture has spread to

many facets of our lives. It continues to sprawl. Video games are played by people of all

ages, 27% of all players are over 50 years old, and the distribution by gender shows a

quasi-even number of male and female players, 56% for the former and 44% for the latter

(Entertainment Software Association, 2015). In a world where video games have had

such a cultural impact, studying them and their impact is primordial. As someone who

has grown up with this medium, I feel a responsibility to make a contribution in regard to

the study and understanding of what Giroux (2013) calls the “screen culture” (p.179).

After a few years in my doctoral program, I dedicated myself to the study of video

games through critical pedagogy. Apple, Au & Godin (2011) summarize the goals of

critical pedagogy as broadly seeking “to expose how relations of power and inequality

(social, cultural, economic) in their myriad forms of combinations, and complexities are

manifest and are challenged in the formal and informal education of children and adults”

(p.3). Critical pedagogy has provided me with a theory to make sense of my life,

including video games, in a new and empowering way. It gave me a sense of agency and

the desire to study a culture I am a member of. I saw in the questioning and analysis of

my experiences the possibility to use video games to question power and make our world

a better place. I now share a thirty-year-old story that embodies the power video games

have had in my life and how I reinterpreted that story a couple of years ago through

critical questioning.

My ActRaiser Story

We’re in 1990 at my parents’ house. I am in my room ready to roll. I put the

cartridge in. The game loads quickly. Control pad in hand. I am set for a challenge.

“Ok, let’s play this.” I press start. “Alright, what’s this one about?” I speed read

through the scrolling introductory text eager to start hacking and slashing: This world is

in disarray. Bla bla bla. Monsters and demons roam these lands. Bla bla bla. humans

need a savior. They call upon ‘you’, a minor deity to rescue them.

“A minor deity? I guess that’s all they could muster. Sure, I can do that.” And so

it started. Hours of fighting followed. As I took the minor deity through the levels, it grew

in power. After the first city was founded, I was able to call upon magical fires, then

came thunder bolts and fire breath. The stage was set. I needed more victories, more

believers, and more power ups to defeat the Evil forces that plagued these lands. With

each freed region, more humans believed. With each new temple, more worshippers sang

the praises of their savior.

ActRaiser (Quintet Co., Ltd, 1990) was a good game. It was entertaining without

being a blockbuster. It offered a mix of genres. One level was about hacking and

slashing, imagine Mario with a sword and spells. The next level was a city managing

game, think about simcity, a simulation in which you can place buildings and create a

town. Basically, I spent one level dispatching demons clearing a piece of land, and then

the next level was about managing that land in order to grow a city and help humans

settle.

Towards the end of the game, my character had become a powerful deity. Many

humans believed in it. All along they had erected statues in its image and built kingdoms

in its name. After hours of play the time for the final fight had come. That boss, the

scourge of humanity, did not leave a particular mark on me. Defeating it was no

challenge. I had finally saved humans. Their world was free of all they feared. My

character headed back to the capital, head high, chest out, ready for glory. I thought I

had won.

As in many games of the early 90's, the ending sequence offered a series of

scrolling texts and short scenes during which I, the player, was limited to reading and

watching the epilogue.

My character triumphantly marched back to his city. I thought I knew what was

coming. I imagined lines of radiant people dancing throughout the streets. Joyful kids on

the shoulders of their celebrating parents. Colorful petals falling from the bluest sky.

Well, the deity was not ready for what was coming and neither was I.

Deserted streets. No song. No praises. Not a soul. Nothing. The deity wandered

through the streets. He entered the main temple where humans had placed a colossal

statue in His name. That space was now empty. The statue was gone.

The narrator, who was wrapping up the story, explained that because their world

was now empty of evil, humans no longer had a reason to worship. Therefore,

my character who had become a powerful god found himself abandoned. Forgotten, he

became dormant.

Figure 1. A Screenshot of the Epilogue

A screenshot

of the epilogue. The

space where

worshippers had

built a statue

of my character is now

empty. I interpreted it

as a symbol of human’s

extinct faith.

This epilogue shattered what I used to think of as "winning the game." While the

concepts of gold and glory had never appealed to me, they constituted what I had learned

to expect from completing video games. From Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) to

Sonic (Sega, 1991), the narrative was pretty much the same: triumph and

prestige await the player at the end of the endeavor. ActRaiser's ending was not about

that. ActRaiser's ending had a message about the meaning of faith and believing. That

message shook me. It sent my head spinning. It made me question my understanding

of religion, worship, believers, god, and gods. Questions swirled in my brain "do people

only believe when they are scared of something? If they are not afraid, do they stop

worshipping and believing? In what other ways have people used gods or religions for

their own ends? Where do gods go when they are forgotten? Who holds power in

religion?" Growing up Muslim in my native France in the 1990’s, I had just a few people

to ask these questions to, namely my parents. None of their answers satisfied my thirst.

I was only a teenager when I played this game but this moment has stayed with

me. The game and the reflections it triggered have impacted the ways in

which I think about religion. As a matter of fact, my playing the game, amongst many

other factors and events, has played a role - even if minor - in my decision not to follow a

religious path. ActRaiser played a role in forming my identity as a non-religious person.

After that experience, I saw myself as skeptical, which I understood as someone who had

an eye for questioning cemented truths.

Interpretation Through Torpefication: Stung by the Torpedo Fish

Decades later, as I started taking classes in my doctoral program and became

exposed to different possibilities regarding education, I asked myself another layer of

questions about the meaning and impact of my video gaming experiences. I connected

one text in particular to my ActRaiser memory. Reading Ann Diller’s concept of

torpefication helped me gain a new understanding of that memory. Diller (1998) defines

torpefication as “the shock of realizing we did not know what we thought we knew”

(1998). Torpefication is a physical reaction to the realization of our own ignorance. She

derives this term from Plato’s image of being shocked by a torpedo fish, commonly

referred to as a stingray (Plato, n.d.). Beyond the shock, being torpified “bears close

family resemblances to the ability to be awed, to be surprised, to be astonished, to be

moved in a deeply moral, or ethical, or aesthetic, or epistemological, or ontological way”

(p. 8). Diller writes that through torpefication individuals will “almost inevitably

experience perspectival shifts” (p. 8). I made sense of torpefication through my ActRaiser

experience. Back then the swirling questions in my head had disoriented me, they

affected me to the point where I had to seek answers. Diller qualifies this search as

becoming a “philosopher of one’s own education” (p.1). The new meaning I made of this

experience fueled my research interest. Interpreting my ActRaiser through torpefication

opened up possibilities. I want to dive deeper into the study of my video gaming

experiences to better understand that medium. I want to explore video games and their

culture to improve players’ and people’s lives. Making connections between video games

and questioning power, culture, and society brought together two of my interests and

passions. At that point, I weaved my journey into academia with video games, stories,

and critical pedagogy.

From Curiosity to Fury

Early in my research I read different theories about video gaming. While they all

contributed to a better understanding of the medium, I found that a crucial aspect of the

discussion on video gaming was absent: the core of the research did not include players’

voices. The behemoth theory of gamification exemplifies this absence. Proponents of

gamification define this theory as “the use of video game elements in non-gaming

systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement” (Deterding, Dixon,

Nacke, O’Hara, and Sicart, 2011, p.1). Such video game elements include points, badges,

and animations. The problem with gamification is that it reduces video games to an

appeal factor, to a shiny ‘game layer’ (McBride & Nolan, 2014, p. 596), on top of

perpetuating unexamined processes of play. Bogost captures the superficial aspect of

gamification through his own definition of the term, “gamification is marketing bullshit,

invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames

and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where

bullshit already reigns anyway” (para.5). Bogost’s definition offers a critical perspective

on gamification. It shines light on the fact that those in power, big businesses, syphon the

image of video games to use it for their own benefit without regard for the video game

medium and its community. Gamification is not about understanding the experiences of

players in a critical way in order to rethink the world outside of gaming or imagine

different possibilities for our society. Gamification is about updating already-existing

systems without concerns for justice or the video gaming culture. Gamification is about

using games as lures to continue doing what has always been done. For example,

gamifying the classroom may mean replacing bubbling right answers on a worksheet with

clicking right answers on a colorful screen. There are no meaningful changes involved.

Through gamification, “tomorrow becomes the perpetuation of today” (Freire, 1998,

p.103). Gamification translates to a surface study of video games. It ignores social,

historical, political, and cultural forces that shape all media. In ignoring these forces,

proponents of gamification silence the experiences and voices of players. My enthusiasm

for video gaming research gave way to rage.

Duncan Andrade (2009), a scholar and high school teacher, writes about righteous

rage, a rage fueled by injustice. He explains that his students, many of whom are

underprivileged, come to his classroom angry. Rage is their emotional response to an

unjust system. As a teacher, Duncan Andrade sees his role as connecting that moral

outrage to “action aimed at resolving undeserved suffering” (p.181). Stryker (1994) sees

rage as a transformative energy. She explains that “through the operation of rage, the

stigma itself becomes the source of transformative power” (p.249). While rage is

commonly thought about as a fire or a burning, Stryker offers a different image to capture

rage:

I am not the water-

I am the wave,

And rage

Is the force that moves me (p.247).

I make sense of my rage as a reaction to injustice. Proponents of gamification

were discarding thought provoking aspects of video games such as torpefication. By

using buzzwords such as technology, globalism, and 21st century, proponents of

gamification push for a superficial definition of education. Rather than engaging with the

electrifying power of video games, they use video games for their own ends. In throwing

away the critical power of video gaming, they were throwing away my experiences and

any other that did not fit theirs. My rage was a sign of injustice toward schooling

practices that remained unchanged, toward the portrayal of video games as mere

entertainment, and toward the discarding of my experiences. My rage moved me and

pushed me deeper into my research. Rather than a fire that spreads and consumes

everything in its wake, the wave is a movement that can’t be put out. My rage moves me

to act in the world. This project is an action against the forces that work to drain video

games out of their critical potential and demean my experiences and the experiences of

other players who have grown up with video games. This project is the wave moved by

righteous rage crashing against these forces. Through this autoethnographic study, I aim

to show that there are other possibilities for video gaming and education. In doing so, I

also open the door for the expression of other accounts.

A Culture Shaped by Social Issues, A Force Shaping Players

While I cherish my video gaming experiences and advocate for the use of video

gaming in teaching critical pedagogy, my project does not aim to hide or diminish major

issues in the video gaming culture. Such issues are well documented. Video games

perpetuate oppressive messages in many ways. I share a few examples below that depict

the widespread issues in the video gaming culture: the content of video games, video

gaming communities, and treating video game workers as disposable.

Oppressive Content

The 1982 video game Custer’s Revenge (Mystique) places the player in the shoes

of General Custer. General Custer, an actual historical figure, is famous for having lost a

resounding battle against Native Americans, the battle of Little Bighorn (History.com

Editors, 2009). The game, in some twisted way, aims to correct that. The goal of Custer’s

Revenge is to “navigate a battlefield to have sex with an Indian maiden (...) tied to a

post,” (Cassidy, 2002, para.1) in other words, to rape her. The 2015 game Hatred

(Destructive Creations) showcases another set of connected issues present in and

perpetuated through video games. Hatred invites players to take on the role of a mass

shooter. Creative director Jarosław Zieliński (Campbell, 2014) explains the rationale

behind the game:

The answer is simple really. We wanted to create something contrary to

prevailing standards of forcing games to be more polite or nice than they really

are or even should be. (...) Yes, putting things simply, we are developing a game

about killing people. But what's more important is the fact that we are honest in

our approach. Our game doesn't pretend to be anything else than what it is.

(para.7),

Through their content, Custer’s Revenge and Hatred reinforce settler colonialism, sexism,

and white supremacy. The slew of issues banalized and trivialized in these two games is

not an accident. As cultural products, video games are imbued with problematic values

that plague our world.

Oppressive Communities of Players

A set of video game players have embraced sexism and white supremacy. This

vocal group claims video gaming as their sole property and opposes any other individual

or group that claims belonging to the video gaming community. One of the most glaring

examples is #gamergate (Griggs, 2014), an internet movement which started with

targeting one female video game developer, Zoe Quinn, for what the oppressive group

referred to as the corruption of video gaming by female developers (Heron, Belford &

Goker, 2014). This movement and its actions then spread to harassing or doxxing any

woman defending or connected to Quinn.

Oppressive Companies

Issues in the video gaming culture also affect video game workers. They are

treated as a disposable workforce, who is overworked (Fuller, 2017), and for whom

overtime is not always paid (Weinberger, 2016). Issues in the culture of these companies

do not stop there. A recent report on the culture of Riot Games (D’Anastasio, 2018),

developer of League of Legends, one of the most popular games in the world, shows that

sexism is an integral part of the company’s “bro-culture” (para. 5) One of Riot games’

values and motto is “default to trust”—in other words, assume that your colleagues

always have good intentions” (para. 61). A former Riot Games employee shared that she

was met with criticism when explaining to male coworkers “why words like “bitch” and

“pussy” were gendered insults” (para. 60). She was told she was not abiding by the

company’s motto and culture of “defaulting to trust.” She was expected to trust that her

co-workers were not using these words as insults. Sexism and neoliberalism are alive and

well in the video gaming culture.

My goal is not to demean or ignore these issues. By looking for video gaming

elements that lend themselves to teaching critical pedagogy, I do not mean to reduce

video games to that aspect. However, as someone who has grown up with this medium, I

have experienced questioning and shifts in my thinking that I want to investigate because

they are seldom represented in the literature in education and video gaming. This does

not erase the multitude of issues tied to video gaming. Moreover, I account for these

issues in my findings chapter where I question and weigh my role in perpetuating these

forms of oppression.

Statement of the Research Problem

(...) for me, someone who the world viewed as male, World of Warcraft provided

a space to discover that I felt more comfortable when treated as female. (Dale,

2014, para 1)

People play video games for diverse reasons. Players such as Dale see in video

games, and World of Warcraft in particular, a space in which she can be herself. Making

sense of what video games bring to their players is intimately linked to their identities,

and to their lives outside of the games they play. Golub (2010) writes that to fully grasp

the reach and power of video games we must, as first suggested by Dibbell and Schutz,

study video games, not as an isolated space, but as an integrant part of players’ lives

(p.40). One of his main suggestions in order to conduct anthropological studies of video

gaming is to “follow participants (...) across all segments of their life-worlds that are

central to their biographies, not merely those that are virtual“ (p.40). Golub shatters the

cliché of online and offline lives as fragmented worlds by demonstrating that these spaces

are intertwined; they inform and influence each other. Gaming does not exist in a

vacuum. Video games cannot be understood as geographical spaces, to be fully

understood they must be studied as cultural spaces (p.41).

Early sociological and anthropological studies of video gaming focused on

ethnographic studies of players’ in-game experiences (Chen, 2009; Nardi, 2010). Golub’s

call highlights the necessity to study players across all facets of their lives to better

understand the meaning they draw from video gaming. To achieve this, we need to

explore the diversity of stories behind players’ gaming experiences. We need to ask who

the players are, why they choose to play the games they play, and what they get from

them. We can only achieve this by diving into players’ intimacy. The goal is not to define

the video gaming experience as a monochrome monolith, but rather to explore its

complexity and meaning by studying diverse players across gender, race, ability, and

other identity markers. My study is one slice of that larger project.

Some scholars have recently started this work by studying video gaming through

the lens of feminism (Chess & Shaw, 2015; Lavigne, 2015; Shaw, 2015) and race (Gray,

2014). One of their findings is that, like “any identity, being a gamer intersects with other

identities and is experienced in relation to different social contexts” (Shaw, 2012, p.29).

This statement further stresses the importance of studying video gaming beyond the

pixels on the screen. My study takes up Chess and Shaw’s (2015) call ”for other gaming

cultures and increased diversity” (p.217) by examining my lived video gaming

experiences as a student of critical pedagogy who has grown up with video games.

Hock-Koon (2011) writes that we stand at a new time in video game scholarship,

a time in which people who have grown up with video games are now entering academia.

There is indeed a growing number of video game players in academia who have

conducted research in their culture (Blackmon & Terrell, 2007; Braithwaite, 2015;

Campbell & Grieve, 2014; Chen, 2009; Gray, 2014). However, video game

players/scholars have seldom written about their own lived experiences.

Autoethnographies are rare. I have found a mere three texts that are referred to as

autoethnographies. In the earliest one, Sudnow (1983) writes about his experiences of

coming to video gaming as an adult. Throughout his work, he draws on his background

and identity as piano player to make sense of his video gaming experiences. My project

builds on his work by bringing in a different perspective on video gaming through my

identities as an immigrant, a non-Muslim Arab, and other factors that vary from

Sudnow’s identities. For example, there was no internet at the time of Sudnow’s study

and therefore no online video games. Video gaming then is not video gaming now. That

difference alone is worthy of prompting another autoethnographic study on video

gaming.

Bissell (2011) also wrote about his own experiences playing video games. He

describes his experiences playing video games through two interlocked entry points. The

first is his own lived experiences playing video games. The second entry point is his

interviewing of game designers such as Cliff Bleszinski of Epic Games and Jonathan

Blow, an independent designer. He uses these interviews to voice his own experiences

and reflect on them.

My project differs from Bissell’s in many ways. While I grew up on a mix of

computer and console games, I have not owned a console in over twenty years. Bissell

solely plays console games. He is not a PC gamer. While some games are available on

both format, PC and console platforms offer different possibilities for players such as

modding, the possibility for PC players to modify components of their game. My study

will add another layer of complexity to the scholarship on video gaming by bringing an

autoethnographic account of PC games, especially World of Warcraft. This is also

another major difference with Bissell’s experience. He describes WoW as “less a video

game than a digital board game” and a game he “very much dislikes” (p.40). WoW has

rhythmed my life since I started playing it in 2007. WoW has been the main game I have

played for over 10 years. While WoW is my main game, it is not the only one I play. Like

Bissell who describes GTA IV (Rockstar North, 2008) as his favorite game, having a

main game does not necessarily mean we do not play other ones. My study will cover

several games, many of which I played decades before the release of WoW and others

during the time I played WoW.

Chen’s (2012) study is the third piece that is referred to as an autoethnography of

video gaming. While Chen’s work revolves around his experience as a WoW player, he

centered his research on his raiding team and set the scope of his study to in-game

interactions solely within WoW. While some see his work as autoethnographic, Chen

instead describes it as “following the tradition of online games ethnography” (p.159). As

a matter of fact, he dedicates a mere seven page “mini chapter” (p.159) to the tensions

between his identities as a researcher, gamer, and educator. He discusses these tensions

within the boundaries of in-game interactions with his raidmates and does not extend his

reflections beyond this scope. The confinement of his identities to this short section

shows that, while his experiences as a raider played a role in his study, they did not

constitute the core of it. I do not label his work as autoethnographic, this does not

undercut in any ways the value of his study. As a matter of fact, his work has served to

inspire mine.

The specificities and intersections of my identities (immigrant, father, and all

other facets of my being) will be central to my work. These identities are either not

shared or not foregrounded in Sudnow’s, Bissell’s, or Chen’s work. Moreover, the scope

of my work in terms of time length (I cover the thirty plus years I have been playing) and

reach of the observation field (my lived experiences expand beyond the pixels on the

screen) are unique to my study. Therefore, my methodology for this project adds another

layer of complexity to the video gaming scholarship.

The goal of my research is to better understand the video game culture and tap

into it to offer critical possibilities for our world. I have found in my experiences ways to

make our world a more just place. I was also mindful that my relationship with video

games put me in a position where I had to account for problems and critiques of a

medium that contains and propagates a multitude of messages, some, if not many,

harmful. The chronological component in my study was important. I investigated how my

becoming a student of critical pedagogy shaped my lived video gaming experiences. I

wanted to know to which extent my lived video gaming experiences were informed by

critical pedagogy. I wanted to investigate my reflections, actions, and silences as I played

and navigated video gaming in and off the screen. This study represents an important

contribution to a larger whole, one voice in a larger discussion. My study is also cathartic

as I told and analyzed my stories of video gaming. By examining my stories, I am giving

them visibility, in doing so I worked to legitimize and validate my experiences.

Research Questions

In this study, I used autoethnographic research methods to explore what video

games mean to me and what they have contributed to in my life. I researched my own

experiences as a video gamer player whose identity as a student of critical pedagogy has

triggered questions and inquiries. As a student of critical pedagogy, I understand that the

relationship between players and video games is dynamic, fluid, and reciprocal. The

following questions guided my research:

1. How do I navigate the video gaming culture as a student of critical pedagogy?

2. In what ways do video games lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy?

Overview of the Chapters

Chapter one is an introduction to this study. In chapter two, I show how gaining

the identity of student of critical pedagogy has helped me examine my schooling and

educational experiences. I did so by reviewing the literature on critical pedagogy and

drawing on my own stories of schooling. I use Freire’s (2009) concept of the ‘banking

system,’ a concept of education in which “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who

consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing”

(p.72). These stories rely on my experiences as an Arab student in the French public

school system, the country where I grew up. I used the lens of critical pedagogy to move

from a naïve understanding (Freire, 2009), of my schooling and educational experiences

to a more complex and systemic understanding of these experiences. This chapter also

acts as a blueprint for the examination of my video gaming experiences through the lens

of critical pedagogy.

In chapter three, I go over the methodology I employed for this project:

autoethnography. I start by describing the different types of autoethnography and

explaining the specificities of personal narrative and reflexive ethnography, the two types

I employed. I then described my methods of data collection, the writing of epiphanies by

using writing as a form of inquiry, and a documentation of my current video gaming

experiences through field notes and journaling. I close this chapter by writing about the

validity of my methodology, a method that is still controversial for proponents of

canonical research.

Chapter four answers my first research question: How do I navigate the video

gaming culture as a student of critical pedagogy. I drew on the analysis of my epiphanies,

field notes, and journaling to establish meaningful themes. I had initially thought of

presenting my findings in two themes: the ways I consent to oppressive forces in the

video gaming culture and the ways I resist these forces. However, this study exposed a

rift in how I thought of myself and how I acted in my video gaming experiences. I

unveiled a chasm between my identity as a video game player and that of student of

critical pedagogy during my journaling and field noting. I use the concept of enchantment

to describe how my previously unexamined experiences worked to blind me to the

multiple issues I engaged with. To do justice to the movement triggered by this study, I

present my findings to my first research question in a dynamic format. I first share the

ways in which I consented to the oppressive culture of video gaming. I then expose the

ways in which I thought I resisted these forces. I conclude this chapter by wording how,

after exposing the enchantment, I worked to reconcile the two identities at the core of this

project: student of critical pedagogy and video game player.

In chapter five, I answer my second research question: In what ways do video

games lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. I use the concept of

dismantling the clock to explain how this study worked as the careful examination of my

experiences. Through the work of clockmaker, I identified four cogwheels that lend

themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. This chapter is my re-assemblage of

these cogwheels in alignment with critical pedagogy.

I conclude this dissertation in my sixth chapter. I start by summarizing my findings. I

include recommendations for future research and implications for practice. I end this

chapter and my work by sharing the limits of this study and my closing thoughts.

CHAPTER II

BECOMING A STUDENT OF CRITICAL PEDAGOGY:A REVIEW OF THE

LITERATURE ON CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

Introduction

Becoming a student of critical pedagogy has triggered, informed, and shaped the

questioning of my life starting with my schooling experiences and expanding to other

experiences such as my video gaming. This process has introduced questions that have

troubled my identities, experiences, and ways of seeing and being in the world. In this

chapter I write about becoming a student of critical pedagogy through the review of the

literature on critical pedagogy. Kincheloe (2008) writes that “all descriptions of critical

pedagogy—like knowledge in general—are shaped by those who devise them and the

values they hold” (p.5). Drawing a cemented picture of critical pedagogy is impossible.

Definitions are imprinted with the author’s experiences. Therefore, my understanding of

critical pedagogy will share common points with my readers’ understanding. It may also

differ on other points.

I write about my becoming a student of critical pedagogy by weaving scholarship

and my stories of schooling. My goal is to translate my journey into critical pedagogy

through pivotal stories that I interpret or reinterpret through scholarship. My stories serve

two purposes. The first is to “infuse writing with an intimacy that often is not there when

there is just plain theory” (hooks, 2010, p.50). I create this intimacy by crafting stories of

my schooling experience. I invite you into my world by wording it (Rose as cited in

Denzin & Lincoln, 2003).

The second purpose in using stories is to use storytelling and critical pedagogy as

a form of healing. Some of the stories I share translate difficult moments that have hurt

and shaped me as a child and continue to influence me as an adult. I use stories to show

how the critical writing of these stories serves as a “therapeutic” tool (Poulos, 2010,

p.76). I write these stories by relying on the works of critical pedagogues who have

influenced me in this critical journey. These include Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and bell

hooks. I braid their work around my stories. Doing so has allowed me to become a

student of critical scholarship. It helped me move from understanding my experiences as

solely saying something about me and my worth or unworthiness to understanding the

social, cultural, and political backdrop that shaped these experiences. This critical

understanding has empowered me to address these issues.

Through this chapter, I am laying the ground for writing and reinterpreting my

stories of video gaming through the lens of critical pedagogy. This chapter shows how

gaining the identity of student of critical pedagogy has helped me examine important

moments of my schooling and education. In this review of critical pedagogy, I show how

making sense of these experiences through critical pedagogy has opened a space for me

to act in the name of creating a more just world. By making sense of critical pedagogy

through my schooling experiences and describing the ensuing movements in my thinking,

I set the grounds for examining my video gaming experience and exposing the

movements that resulted from this study.

The Social World

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right.

Shining black shoes stomp their path in flawless rhythm.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right.

The military parade is on. The symbol, the blazon of a country.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right.

Stop.

Uniformed and perfectly groomed, they swing their weapons to their other flank.

Go.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right.

Wooden weapons. Real pride. ROTC teenagers. Real military hunger.

I was an ESOL teacher when I first set foot on the campus of an American high

school. I was shocked to see a group of fourteen-year-olds in military uniforms ordered

around by a slightly less young leader in that space. This was an aberration. Military

education in a high school does not exist in France. I asked my fellow teachers about

what I was witnessing. It took a discussion for me to understand that ROTC was an actual

school program, that it was present in most high schools across the country, that

militarizing youth minds was a state sponsored goal. This moment sent me in a spin. The

only countries I knew of with such programs were totalitarian regimes which

indoctrinated youths. There, the young were portrayed as disposable. A strong sense of

honor shaped by powerful autocrats was instilled in these young minds in order to

legitimize sending their bodies to war. The message I had learned in France was that

youth in the military is an antidemocratic sign.

The surprise did not stop there. What I understood as a clash between democratic

ideals and military presence in schools was seen as ‘normal’ by my coworkers. It made

sense to them. “This is just how we do things” (p.19). Schwalbe (2007) uses this sentence

to translate how decisions made by those shape our society become invisible. With time

these decisions become habits. In turn, these habits become norms and part of our belief

system. We accept them without questioning them. This “consent” is “given by the great

masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant

fundamental group” (Gramsci, 1971, p.12). My coworkers saw state sponsored military

education as ‘natural’ as the air they breathe. This is what Schwalbe describes as the

social world. A world shaped by people in power. A social construction in which the

builders and their intent disappear from public sight, from public debate, for public

thought. ROTC programs do more than normalize the presence of the military in schools,

they play a part in normalizing militarization in all facets of American society. I came to

recognize that students in the ROTC program do learn about leadership and a certain idea

of service. But this program cannot be detached from the impact the normalization of

militarization does on a national and international level.

For me, a French citizen, someone who has been socialized differently, aspects of

the American culture that clash with my own stand out. I noticed other instances of the

normalization of the military in the US. Take the case of November 11th. In the United

States, this holiday celebrates veterans, people who have risked their lives in wars. In

France, on that same day, France commemorates the end of World War I. While subtle,

the differences between these two messages are meaningful. Celebrating the people who

fought contributes to honoring and elevating the image of warriors in terms of honor,

pride, and sacrifice. Commemorating the end of a war sends a different message about

war: that it needs to stop. Such educational messages, whether they take place in schools

or not helped me understand why the US military budget is larger than that of China,

Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, Germany, and Japan combined

(U.S. defense spending compared to other countries, 2017). All these messages contribute

and reinforce the will of those in power, their desire to have a military force handy to

serve their purpose.

Writing about the ROTC experience helped me identify the invisible messages

that establish the place of the military in American culture. By reflecting on these

experiences, I came to understand essential social rules that regimented the country

where I now live and the one I grew up in. Witnessing the marching of youth in schools

was not the result of purchasing uniforms and slapping them on teenagers. The overlap

between public schooling and the military is the result of shared beliefs (Schwalbe, 2007,

p.15). The world we inhabit is not merely made of atoms and molecules. Rules that made

possible the presence of the military in schools and therefore the importance of the

military in US society correspond to the ideas and ideals of people who can make such

rules. In turn, these systems and rules come to shape the beliefs of the larger public. The

power to shape the rules gives the possibility of those who hold such power to create

schools and societies that reinforce their ideas and ideals. With time, these decisions

become shared belief, become the norm, and become invisible even to those who did not

play a role or have a voice in bringing these rules into existence. This is the case even

when these rules and systems go against the interests of those who believe in them.

Gramsci (1971) uses the term “hegemony” (p.12) to describe the domination of one

group above others. Dominant groups achieve hegemony through either consent or

coercion to legitimate ‘common sense,’ a social, cultural, and economic order of the

world that benefits the dominant group. What holds this social construction together is

not the asphalt of our roads or the cement of our buildings. It is the invisibility of the

ideas that compose it. All societies are built on ideas that become norms. No social

system can exist without them (Johnson, 2014). Because I was brought up in a different

country with different norms and habits, American norms and habits that differ from

mine stand out like a sore thumb. My ROTC experience triggered questions. Learning

about critical pedagogy gave me vocabulary to identify power and question its use in

shaping schools, education, and our world.

The Question of Power

Neutral, objective education is an oxymoron. Education cannot exist outside of

relations of power, values, and politic (Giroux, 2013, p.192)

My journey into critical pedagogy has exposed many of the messages I grew up

with as mirages. “There is no place for politics in schools” is a message I heard from

teachers, parents, administrators, friends, and media. Education was presented to me as a

golden ticket to lift myself up, the guarantee of a bright future. My parents, immigrants

from Algeria, taught me that degrees would allow me to access a stable life. They talked

about schools, grades, and diplomas as noble, essential, and a representation of my

intelligence, of my worth. While degrees offer many advantages, such as better chances

of finding a job and ensuring a stable economic future, this message is incomplete and

works to hide the power and politics behind schools and education. My parents

participated in spreading this message, not because they were in on it, but because this is

how the world, the social world had been presented to them. Without critical ways of

seeing the world they were not able to challenge that message.

Through becoming a student of critical pedagogy, I have reinterpreted my stories

of schooling and education to expose themes of domination that run through the history

of schooling such as “school as managers of public thought” or “schools as engines of a

consumer society” (Spring, 2011). Giroux writes that there is no such thing as neutral

education, that the decisions that shape schools are a reflection of politics, values, and

power. Critical pedagogy gave me the language to understand school and the world as a

social construction, as shaped by people with power. Becoming a student of critical

pedagogy has granted me knowledge, language, and questions to expose incomplete

and/or hurtful surface messages I had been bombarded with. The questioning of the social

world has helped me understand that my schooling experiences were not neutral, that

they were shaped by many unseen forces (Kincheloe, 2008, p.71). This questioning

should not be understood as the demonizing of schools. As a student of critical pedagogy,

I see in education and schools a tool to promote democratic values and democratization,

that is to create a society that is fair and just and that allows everyone to live free, full,

and dignified life (Schwalbe, 2007; Shapiro, 2005). As my ROTC story highlights,

questioning power is essential in assessing whether schooling is indeed contributing to

the creation of a more just world. As a student of critical pedagogy, I want to ensure that

the rules and systems in place are working for the benefit of all, not only for the few

shaping the social world.

Education plays a major role in shaping our shared beliefs, in shaping the social

world. One of the ways schools shape students’ understanding of the world and place in it

is through its portrayal of knowledge, the way schools teach what it means to know

something. There are two critical questions that revolve around knowledge which I will

use to anchor my becoming a student of critical pedagogy. The first is ‘what is

knowledge?’ or what does it mean to know something. The second is ‘whose knowledge

is valued and deemed valid’ and therefore whose knowledge is devalued and demeaned. I

tackle these questions separately in the next section by relying on Freire’s (2009) concept

of the ‘banking system’ (p.72), a system Freire exposes as harmful to democratic values

in which knowledge is depicted as passive, detached, and hermetic. Through the banking

process, the world is presented as static, a world in which students have no say, instead of

a social construction, a world in which students have power. Through the banking

process, the social construction of the world is hidden. Ideas and systems that are harmful

become difficult to see, challenge, and change. Therefore, the social world and any

injustice it harbors continue to exist. It is in the democratic hope of exposing these

injustices that I take on these questions of knowledge. I do so by sharing stories of my

schooling experiences that conveyed harmful messages and hurt my sense of agency and

identity. I show how critical pedagogy has helped me reinterpret these stories in the

larger context of power and politics.

What is Knowledge?

What It Means to Learn in Mr. Charles 7th Grade History Class

Mr. Charles: “Title in red. Centered. Write bla bla bla.”

As instructed, I take my red pen and write that exact title as neatly as possible. A

perfectly written B, then comes an L, and an A. I write the next two words with the same

attention. Mr. Charles will pick up our textbooks and check colors and formats as he does

every week. I know my parents will get mad if any teacher says anything negative about

my work. And so I pen the title with great focus and a tint of fear.

Mr. Charles: “Now, green pen for the first level subheading. No indentation.

Write bla bla bla.” I switch pens and continue working. I want to take my time to write

clearly. My sixth grade French teacher had told me that my handwriting was poor. She

instructed me to stop writing in cursive and only write in print. This, she said, would help

me form better looking letters even if it took me longer to write. I look around to make

sure that I am not falling behind. The other students might be faster than me. Writing in

cursive is the norm in French schools. I am the only one person I know who writes in

print.

Mr. Charles: “Now, black pen for the second level subheading. It must be

indented by 3 centimeters. Write bla bla bla.” The monotony of copying titles is

rhythmed? by the mechanical act of switching of pens. This pseudo-physical activity is

the only thing that keeps me and many of my classmates from falling asleep in this

history/geography combo class. Cemented behind his desk, Mr. Charles moves on to

dictating his notes for that subsection. Blue. Copying notes has to be done in blue. I focus

on Mr. Charles’ voice and write the words as I hear them. I stay silent. No one ever says a

word in history/geography class. In between our note copying, one of us may be called to

the board to point at an answer on the giant map. Stepping up to the front of the class was

terrifying. We preferred to stay invisible.

I did not think of Mr. Charles as a mean teacher and despite the rigor and

extensiveness of the note copying, I did not think of him as a strict teacher either. During

recess, the words we used to describe him and his class were boring, low energy,

annoying, and soporific. On test days, these words echoed with bitterness and irritation…

----------------------------------------

What was the second subheading again? Why can’t I remember? I did study

yesterday. I always learn these lessons by heart. I am a good student. I make very good

grades no matter the class. Why doesn’t that subheading come back to me? I read over

the first subsection of notes I spat back out word for word hoping it will lead me to

figuring out what that second subheading is.

Figure 2. Mr. Charles Class

Yacine Kout

19 septembre 1989

Contrôle d’histoire

Question: What is Bla bla bla?

Bla bla bla

Bla bla bla bla bla bla

Bla bla bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla Bla. bla bla bla bla bla.

Bla bla bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla.

Bla bla bla bla bla bla.

??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???

No. It’s not coming back. What’s going to happen if I don’t make a good grade? I

better not think about that. Just read it again Yacine. It’s bound to come back... eventually

*gulp.* I look around. Everybody else has their nose buried in their sheet of paper.

What’s happening? Slimane had told me that sooner or later the streak of great grades

would end. “20/20’s belong in elementary school,” he said. Seventh grade is a different

story. The words and sentences I cannot remember, those I was to write on my test, are

now goosebumps on my skin. If I get a bad grade the glasses on my nose will no longer

be seen as the mark of my so-called intelligence. Instead, they will paint me as a good for

nothing, someone who can’t play sports and who isn’t even good at school. I am

overwhelmed with shame and fear. There is no room for bad grades at home.

Making Sense of Mr. Charles’ Teaching: Banking System and Schooling.

My experience in Mr. Charles’ class is not an anomaly. This experience

represents what many have come to think of as learning: absorbing facts detached from

our lives and spitting them back out in the same way they were thrown at us. In the USA,

this is usually done by finding and bubbling the right answer. While I never had to bubble

answers on a test (multiple choice tests did not exist when I was schooled in my native

France), many of my tests required me to write word for word or paraphrase what I was

dictated in class. Like hooks (2010), I found that many of my classes were “a

dehumanizing space” (p.34), a space where my thoughts and questions were not

welcome. This model of learning constitutes the norm in the USA. People in and out of

schools have come to see this way of learning as the only way of learning. Freire (2009)

coins that system the ‘banking system’ (p.72).

The banking system. In my middle school, Mr. Charles’ class and other classes

like his were notorious for the pain they inflicted on their students. We, the students, were

seen as empty objects who had nothing to bring to the class. We were treated as ignorant,

knowledgeable only if we followed directions, applied the colored template mindlessly,

copied notes religiously, and regurgitated them verbatim. Mr. Charles’ class stood out

among other classes in which the teacher adopted the banking concept of education

because it was the first one in which the entire 55 minutes were spent on listening to his

words and copying them according to a strict color coding. Another telling memory of

that class is that of my friend Jérôme. He would secretly record Mr. Charles’ lecture on

his mini-cassette recorder. On test days, he would slyly run the earphone cable through

his sleeve right before class. During the test, he would play the recorder in his pocket and

find the portion of the recording that corresponded to that test’s lesson. In banking,

learning is synonymous with repeating. Students’ thoughts, experiences, and questions

are erased from the learning process. Jérôme’s body was a mere conduit for Mr. Charles’

words. Jérôme was absent from his test as we were absent from that class. Getting good

grades in Mr. Charles’ class and in the banking system is a reward for complying with a

system that objectifies and silences students.

In the banking system, schools are modeled after the factory model. The teacher is

the factory worker. The students are the inanimate products built by the teacher. The

setup of the classroom, lines of desks facing the all-knowing teacher, reinforces the

centrality of the teacher’s knowledge and reciprocally the ignorance of the students. In

Mr. Charles’ classroom, all the desks were facing him. He was the center of the attention,

the center of teaching. This layout reinforced the idea that learning was a transaction that

originates from the teacher and goes toward the students. Freire (2009) states that “in the

banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider

themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (p.72).

Through this idea, students adopt an inanimate state which equates them to empty

inanimate vessels. The act of teaching translates to the teacher “depositing” their

knowledge into “depositories,” passive students who are reduced to objects (Freire, 2009,

p.72). The finalization of the learning transaction in Mr. Charles’ class occurred during

tests when students were to present him with his own words, organized in the same way

he introduced them to us, using the same color coding he ruled his class through. In

schooling, conforming is key. Students are labeled as ‘educated’ only after they can

replicate what they are told and shown. As Freire (1998) writes, “there is no education

here. Only domestication” (p.57).

Invisible messages such as the place of students in the classroom, the

unworthiness of their experiences, and their absence in the learning process are referred

to as the “hidden curriculum.’ Vallance (2006) writes that the “the functions of this

hidden curriculum have been variously identified as the inculcation of values, political

socialization, training in obedience and docility, the perpetuation of traditional class

structure - functions that may be characterized generally as social control” (p.79). These

are teachings that are not written in lesson plans. They correspond to teachings that

students receive through less visible or obvious means. Dewey shows how the layout of a

classroom and the positioning of desks sends messages about the place of students in

their learning. After having visited a few furniture dealers looking for desks at which

students could work together, one of these dealers made the following comments "I am

afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work;

these are all for listening" (Dewey, 1900, p.32). The listening of students referred to here

is not one in which interlocutors listen to one another in order to communicate. The

listening the furniture dealer was referring to is a listening which situates students as

subordinates, incapable of producing anything of value. Dewey (1900) continues:

with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that

there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size,

with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some

chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only

educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made "for

listening"--because simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of

listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. The attitude of

listening means, comparatively speaking, passivity, absorption; that there are

certain ready-made materials which are there, which have been prepared by the

school superintendent, the board, the teacher, and of which the child is to take in

as much as possible in the least possible time. (p.32)

Through a critical questioning of the classroom space, the concepts of the banking

system and hidden curriculum expose educational elements that stretch further than tests

and teaching strategies. They include elements such as space, furniture design, classroom

layout, and many more. A critical analysis of space shows that in the traditional layout of

the classroom, students are more likely to see themselves as powerless in the classroom

and to become powerless out of schools. An educational system that rewards students for

silencing themselves will produce citizens who have difficulties seeing themselves as

people who can bring value, who can bring something new to our world. Such citizens

will be less likely to challenge power in society and bring about a more just world to

existence. By presenting knowledge as oriented from the teacher to the student, the

banking system and the hidden curriculum are more likely to create obedient students.

These youths will be highly unlikely to ask critical questions, highly unlikely to see the

world as a social construct, highly unlikely to address issues of power in the world, and

therefore highly unlikely to work to make this world a better place for all.

Systems not people. Students are not the only people suffering from this

dehumanizing system of learning. The following story showcases the reach of the

banking system and its objectifying of teachers. Due to the impossibility of translating a

specific French pun into English, I decided to write the first paragraph of my story in

French and translate it in English. I underlined the pun to help my readers see the

connection.

----------------------------------------

Vous savez ce que je fais ce soir? Je dîne à Meaux. Oui, je dynamo. Un ange

passe. Vous comprenez? Il y a Dynamo Kiev contre Paris Saint Germain ce soir.

Je vais regarder le match.

Do you know what I am doing tonight? I dine in Meaux . Yes, I dynamo. An

awkward silence settles in. Do you understand? Paris Saint Germain is playing

against Dynamo Kiev tonight. I am going to watch the game.

He laughs. Never mind that he is the only one. He loved his pun. One of the

lamest puns I have heard in a while. I do not say anything though. I started this job a few

days ago. It is not my place to say something. But boy! Did HE just say that? Did Mr.

Charles just crack a joke? And laugh? Eight years ago, I spent two straight years in his

classroom. I cannot remember him smile once. Today I am his co-worker and I am

confused about who this person is.

His eyes shine as he forks a few of his carrottes vichyssoises. Where was this

teacher when I was in the 7th grade? Who is that person? That question burns my lips but

I cannot ask it. I never ask him. Mrs. Benamou rolls her eyes as she puts her spoon down.

She taught me French and Latin in middle school. She is sitting next to me. She asks me

to excuse Mr. Charles and his poor, poor sense of humor. “He has always been like that,”

she says.

----------------------------------------

Working in the same space as Mr. Charles was a troubling experience. Having

lunch with him shattered the image I had of him. He was not funny but he was joyous.

His sense of humour revolved around crafting puns that never quite hit the mark with his

audience. This experience made me see him in a different light. I understood that his

voice was not present in his teaching. When he was my teacher, he was absent from his

very own classroom. In many ways, he was similar to my friend Jérôme. His tied-to-the-

desk-body was a conduit for the system. However, people are not robots. Working within

a dehumanizing system does not make robots out of people. Even in the most debilitating

tasks, we strive to reclaim our humanity by making meaning out of them. Mr. Charles

was the only teacher I had that used color coding with such precision and thoroughness.

Maybe that was his way of reclaiming ownership or agency in his work, of reclaiming

some aspect of himself in his teaching. That coding was a creative touch and I did find

beauty in using colors to convey meaning. I see in my quasi-fascination with this color

coding a sign of the “quintessential human need to make or find meaning” (Shapiro,

2005, p.7). My capacity to find something meaningful in such a mindless class speaks to

the human capacity to find meaning in situations that do not lend themselves to it. There

was nothing in that class that invited student input. Even when reduced to an object by

these pedagogical practices, I found something meaningful. I found an escape. This

meaning making was a form of resistance to the situation I was placed. I resisted my

objectification. This was a sign of criticality.

The banking system hurts students by reducing them to objects, by negating their

voice and treating them and their lives as worthless, but as this story shows, it also

impacts teachers. Freire (1998) writes that the banking system impacts the learner and the

teacher (p.79). hooks (2010) further tells us that “no blame can be attributed to the huge

body of educators who simply taught as they were taught” (p.29). The responsibility does

not lie with the teachers for whom the schooling factory is the only model they know.

These teachers cannot implement another model of learning if they only know one model

of teaching. For teachers who have not been taught to question power in education,

teaching only makes sense as the act of replicating what they have known. Kincheloe

(2008) writes that teachers involved in the banking system do not intentionally hurt

students; instead, they merely follow the directions of their administrators and “the rules

of the system” (p.8). Giroux gives the example of Florida state legislators who in 2006

“outlawed historical interpretation in public schools, arguing that American history must

be taught as a series of facts, rather than as a matter of interpretation, reasoned debate,

and accumulation of evidence” (Giroux, 2013, p.32). Governor Bush who signed that

education bill into law declared that “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as

constructed (Jensen, 2006, para.4). Moreover, the law states that “factual history shall be

viewed as knowable, teachable and testable” (HB7087e3, 2006, p.44). This example

shows that people in power define knowledge in schools by making laws regarding its

teaching and representations. They also create systems which assess knowledge

according to their interpretation of it. If knowledge is a series of facts, then assessing

learning is about spitting these facts out as they were taught. In creating such systems,

they validate certain ways of knowing and outlaw others. This decision made by state

legislators reinforces the idea that students have nothing to bring to the classroom, that

they should stay silent and learn facts by heart in order to regurgitate them for a test. This

law translates the grip of powerful people on schools and their hold through that

institution on creating and perpetuating a social world that preserves their views and

interests. Through that decision, Florida state legislators reaffirmed that in their view,

knowledge is not to be debated or discussed. It is to be passed down from textbooks to

students through teachers. Via such a system, young people are to understand that their

place in the classroom and in the world is to adapt to norms they had no say in creating

and that the best future they can aim for is attainable by complying to that system.

To add to the injustice of such a system, a critical analysis of knowledge

construction in schools reveals that this view of knowledge and schooling is not present

across all layers of society. Anyon (table 1) conducted a study that shows the impact of

class on how students understand knowledge and see themselves in relationship to

knowledge.

Table 1. Key Points of Anyon’s Study on Social Class and School Knowledge

Question

Working-class schools

Middle-class school

Affluent professional school

What is

knowledge?

“You gain facts, like.”

Some children answer they

didn’t know

“The three R… Miss [P]

said if we don’t have the

three Rs, we can’t do

anything… Say if you

work in a store you gotta

add up prices.”

“It means you’re

intelligent.”

“When you study.”

“To know things.:

“The way you think. Yes, the way

you think.”

“It’s when you know something-

you can be a great scientist.”

“You think up ideas and then find

things wrong with those ideas.”

Where does

knowledge

come from?

“Teachers.”

“Dictionary.”

“From the old times.”

“From libraries.”

“From reading and learning.”

“Anybody, if they’re really

willing to learn something, can

really go far in that subject(...)”

“From going places.”

Could you

make

knowledge?

75% of children answered

no.

20% answered they did not

know.

5% answered yes.

55% answered yes.

45% of children

answered no.

80% of children answered no.

20% answered no.

Note: Adapted from Social class and school knowledge, by Anyon 1981.

Anyon’s findings are troubling because they show us that the voices and stories

which are the most needed to understand and address inequalities of wealth in our society

come from students who are taught not to see themselves as knowledge producers, not to

see themselves as capable of bringing something to our world. On the other hand,

students from affluent neighborhoods are taught in a way through which they see

themselves as worthy and capable of bringing something new to this world. These

students, who are most likely to be distant from issues tied to poverty, see themselves as

knowledge producers and are most likely to aim for and reach positions of power as

youths and adults, as students and professionals. This rift contributes to wealth inequities

in American society as the class of people who have power continue making decisions

and shaping society without the input of people who are most hurt by unjust systems.

This critical analysis of knowledge shows us that instead of working as “the great

equalizer” (Mann as cited in Martinez-Blanco & Waldo, 2011, para. 4), a ‘common

sense’ understanding of education, schools are spaces which reproduce and perpetuate

inequalities.

The banking system is a complex cogwheel in a larger system. It works to rob

lower and middle class students of their stories and agency. By doing so, it keeps a socio-

political economic order that is unjust to the youths it hurts. That system does nothing to

nurture young people’s power and energy to impact the world and make it a more just

place. The banking system limits our understanding of education and prevents youths

from seeing value in their perspectives and in their stories. This system values one way of

knowing the world, one voice, as determined by people in power. In that process this

system demeans and negates every other way of being or interpreting the world. In the

next section, I explore the question of whose knowledge is conveyed through the banking

system and analyze how it devalues other knowledges.

Whose Knowledge?

Whether one is teaching in Bangladesh or Bensonhurst, Senegal or Shreveport,

East Timor or West New York, education is a political activity (Kincheloe, 2008,

p.8),

My K-12 schooling experience took place in France. As Kincheloe writes, no

matter where a student is schooled, education is always a political activity and project.

Since education is a political activity, we need to question whose politics and whose

knowledge are implemented through the educational system. In the next story, I tackle

the critical question of whose knowledge is taught in schools by sharing an experience

that impacted me more than twenty years ago. While it touches on a wide range of issues

such as power, politics, knowledge, silencing, and identity, I foreground my analysis

around the question of whose knowledge I was taught.

----------------------------------------

September 1993. Twelfth grade history, finally. Since sixth grade, year after year,

we had studied history chronologically as a series of dates and events that inched closer

to modern times. At the end of 11th grade, I realized that my senior history class would

cover the 1960’s. I would learn about Algeria, the country of my parents. At last, I was to

learn something about me.

I did not know much about Algeria. Conversations on that topic with my parents

were few and short lived. My mother would tell me with sparks in her eyes that out of all

French colonies, Algeria was the one place France tried the hardest to keep under its

control. Algerians fought ruthlessly for their independence. There was a sense of

Algeria’s worth in my mother’s eyes when she spoke about this. Her pride rang in her

voice. For her, France’s clinging to Algeria was testimony to how important her country

is. Our conversations never went further. I did receive other messages about that war

though.

----------------------------------------

Summer 1988. The Imam’s call to prayer reaches the whole neighborhood. It’s

Friday. Almost everyone is heading to the mosque. I stay at my aunt’s house. I speak

Arabic, the sacred language of Islam, but I did not grow up with religious rigor. My

father put some distance between him and the faith he grew up in since he moved to

France. I am alone in front of the TV while my cousins, uncles, and aunts are praying.

Some of them are in the mosque. Others are in the prayer room of my aunt’s house, a

place decorated with golden Arabic calligraphy and layered with beautiful red prayer

rugs. The prayer is echoed on the TV as precious Arabic letters slowly form on the

screen. The fully shaped words give way to a night scene. The images of a military man

painfully crawling in the mud with a rifle on his back appear on the screen and engrave

my memory. I am perplexed. I do not understand the connection. I feel weird. I look

away.

Later that day, I ask my uncle Omar about it. He is friendlier than my father and

more knowledgeable than my mother. Speaking of religion was not welcome in my family

nucleus. In Algeria, the core family core grew to include cousins, uncles, and aunts. This

was an opportunity to ask.

“Uncle Omar, why are there images of a military man mixed with the call to

prayer on TV? Is that normal?”

He smiles, “This was not a military man, Yacine. That was a mujahidin, a

freedom fighter, someone who fought to free Algeria from the French, to free Algeria

from your country.” He laughs.

I am confused. My parents are Algerian. My family members are Algerian. I am

French. What does that mean about me? I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to

think. I don’t know what to ask. I do not want to keep talking. I do not think I can handle

more singling out, more shame and fear. Moreover, the discussion could send ripples to

my parents. I would get an earful for asking about this, if not worse. My parents had

moved to France because “il y a plus d'opportunités en France qu’en Algérie pour nous

et nos futurs enfants.” That was the story. A one sentence story. More of a way to silence

than to tell.

----------------------------------------

June 1994. My senior year is about to end. Next year, I will head to la Sorbonne

Nouvelle to major in English. All my classes will deal with English literature, civilization,

and language. No more history classes. But June. It’s June. The year is over. We

addressed “les trentes glorieuses.” We looked at pictures of politicians to understand the

cold war. We drew arrows on maps to cover the trade shifts after decolonization. That

was it for the K-12 history curriculum. No trace of the sparks in my mother’s eyes.

Nothing to help me understand my father's silences. Nothing to clear up my uncle’s

laugh. Where was the Algerian War of Independence in my class? Where was I? I could

go to the library and check out a book about it but what would people think?

“What is this Arab boy doing?” Mumbles the suspicious librarian from behind

her desk.

“Doesn’t he know about his history already?” Thinks the person who sees me

check out the book.

“An 18-year-old that does not know about himself. What a shame!” Says the eyes

of the patron as he catches me reading in a corner of the library.

I could imagine this but I did not want to hear it. I could not face this. I do not go

to the library.

A few weeks later, I graduate from high school. I receive my baccalauréat degree.

According to the French department of education, I now know something. I guess I do but

I don’t know about me.

----------------------------------------

Making Sense of the Silence on the Algerian War of Independence

Becoming a student of critical pedagogy has helped me understand the

complexities of this part of my life in a way that was not possible without considering

issues of power and politics and how they shape knowledge and education. As a teenager,

I felt a sense of shame for not knowing the history of Algeria’s decolonization, for not

knowing this part of my history. I individualized this lack of knowledge. It defined my

teenager self. I walked the world as someone who knew he did not know a part of

himself. There was a hole in my soul. I felt like a lesser being. I dodged discussions on

that topic with my friends, most of them white. I did not want them to know that I did not

know. Worse, I did not want to find out they knew more than I did. I was ashamed of

what they may think about me. I had a naïve consciousness (Kincheloe, 2008, p.72).

Incapable of questioning power, I could only blame myself.

Through critical pedagogy, I understand that the silence in schools around

Algeria’s War of Independence was a decision made by people in power. That silence

was a deliberate omission. Giroux refers to this type of erasing as the “history of

forgetting” (Giroux, 2013, p.134) and Paulo Freire calls it a “culture of silence” (in

Giroux, 2013, p.169). Not knowing about my parents’ country was not the mere

reflection of potential issues or trauma in my family. My ignorance was in part

engineered by people in power who silenced this part of French history from public

school history books. This story highlights a second important point about the banking

system. In addition to stifling students’ imagination and potential to change the world,

this system presents learning as adopting and conforming to a single way of seeing and

understanding the world. I will unpack this single view of the world in American schools.

I will share the drastic consequences this view of the world, masquerading as the only

view of the world, has on youth.

The One View of Seeing the World

The machinery of permanent education and the public pedagogical relationships

these create have become the main framing mechanisms in determining what

information gets included, who speaks, what stories are told, what representations

translate into reality, and what is considered normal or subversive (Giroux, 2013,

p.31)

Schwalbe (2007) writes that it is only “when we try to pull away, to break from

the pattern” of the social world that we experience the tangible force of the threads

(p.19). This is what happened when in 1998 a Raza studies program was implemented in

the Tucson Unified School District (Rao, 2017). This program was created to address the

alarming Latinx students drop out rate. Through this program, students of any

background could take classes that presented a Latinx perspective on the history of the

US. Romero reports that through this program Mexican-American students closed the

achievement gap (Romero, 2014) therefore getting closer to fulfilling the promise of

compulsory public education. Despite its obvious success, state legislators and Tom

Horne, then superintendent of TUSD, launched a hatred filled multiyear campaign to

close the program. By passing House Bill 2281 in 2011, their relentless efforts killed the

Raza program citing what Horne saw as “propagandizing,” “brainwashing,” (Lacey,

2011, para.3) and “separatist” (Associated Press, 2017, para.13). Legislators and other

people in power have shown that “achievement is irrelevant” to schooling if it does not

serve their worldview (Duncan-Andrade, 2014, p.163).

I find three main takeaways from the history and ban of this program. First, they

“pulled away” from the hegemonic idea of education, they imagined and implemented

another way of doing education by foregrounding a Latinx perspective on the history of

this country. Second, by “pulling away” they suffered the hateful backlash of those who

held power. Third, in doing so they exposed the power structures that created and held

together the current educational system, an educational system that created, supported,

and enforced a single view of the world. A view of the world no one was supposed to

deviate from. Critical pedagogues have used several terms to describe this politically

elevated view of the world such as “Anglo-Eurocentric” (Duncan-Andrade, 2014, p.161)

and “white supremacist” (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2017, p.143). I choose to use the term

white supremacist as it evokes the racist history of this country and carries a sense of

superiority towards other races.

One of the ways this white supremacist view persist is through its invisibility.

People who hide behind a supposed neutral way of teaching history do so either because

their political and cultural identity is perfectly aligned with it or because they consent to

it. Neutrality is a mirage. Since that perspective is presented as the norm, anything that

varies from it is perceived as deviation, as transgression. No matter the successes in

improving student graduation, in the eyes of legislators this program was not aligned with

what they saw, consciously or not, as the one way of seeing and understanding the world.

The message they sent when they outlawed this program was that, no matter how many

minoritized students drop out, schools should only teach through the white supremacist

lens. This is what I faced when I expected to learn about the Algerian War of

Independence. No matter if the silences hurt me and hurt my future, I was to be taught

through that lens. The consequences of teaching through this worldview are drastic. They

affect students’ identity and sense of self-worth. They erase people’s histories from

textbooks and contribute to their devaluing. I explore these consequences next.

Consequences of the “White Supremacist” Lens on Students

The closing of the Raza studies program prevented all students from learning

about the Latinx and indigenous stories of the Americas. These include stories of

oppression such as the genocide of indigenous people’s stories of resistance such as the

courage of Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdamez who spoke against poverty. In a district

that was serving 61% of Hispanic students (TUSDStats, n.d.) at the time the program was

closed, this means that students were deprived of knowledge that represented their culture

and their view of seeing the world. Their knowledge was erased. This whitewashing of

schooling prevented public school students from being exposed to a critical analysis of

history. It prevented youths and adults from engaging with injustices, naming them, and

seeking just possibilities. Identity wise, it also prevented them from knowing who their

peoples were, where they came from, what their history was, and understand how they

were positioned in the world. These students are more likely to feel and be alienated in

schools. Dropping out becomes an option. Doing well in school for students whose

history is erased and devalued becomes a debilitating process. Students must adopt and

conform to a view of seeing the world that ignores and silences them. Failure to comply

and succeed to this system is individualized. It is portrayed as a lack of intelligence by

teachers, administrators, and classmates. It can also be lived as a lack of intelligence by

the students themselves. Freire (1998) writes that “the role of the dominant ideology is to

inculcate in the oppressed a sense of blame and culpability about their situation of

oppression” (p.78). Without critical pedagogy, without a questioning of “who has control

over the conditions for the production of knowledge, values, and classroom practices”

(Giroux, 2011, p.5), the blame is centered on individual students. Their failure is

portrayed as the result of their unworthiness. This is the source of the shame I felt when

the Algerian War of Independence did not appear in my senior history books. Without

critical knowledge, I had individualized a political and social issue. This had damaged

my sense of identity and self-worth. Becoming a student of critical pedagogy freed me

from the pain. It has granted me access to a questioning of power. In doing so, it has

allowed me to start healing.

The critical analysis of my experiences has opened possibilities for educating.

Possibilities that are not grounded in domestication and white supremacist ways of seeing

the world. Becoming a student of critical pedagogy has reawakened and nourished my

imagination. This sense of possibility and imagination is necessary to continue the

process of democratization in the US and beyond, that is to include voices and people in

society and address the needs of those who have historically been deprived of access to

living a full and dignified life. Without a critical understanding of the powers that shape

our world, without a critical assessment of the health of democracies, without a push to

address the injustice and oppression the most vulnerable members of our society endure,

“tomorrow becomes the perpetuation of today” (Freire, 1998, p.103). We can only

replicate what we see as ‘normal.’ It is only if we understand the inequities of today that

we can challenge, imagine, and enact more just futures. In the next section, I explore this

reawakened sense of possibility nurtured by critical pedagogy.

Critical Pedagogy as Democratic Imagination: Enacting New Futures

Imagining different futures is a key component of critical pedagogy. The last

scene of the movie Arizona Dream (Gurian & Kusturica, 1992) provides a good metaphor

to explain this idea. That scene has stayed with me since I first saw it in the mid 1990’s.

It intrigued me. I never quite understood it but it spoke to me on some mystic level. The

scene depicts a dream in which a younger and an older Inuit character ice fish

(regrettably and problematically these indigenous characters are played by white actors

Johnny Depp and Jerry Lewis). As they get ready to fish, the two characters chat about

halibuts and the fact that, unlike young halibuts, adult halibuts have two eyes on the same

side of their head.

Young fisherman: Do the eyes start on either side of the head?

Older fisherman: Yes, it's a very strange fish. When it becomes an adult, one eye

moves across, joins the other.

Young fisherman: Why do they do that?

Older fisherman: Maybe it's like a... a badge of maturity. They passed through the

nightmare.

Young fisherman: Nightmare?

Older fisherman: The nightmare that separates children from adults.

Years later while being introduced to the writings of Giroux and Freire, this

scene, as eerily as it imprinted my memory, came back to me. I draw two connected

lessons from that tale. The first is that all children are born with the capacity to see the

world through different perspectives. Imagination is therefore a human capacity we are

all born with. The second is that becoming an adult means losing the capacity to see the

world in different ways, losing the capacity to imagine other possibilities. Becoming an

adult is about conforming to a unique predetermined view of seeing the world. For that

harmful process to be complete, young people must lose their innate capacity to imagine.

This scene helped me make sense of critical pedagogy and of the damage the

current school system causes to our youths. Through schooling, students’ innate

capacities are diminished. Their sight is restrained, they are less likely to see differently,

ask questions, and imagine. In schools, imagination is demonized, damaged, and at times

annihilated. By taking away their capacity to imagine, students are rendered voiceless and

powerless. This tale also shows that the young are capable of seeing what adults can’t.

Adults, whose sight is shaped and restrained by the invisible rules and laws of the social

world, have difficulty seeing beyond it, have difficulty imagining other possibilities.

Children whose sight has not been restricted and damaged by the rules of the social world

can bring something new to this world. As hooks (2010) writes “children are organically

predisposed to be critical thinkers” (p.7). This capacity for imagination is a tenet of

critical pedagogy. Shapiro (2005) writes, “each generation can and must find new layers

of significance and insight into the purpose and quality of our lives” (p.192). Through its

nurturing of imagination, critical pedagogy can achieve this goal.

An education anchored in critical pedagogy is a democratic project in which the

grasp of power on the social world is made visible. A vision of society in which

education is a foundation of democratization. Through it, students’ capacity to see other

possibilities is nurtured. Understanding the world as a social construction is a call to

question rather than to conform, comply, and replicate. Critical pedagogy is about

understanding that rules and laws are not natural but created by people, and about

reshaping the social world into a more just place. Realizing that our world is a social

construct grants us the possibility, the responsibility, and the emotional push to shape our

world. The knowledge exposed through critical pedagogy is not an abstract concept

detached from the world. Giroux (2013) writes that “education is not simply about the

transmission of knowledge: it is more accurately about the production of subjects,

identities, and desires” (p.200). Freire’s concept of praxis best represents this production

of subjects, identities, and desires.

Praxis

Critical knowledge is a force, a push to end suffering and oppression in all its

forms. Freire’s concept of praxis is the embodiment of informed action in the name of

justice. He defines praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform

it” (1970, p.79). In praxis, reflection and action are linked. Freire does not see reflection

and action as two separate entities as if someone could either be a theorist solely

preoccupied by reflection or an activist solely dedicated to action. Reflection and action

are not placed in opposition. What Freire tells us is that reflection and action must be

connected in order for any type of meaningful change to occur. Through praxis students

enact their agency in the world, bring into existence more just possibilities. Freire (2009)

uses the term conscientizaçao to describe the process of leaving “behind the status of

objects to assume the status of historical Subjects” (p.160). Conscientizaçao moves

students of critical pedagogy in two ways. First, it moves us emotionally as we become

conscious that the plagues of the planet are manmade before lifting us with hope as we

understand that all human beings have the potential to end oppression in our world

(Purpel, 1999). Second, it moves us physically. It moves us into action. Because we

understand that all people hold power, students of critical pedagogy bear the

responsibility to act and bring our world closer to a just place. Inaction is no longer an

option once we realize we possess the tools to end oppression and injustice.

Intervention

Freire (1998) writes about education as being a form of intervention in the world

(p.91). This intervention is grounded in the lived experiences of the critical actors. Giroux

uses the example of the Occupy movement to illustrate this intervention. The Occupy

Movement consisted in protesting “against economic inequality and corporate greed”

(Walters, 2011, para. 1). This movement was mostly, but not only, led, generated,

populated, and animated by young people. They saw their role as “fighting back against

the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic

process (..) and fight(ing) back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules

of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.” (Occupy Wall Street, n.d.).

While the movement encountered many challenges, such as governmental repression and

use of force to remove protesters, their demand for justice introduced to the American

public and to the world the concept of the 1%. That term represents the critical fact that

“almost 40% of US wealth is held in the hands of 1% of the population, who are taxed

more lightly than the majority of Americans” (Walters, 2011, para.4). By introducing this

critical term, the Occupy movement has brought into the common consciousness the

concept of wealth inequality and exploitation on a scale that did not exist before the

movement. This language is a way to name and make visible power and those hold it

(Giroux, 2013, p.148). Today this idea is weaved into the social world. People make

sense of inequities through this term. Obviously, we are still working at translating these

now popular ideas into rules and laws.

Another achievement of these actions is that they bring about a sense of hope to

those who experience these struggles. Giroux (2013) defines hope as “the outcome of

those pedagogical practices and struggles that tap into memory and lived experiences,

while linking individual responsibility with a progressive sense of social change” (p.153).

These movements, whether they take place on a local or global scale can replenish our

sense of hope and possibilities. They can help us feel connected to the struggles of others.

As a child of colonization, I feel a connection with the Latinx students, teachers, and

communities whose Ethnic studies program was banned by legislators. Even if we are

separated by place and time, I feel I “share a journey” with the advocates of this Ethnic

studies program (Shapiro, 2005, p.77). In that ban, I saw the oppressive power and the

culture of silencing that affected me as a teenager. My identity as a student of critical

pedagogy pushes me to listen to the stories of those who aim to bring about justice in our

world. Critical knowledge connects us to those who experience and fight oppression in all

its forms. Critical pedagogy echoes Dr. King’s words “injustice anywhere is a threat to

justice everywhere” (King, 1963, para. 4). I also feel that injustice to anyone is an

injustice to everyone. Critical knowledge enables us to see that the net of oppression is

cast over all those who do not fit the “white supremacist” social, cultural, political, and

economic project. Critical pedagogy connects us. Compassion, solidarity, and love are

foundational in the struggles for justice.

Conclusion

Becoming a student of critical pedagogy helped me put my experiences in a

socio-cultural and political context. This ongoing process has helped me see the then-

invisible power and forces that shaped my experiences. It gave me language to identify

power, how it works, who holds it, who benefits from it, and who is hurt by it. Having

that language helped me challenge power when it worked against justice, against people

who are the most vulnerable. Critical pedagogy helped me imagine different possibilities

to make this world a better place.

hooks (1994) writes that she “came to Freire thirsty, dying of thirst (in that way

that the colonized, marginalized subject who is still unsure of how to break the hold of

the status quo, who longs for change, is needy, is thirsty)” (p.50). I was not thirsty when I

first encountered critical pedagogy. I was angry as hell. “Despite all my rage, I felt like a

rat in a cage” (Corgan, 1995), a prisoner in my own body. In my youth, without critical

questions in regard to power in society and education I could only understand my

ignorance about Algeria as a sign of my own failures. Without critical language I only

blamed myself. After moving to the USA, I was able to question society as an outsider.

The brushing off of my questions about ROTC and other elements of schooling upset me.

Coworkers refused to see what was glaring to me. I could not pretend this was “normal”

and stay still. I had to do something. It started with questioning. I had to move. The anger

was rising. I was becoming the wave (Stryker, 1994). Coming from a different country

enabled me to see American norms. The strings of the American social world could not

be invisible to me, at least, the ones that differed from the French strings. When speaking

to people around me about what I saw as problematic messages and practices, they would

shrug their shoulders. To them, I was an ignorant alien. Someone who did not know. I

wonder if this is what Cassandra, the mythic Greek princess, felt. In her story, Cassandra

was gifted with the power of prophecy and afflicted with the curse that no one would

believe her. As a foreign parent, teacher, and student, I felt I could see problems in

schools and beyond but everyone dismissed me.

Becoming a student of critical pedagogy has been liberating. It gave me language

to understand my world and the social, cultural, and political forces I was up against. I

am still angry but I am hoping that this doctoral journey, these three letters after my name

will break or alleviate Cassandra’s curse, that the journey to adding them to my name will

work as a hopeful path (Duncan Andrade, 2009). I hope that my rage will move me into

just actions. Becoming a student of critical has become part of my identity. Freire (2009)

writes that we, as human beings, are “unfinished”, always in the process of becoming

(p.84). Becoming a student of critical pedagogy is a process. It cannot end. I gain new

questions and new insights about the meaning of this new identity. I continue to be a

student of critical pedagogy by questioning my experiences, the world, and my position

in it. I continue on this critical path by questioning my participation in systems of

oppression. I continue on this path by revisiting my stories and listening to the stories of

people who do not share my experiences. Through these stories I am exposed to different

“different ways of seeing and knowing” (hooks, 2010, p.46). Stories that are different

than our own “are a way of knowing. Therefore, they contain both power and the art of

possibility. we need more stories” (hooks, 2010, p.53).

When I decided to focus on video games as a research interest, I interviewed other

players. It was difficult for me to hear their stories. Difficult because they did not

correspond to my experiences. I found myself pushing back. I could not step back

because I felt that my experiences were not present in the literature or in my

interviewees’ life. Researching other players’ experiences was working to silence my

own experiences. I was not ready for these projects. In order to be a better listener, I first

needed to know myself. I could not do justice to other players’ experiences if mine were

not clear to me. Interrogating one’s own experiences is an essential and continuous

process in becoming a student of critical pedagogy. In this chapter, I have examined and

re-interpreted my schooling and education experiences through critical pedagogy. I

shared how this examination has brought me healing and empowerment. In the next

chapter, I detail the methodology and process I have employed to examine, interrogate,

and make meaning of my video gaming experiences through critical pedagogy.

CHAPTER III

AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS METHODOLOGY

Introduction

Writing was a personal quest, a way into myself, and into my culture (Goodall,

2000, p.39)

In this chapter I discuss autoethnography as a methodology. I anchor my decision

to adopt an autoethnographic method in the fact that there are no first-person accounts of

video gaming experiences. Researchers such as Gee (2003) or Nardi (2010) studied video

games as newcomers to the video gaming sphere. Braithwaite (2015), Gray (2014), and

Chen (2009) are video game players but their research did not focus on their own

experiences. They conducted ethnographic projects through which they studied specific

games or players other than themselves. I have not found any studies in which

researchers focused on their own lived video gaming experience as a member of that

community. Using autoethnography constitutes a new angle in the study of video games.

This project will therefore constitute another significant step in video game studies. My

study adds an original account to a much more complex whole. More stories and more

accounts of video gaming experiences are needed in order to better understand the video

gaming culture. This project is also a call for other scholars/players to question and

analyze their lived experiences of video gaming. I start the detail of my methodology by

reviewing Ellis’ approaches to autoethnographic work (2004). I then proceed with

explaining the approach that fits my study and detail the methods I employed to collect

and analyze my data. In the last section of this chapter, I address the criteria of evaluation

for my work.

Ellis’ Approaches to Autoethnographic Work

The word autoethnography is composed of three terms. Auto refers to the self.

Ethno refers to culture. Graphy refers to writing. The overarching definition of

autoethnography refers to the writing of the self in relation to a specific cultural context.

There are nuances to this definition. Reed-Danahay (1997) writes that “the word

“autoethnography” has been used for at least two decades by literary critics as well as by

anthropologists and sociologists and can have multiple meanings” (p.4). Ellis (2004)

identifies six approaches to autoethnographic work. I briefly review them here, and then

focus on the approaches I have adopted for this study.

The first approach is personal narrative. Ellis (2004) describes it as an approach

through which researchers “view themselves as the phenomenon” (p.45). They write

“evocative stories specifically focused on their academic as well as their personal lives”

(p.45). Researchers write about “topics that matter and may make a difference” (p.46).

The second approach is indigenous or native autoethnography. Here, researchers

write from the positionality of colonial object or economic subordinate. Hayano (1979)

made this approach to autoethnography by emphasizing the importance of studying one’s

own people, the idea of natives as ethnographers. This contrasted with the histories of

ethnographic and anthropological work which are tied to colonialism. Indeed, the early

focus of ethnographic work was the study of the other (Hayano, 1979; Reed-Danahay,

1997; Anderson, 2006). In other words, ethnography has its roots in the colonial history

of Europeans studying peoples they colonized. The concept of “going native” coined by

Malinowski (1922) translated the idea that researchers would adopt the ways of their

research subjects. That term shows that there was a clear separation between those doing

the studying and those being studied. Through this epistemology the perspectives and

understandings of the natives were, at best, absent in this research model.

Hayano describes that over time Western colonizers invaded many spaces of our

planet. Fewer and fewer peoples were left untouched by the hunger of the colons. While

regulated by colonizers, frontiers and barriers became porous. As colonizers penetrated

the lands of indigenous peoples, indigenous people entered the colonizers’ societies. With

time and struggle for justice, the colonized made their way into academia and some

became anthropologists (Fahim, 1977). These newly trained scholars wanted to do

ethnographic work among their own people. Indigenous or native autoethnography was a

way for natives to reclaim ownership of their culture and provide a perspective that was

absent from scholarship.

The third approach is reflexive or narrative ethnography. Through this approach,

authors work through their own stories within a specific culture or subculture. They aim

to shed light on these cultures through these accounts. Ellis (2004) writes that reflexive

ethnographies “exist along a continuum” (p.46). They range from “starting research from

one’s own biography” (p.47) to studying one’s life along with other community

members’ life, to confessional tales where the researcher’s struggles in that study take

center stage. In reflexive ethnography, “researchers incorporate their personal experience

and standpoint (...) by starting with a story about themselves, explaining their personal

connection to the project, or using personal knowledge to help them in the research

project” (p.48).

The fourth approach is that of complete member researchers. This approach

focuses on the researcher converting to the culture or group they study. They go through

the process of becoming a member and study their “conversion” experience.

The fifth approach is ethnographic memoir. This approach refers to the personal

tale of what took place ‘backstage’ during a research project. This approach is also

known as confessional tale or “confessional ethnography” (Van Maanen, 1995, p.8).

However, Ellis denotes that the latter term is problematic because it is connoted with sin,

the idea of having done something wrong, and “telling them to someone more powerful

than we are” (p.50). Ethnographic memoirs used to be published separately from what

was considered the body of the study. The reflections, experiences, and questions

associated with research were seen as potentially detrimental to the original project.

Ethnographic memoirs used to be seen as taints to the research project.

The sixth approach is contingent autoethnography. Here, the author’s plans

consisted in studying others. In the process of doing so, the researcher comes to

understand themselves in a new way. This experience compels the author to write about it

in addition to or instead of their original project.

Despite these nuances, all autoethnographic approaches share a common aspect.

They revolve around the writing of culture through the assumed lens of the researcher as

well as the relationship between the writer and the culture they are immersed in. Rather

than hiding their perspective behind the mirage of the neutral observer,

autoethnographers assume their presence in their research in order to hold themselves

accountable for it (Richardson, 2000). The stories autoethnographers render through their

lived experiences help readers better understand their own experience and the world we

share.

Studying my Video Gaming Experiences Through Reflexive Personal Narrative

For this study I have adopted an autoethnographic approach that combines

personal narrative and reflexive ethnography. My research fits the personal narrative

approach since I will focus on an aspect of my personal life through which I am entering

the academic field: video gaming. Moreover, I included “sensory and emotional

experience” (Ellis, 2004, p.46) which is an important aspect of writing a personal

narrative. I have also used elements of reflexive autoethnography as I focused on a

specific subculture that has become a cultural phenomenon: the video gaming culture. In

that process, I use my own stories and analyze them in a larger socio-cultural context to

open myself up to new understandings. Autoethnographers identify this essential process

as reflexivity. They describe it through different images such as “bending back” (Ellis,

2004, p.37), “looking inward and outward” (Ellis, 2004, p.37)”, or “look[ing] in (at

themselves) and out (at the world)” (Boylorn, 2008, p.413). These images define

reflexivity as the capacity to question one’s experiences and translate a process through

which personal stories are reflected through and upon in order to validate them. The

process of reflexivity allows writers to draw meanings that go beyond personal accounts

and towards an understanding of culture and of our world. Because an essential part of

my work constitutes in crafting personal evocative stories through which I reflected on

my lived experiences, my approach reads as a combination between personal narrative

and reflexive ethnography. In the next section, I detail the methods and processes of my

autoethnographic research: collecting data, analyzing it, and presenting it.

Doing Autoethnography: Methods and Processes in Data Collection, Analysis,

and Presentation

There is a wide variety of methods in terms of conducting autoethnographic work.

Some autoethnographers have crafted epiphanies to recollect and make sense of

childhood experiences (Boylorn, 2013; Rambo Ronai, 1995) or in order to make sense of

a single event (Richardson, 2013). Other projects have relied on prolonged periods of

observation (Goodall, 1994; Geertz, 2005). Others have combined the crafting of

epiphanies in addition to a period of investigation and interviewing (Poulos, 2009).

Chang (2007) writes that “Autoethnographers are commended to develop their own

techniques of data collection to meet their research goals” (p.210). To study my video

gaming experiences, I have used two sets of data. The first set consists of written

memories of my video gaming experience. These range from my earliest video gaming

moments to recent games I have played. I have crafted this set of data as epiphanies

through Richardson’s (2003) concept of writing as a form of inquiry (p.499). I call this

set of data my memory set.

The second set consists of an observation of my current video gaming experience:

my observation set. I needed this latter set because as a thirty-year member of the culture

I am studying there were many aspects of my experiences that I took for granted. There

were many aspects of what I do when I play that had become invisible. Some of these

choices and decisions became mechanical. They constituted the ‘normal’ way I play, I

am, I see in that community. To bring these then-invisible facets of my experience to

light, I adopted in this second set a more traditional aspect of data collection through the

use of a journal and diary. I detail in the next sections the methods and techniques I

employed to collect each set of data. After having done so, I go over the process I used to

analyze that data.

My Memory Set: Crafting Video Gaming Epiphanies Through Writing as a Form of

Inquiry

I write because I want to find something out (Richardson, 2003, p.501)

I, like Richardson (2003), have been taught that I was “not to write until I knew

what I wanted to say, until my points were organized and outlined” (p.501). Writing was

for me and many others a tool to use only when my plan had been set and established.

Writing was taught to me as one of the final steps in the writing process, a step that came

after the outline, the backbone of my thoughts and thinking process was cemented.

Writing then became an activity induced with fear and finality. If I did not have a clear

idea of what I wanted to write and how I was going to get there I would not allow myself

to write sentences. This particular idea of writing prevented me from writing freely. It

prevented me from seeing myself as a writer. It prevented me from seeing writing and

language as a way to inquire, investigate, as a way to make sense of myself, of my

experiences, and of my world. I was taught that the writing process starts with thinking

and organizing ideas as opposed to toying with language and exploring through words,

rhymes, metaphors, and other meaning making crafts.

Richardson (2003) writes that language is the centerpiece of writing. She states

that “language does not “reflect” social reality, but produces meaning, creates social

reality” (p.508). She adds that language is a tool that helps construct “the individual’s

subjectivity in ways that are historically and locally specific” (p.508). Language and

therefore writing are tools we use and experiment with to bring our world into existence,

what Rose describes as to “word the world” (as cited in Denzin & Lincoln, 2003, p.500).

Writing, one of the ways we use language, is more than the mechanical act of inking

letters down or pressing keys. Writing is a process through which we make sense of our

experiences, our world, and our position in it by bringing ideas to life on paper.

Writers/researchers bring experiences to consciousness through articulating thoughts and

feelings. Writing is a series of trials and attempts at making sense of our experiences.

Autoethnography is partial and incomplete. Writing as a form of inquiry allows us

to make claims about the world through our experiences and to recognize that these

claims represent a partial and incomplete account, not a universal Truth. It is about

““getting it” differently contoured and nuanced”; It is not about “getting it right”

(Richardson, 2003, p.511). Crafting epiphanies is about finding my voice by penciling it

on paper, by experimenting with it until I flesh out my experiences and therefore flesh out

my world. Writing as a form of inquiry is about finding our subjectivity rather than

playing God. Through it, we can claim to “know “something” without claiming to know

everything” (Richardson, 2003, p.508). Through the writing of my experiences, I have

shed light on the meaning I made of video gaming. I claim these stories as an important

part of a much larger whole.

Richardson (2003) encourages writers to experiment with various styles and

forms of writing in order to hone their skill, find and nurture their voice. She adds that

through this experimentation, writers can get to new findings about their topics and

relationship to them. In my first data set, I follow Richardson’s advice and draw

inspiration from a long line of autoethnographers who have crafted epiphanies from

distant and close memories (Boylorn, 2013; Metta, 2013; Poulos, 2009; Tillman-Healy,

1996; Rambo Ronai, 1995). My epiphanies highlight and retrace over thirty years of

video gaming experiences. I wrote twenty video gaming epiphanies, some of which I had

already drafted for pilot studies or conference papers. These memories date back as far as

the early 90’s. The most recent ones are as close as 2017. I had more than twenty stories

to tell about my video gaming experiences. I had to make choices in the selection of these

epiphanies. My process for selecting these stories was tied to the rage I felt when reading

the literature on video gaming and education and noticing the absence of a variety of

players’ voices in these discussions. Addressing this silence served as a guide in selecting

my stories. As a student of critical pedagogy, the stories I chose were tied to critical

themes I explored in my literature review, such as community, identity, hegemony, social

world, praxis, meaning, and oppression.

I have experimented with various forms of writing in crafting my epiphanies.

These forms include first person narratives, a poem, a letter, dialogues, internal

dialogues, and an ABC story. I have used pictures, screenshots, French language,

passages from an actual email, quotes, two piano partitions, and other tools to tell my

stories. My epiphanies were between two and eight pages long. These twenty epiphanies

crafted through the writing as inquiry method constitute my first data set, my memory set.

While selected fragments of these epiphanies are used in my findings chapters, I include

all of them in their entirety as index items (Appendix A).

My Observation Set

To structure the observation of my video gaming experience, I asked myself

questions in regard to the overall length of the observation period, the length of my play

sessions, and the scope of what constitutes my video gaming experiences. I address each

of these points by relying on qualitative research that focuses on video gaming worlds.

After having addressed these points, I share the methods I have employed to collect data

for my observation set, namely journaling and field notes. I also explain the purpose and

rationale behind the use of these two tools.

The question of time: length of observation period and playing session

length. To determine the length of time of my observation, I drew on the work of

Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, and Taylor (2010). They created a guide for the study of

virtual worlds and video games. While their guide is helpful for my study, their

recommendations focus on ethnographic work, the observation of players other than the

researcher. Some of their guidelines and vocabulary such as ‘interviewing’ or ‘participant

observer’ do not apply to my study. Therefore, I selected recommendations that can be

helpful to my study and adapted others.

Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, and Taylor (2010) explain that three factors

considerably reduce the length of the observation period. They list that having conducted

preliminary fieldwork, being familiar with the language (which I interpret here as being

familiar with the culture), or returning to a well-known field site can impact the overall

length of the study. They argue that “if an ethnographer has already engaged in research,

follow up studies of one to three months may be possible if the research question is

sufficiently focused” (p.89). In addition to being familiar with the culture and site of

research, I have already conducted two pilot researches in this field through classwork. I

have also presented six papers at national conferences on my research and experiences in

video gaming (Kout, 2016a; Kout, 2016b, Kout, 2017a; Kout, 2017b; Kout, 2018a; Kout,

2018b). Moreover, my being a member of the video gaming community for over 30 years

gives me familiarity with the culture I have studied. For these reasons, I have chosen a

time frame of two months for the observation phase of my study.

In regard to length of play session, Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, and Taylor (2010)

state that “the times we choose to log in should reflect the patterns of our participants”

(p.89). I interpret their statement as the need to adapt observations to the play schedule of

participants. In the case of my study, this means that I did not modify my play schedule

for the purpose of this study. I adapted my observation to my current play schedule rather

than modify my play schedule to fit a generic or arbitrary observation frame. As it stands,

I usually played between five and seven days a week. On these days, I played between

one and three hours, rarely in a continuous manner. My observation consisted of

collecting data within that schedule.

Scope of the field. Projects on the study of video games historically revolved

around studying one game or players within a single game (Bartle, 1996; Chen, 2009;

Nardi, 2010). However, video gaming is not an isolated island. Like any other space,

video gaming is a socially constructed space (Schwalbe, 2007). Their experiences are

linked to their lives outside the game (Dale, 2014). Golub (2010) writes that to fully

grasp the reach and power of games such as World of Warcraft we must study online

games not as an isolated space but as an integrant part of players’ lives:

By expanding my scope to include the technical and cultural systems which

ramify out of in-game activities, I hope to have at least suggested an analysis of

raider culture as one of proliferating, overlapping domains of experience:

although boss fights can only occur in World of Warcraft, this is a world that is

curiously laminated. (p.42)

Golub shatters the cliché of online and offline lives as secluded worlds by

demonstrating that the offline and online spaces are intertwined: they inform and

influence each other. Video gaming does not exist in a vacuum. Dichotomies and binaries

such as offline/online or real/virtual represented by terms such as ‘in real-life’ (IRL) or

virtual worlds are “imperfect and misleading” (Dengah, Fagan, Lacy & Snodgrass, 2011,

p.1211). The experiences of players must be studied as integrant part of the player’s lives.

Taylor (2009) further illustrates the need to study video games beyond the screen by

stating that:

Games, and their play, are constituted by the interrelations between (to name just

a few) technological systems and software (including the imagined player

embedded in them), the material world (including our bodies at the keyboard), the

online space of the game (if any), game genre, and its histories, the social worlds

that infuse the game and situate us outside of it, the emergent practices of

communities, our interior lives, personal histories, and aesthetic experience,

institutional structures that shape the game and our activity as players, legal

structures, and indeed the broader culture around us with its conceptual frames

and tropes. (p.332)

In my study, the scope of the field reaches beyond the pixels on the screen. It

includes a broad range of experiences such as out of game experiences with friends I

have made in game and discussions with my son in regard to the games he plays, or we

play.

Data collection. In order to capture my video gaming experience, I developed my

own techniques of data collection by drawing and expanding on Goodall’s (2000)

recommendations. Goodall (2000) used two journals to conduct what he coined “new

ethnography” (p.9): a set of field notes and a diary. The purpose of the field notes is to

collect information about those he observed. In my study, I dedicated the set of field

notes to collect data about my actions in and around my video gaming experience. I used

my field notes to keep track of my playing time by recording start and end times. I

recorded the title of the games I play. I described the actions I took in game and what I

accomplished. I also recorded actions and events tied to video gaming experiences that

occurred outside of screen time. For example, I kept track of video gaming ads I saw

when surfing the web or discussions I had with acquaintances about the video games we

play.

One of my purposes in writing field notes was to address a potential pitfall of

doing research in my own “backyard” (Glesne, 2011, p.41). Glesne describes “backyard”

research as conducting projects in an environment the researcher is familiar with. One of

the risks of doing work in such an environment is that many aspects of that culture may

have become “natural” or “invisible” to the researcher. Therefore, I may have not

perceived some of my actions as meaningful because they became mechanical and

normalized. Using field notes to keep track of these actions became an important tool in

helping me make my familiar strange, visible, and noticeable. I kept my field notes in

notebooks I carried with me wherever I went during these two months. The notebooks

were small enough to slide in my back pocket.

The second tool Goodall (2000) recommends in conducting observations is the

use of a diary. The purpose of this diary is to record feelings, thoughts, reflections, and

questions that may occur during the observation. I used a google doc to write up this facet

of my research. Here too, I recorded dates. Initially, I had envisioned writing after every

playing session. However, it became more convenient and efficient for me to dedicate a

minimum of fifteen minutes per day to record my feelings, thoughts, reflections, and

questions. In order to respect my dedication to not altering my play patterns, there were a

few evenings when I was too exhausted to fully journal, I could barely stay up to play.

On these few days, I jotted down bullet points and expanded on them the next day.

Field notes and diary constituted the two pieces I used to collect data for the

observation phase of my study. With my memory set, these documents constituted my

data for this project. In the next section, I explain how I analyzed this data. I detail the

process of coding the data, grouping these codes in themes, and presenting these themes

in a meaningful way. I relied on the work of Saldaña (2009) to describe what I did and

why I did it (p.31).

Analyzing Data: Making Meaning Out of Memories and Observation

The amount of data in any research project is considerable. After gathering it,

researchers need to make sense of it. There are different approaches to analyzing data.

Hsieh and Shannon (2005) list three such approaches: conventional content analysis,

directed content analysis, and summative content analysis (p.1278). The approach that

fits my study is the conventional content analysis since it is the only approach through

which codes are derived from the data itself instead of being derived from theory or the

literature review (p.1286). In my content analysis, I drew on two major processes to make

sense of my data: coding and patterning. I explain these processes in my next section.

Coding. Coding data is the first step in helping researchers “summarize,

condense, or reduce data” (Saldaña, 2009, p.4). Coding consists in reading data and

assigning a “word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient,

essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language based or visual

data” (Saldaña, 2009. p.3).

While Hsieh and Shannon (2005) write about coding as occurring during data

analysis (p.1286), Saldaña (2009) advises researchers to start coding as they collect data

and not after all the fieldwork is completed (p.17). This is supported by Miles and

Huberman (1984) who wrote that “late coding enfeebles the analysis. Coding is not just

something one does to “get the data ready” for analysis, but something that drives

ongoing data collection” (p.63). This ongoing coding is not final but creates a space for

“analytic consideration while the study progresses” (Saldaña, 2009, p.17). Saldaña

recommends the use of three columns in coding (table 2). The first column is for the raw

data, the second column for the preliminary code, and the third column for the final code.

Table 2. Coding Data Template

Column 1

Column 2

Column 3

Raw data

Preliminary code

Final code

The closer I get to retirement age,

the faster I want it to happen. I’m

not even 55 yet and I would give

anything to retire now. But there’s

a mortgage to pay off and still a

lot more to sock away in savings

before I can even think of it. I

keep playing the lottery, though,

in hopes of winning those

millions. No luck yet.

"Retirement age"

Financial obligations

Dreams of early retirement

Retirement anxiety

Note: Adapted from The Coding manual for qualitative researchers, by Saldaña, 2009.

As implied by the use of columns, coding is more complex than reading a set of

data once and adding a code to capture a pertinent point. There is more to it than

highlighting an important point and moving on. Coding cannot be finalized in one

reading. It is a cyclical action (Glesne, 2011; Saldaña, 2009). It must include at least one

revision process (Saldaña, 2009, p.10). Codes also send researchers back to the data and

with each reading they introduce more nuances and complexities. I used this three-

column method in coding my data to reflect this cyclical process.

On ongoing analysis in autoethnographic work. The recommendations from

Saldaña, Miles, and Huberman are made in the context of ethnographic work. They focus

on ongoing coding as the source of the ongoing analysis. In this autoethnographic study,

daily journaling was the place for me to reflect on my ongoing work. This daily

documentation acted as an analysis tool. I made sense of my experiences for that day. But

I also reflected on the meaning and place of that day’s experiences within the context of

what I had field noted, journaled, and the epiphanies I had crafted since the beginning of

the study. For my project, daily journaling was more than a “good device for forcing that

analysis” (Miles & Huberman, 1984, p.64). It was an essential and mandatory component

for forcing reflection and analysis.

Coding concepts. Summarizing an idea is just one of several coding concepts.

Saldaña (2009) lists the following as the main coding concepts (p.3-6):

• Descriptive coding: summarizes the primary topic of the excerpt

• Process coding: a word or phrase that captures an action

• In vivo coding: using the participants’ own language

• Pattern coding: coding for patterns in the data

• Simultaneous coding: applying multiple codes to the same text

I used all of these coding concepts in my work in order to help me make sense of my

data. Since I foregrounded critical pedagogy in this project, I coded my data according to

principles I shared in my second chapter. These principles revolved around questions of

power and meaning. They also include the ideas of community, hegemony, meaning,

social world, praxis, and oppression. Data that echoed, elevated, or silenced these

principles were the most important in my study.

Coding by hand and alone. While several coding software such as Codebooks,

CAQDAS, Atlas.ti, Maxqda, or NVivo exist, I have decided to code by hand. My stories

are personal. I am attached to them. Coding them via a software would break this

intimacy. I completed this work by hand to preserve this bond.

Some researchers hire help for coding data. For example, researchers may work in

teams to code together and save time in that process. I made the decision to code on my

own. My decision was anchored in my will to be immersed in this experience, in my

stories from beginning to end. It was also a financial decision. Hiring people to do this

type of work is costly. Even if I wanted to, I could not afford this expense.

One of the challenges inherent to coding alone is the isolation. Coding alone strips

away the opportunity to make meaning out of the data through conversing with people

involved in a project. Being able to verbalize questions, findings, and challenges provides

an opportunity to clarify thoughts and make new insights (Saldaña, 2009, p.28). To

address this drawback, Saldaña recommends speaking with a colleague or mentor about

our research throughout the coding process. I followed this advice. I had built in several

avenues to speak about my research. I had joined two graduate writing groups that met on

Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings. In these groups, I had the opportunity to share

what I was working on and what I was struggling with. Moreover, I also had the

opportunity to sit with Dr. Villaverde, my dissertation chair, and voice my progress as

well as my challenges. A few months before the end of my project, the writing groups

stopped meeting regularly. I contacted one of my friends, Chuck, who was working on a

dissertation of his own in another field. We supported each other by sharing our progress

and questions. This helped counter balance the end of the writing groups. These

opportunities helped me address the challenges of coding in isolation.

Analyzing data through patterning: from codes to categories. I organized my

codes in themes. This process facilitated the analysis of their connections (Saldaña, 2009,

p.8). Organizing codes into themes is not merely about grouping codes that are exactly

alike. Hatch (2002) lists six categories for establishing patterns (p.155):

• Similarity (things happen the same way)

• Difference (they happen in predictably different ways)

• Frequency (they happen often or seldom)

• Sequence (they appear in a certain order)

• Correspondence (they happen in relation to other activities or events)

• Causation (one appears to cause another)

Hatch’s categories of patterns offered me mindful tools to make sense of codes. I used

them to organize my codes and make meaning out of my data.

Presenting findings. Autoethnographic findings have been presented in a myriad

of ways, some are controversial, but all are creative in their own ways. Rambo Ronai

(1995) has weaved scholarship through her story of incest to compare and contrast her

lived experiences with the current scholarship on child abuse. Matte (2013) has

investigated her story of domestic abuse by anchoring it in scholarship and using

powerful illustrations she designed with the assistance of an artist. Tillman-Healy (1996)

presented her work on bulimia through a series of poems without any references to

literature by using stories as theories to convey their meaning and experiences (Bochner,

1997). The latter presentation style usually receives a lot of pushback for a multitude of

reasons. One of them is the idea that new research must be anchored in existing

scholarship.

For my project, I used a rather conventional presentation. I drew out major themes

from my codes and used passages from journal, field notes, and epiphanies to illustrate

these themes. I used theories from critical pedagogy and psychology to anchor my

findings. In the end, my findings loosely resemble Rambo Ronai’s work. She weaves

scholarship and personal stories to present her findings. She uses that format to either

reinforce, challenge, or add new perspectives on scholarship. I found that format creative

and insightful. While Rambo Ronai’s experiences are horrifying, her writing is

captivating and drew me in. My findings are presented in the same style. My readers will

be the judges of the literary quality of my work. Richardson (2003) labels this weaving as

a “layered text” (p.530). She describes it as “putting yourself into your text and putting

your text into the literatures and traditions of social science” (p.530).

No matter the presentation style, autoethnography as a methodology has been

challenged in academia and even perceived as invalid. In the next section, I address and

rebuke these perceived issues of canonical validity, especially the idea that researchers

should be distant and invisible in their study. I will build on this argument to set criteria

for the validity and evaluation of my autoethnographic study.

Rebuking the mirage of the invisible researcher. Proponents of canonical

research (Atkinson, 1997; King, Keohane & Verba, 1994) have criticized

autoethnography because it does not meet standards of objectivity and detachment. The

argument here is that autoethnography is “biased, navel-gazing, self-absorbed, or

emotionally incontinent” (Mogadime, 2010, p.45). However, other scholars have shown

that research cannot be done from a “neutral, impersonal, and objective stance” (Ellis,

Adams & Bochner, 2011, p.274) many of the critics argue for. Indeed, the way we see the

world is informed by the cultural lenses we have acquired (DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2017).

Our perspectives are never neutral. Goodall (2000) writes that “descriptions of the

outward world come from deep inside of us (p.95). Villaverde (2008) explains that

“traditional paradigms separate logic and emotion and isolate social factors from the

object of study” (p.106). In doing so, she argues that traditional research hides power and

silences various truths to present one Truth as all-encompassing in the name of certainty

and objectivity. Anyone who claims to be certain or objective is, consciously or not,

portraying their lens and way of viewing the world as the norm, a norm that may be

invisible to them. In academia, proponents of objectivity apply a normative lens that has

dominated research standards for decades. This lens represents a “white, masculine,

heterosexual, middle/upper classed, Christian, able-bodied perspective” (Ellis, Adams &

Bochner, 2011, p.275). Humphreys (2004) describes proponents of objectivity and

neutrality as scholars who “teach, research, publish, and often conceal their presence

within third-person research accounts” (p.843). Rambo Ronai (1995) writes that “the

traditional narrative form in science force-feeds the reader a particular understanding of

the world masquerading as the understanding of the world” (p.396). Becoming objective

is therefore not about reaching some elevated objective or neutral point of view as

canonical researchers claim. Instead it deals with hiding the researcher’s positionality,

normalizing a perspective, interpretations, and findings. Ellis and Bochner (1996) write

that “instead of masking our presence, leaving it at the margins, we should make

ourselves more personally accountable for our perspective” (p.15). Autoethnographers do

not mask their subjectivity as proponents of canonical research do, nor do they blindly

embrace it. Autoethnographers are aware that what they research, see, write, and report is

informed by their cultural lenses, by their subjectivity. By acknowledging this, they are

more likely to address potential issues arising from placing themselves at the center of

their study rather than normalizing their findings and passing them as objective and

universal. This is all the more striking for researchers who do not fit the “white,

masculine, heterosexual, middle/upper classed, Christian, able-bodied” norm. Standing

outside of this normalized lens makes that lens all the more visible, palpable, and painful.

For such researchers, the turn to “creative analytic practices” is lived as liberating

(Richardson, 2003, p.523). Autoethnography is one such creative analytic practice.

Making myself accountable for my positionality. There are two major chapters

that frame my video gaming story. The first is a chapter that seems typical of an

immigrant child’s journey into a new world of possibilities. It is a story that blends

fascination, discovery, playfulness, and sacrifice. As a child, video games enabled me to

connect with other young people to make friends and to find a sense of fulfillment when

defeating bosses or finishing games. It also gave me and my friends a basis on which to

build a community. As teenagers, we would gather at my friends’ Daniel or Chien’s

house to play, laugh, and be together. On two occasions, we organized neighborhood

Street Fighter 2 tournaments. This was e-sports in the making.

My background as the child of struggling immigrants also influenced this first

chapter of my video gaming story. My parents’ sacrifice to purchase a computer was a

financial possibility for them. However large that sacrifice was, however long they had to

save to make it happen, they were in a position where they could make it happen. By this

I mean that some families might have never been able to save that much money or save

any money. I was privileged in the sense that my parents valued my desire and could

make that desire a reality through financial literacy.

The second chapter of my video gaming story took place in my mid-twenties after

I moved to the United States and, ironically enough, became an immigrant. This new

chapter is best represented by my sister’s reaction when I told her that I was writing my

dissertation about my video gaming experiences. “Why not role playing games?” she

replied. My most visible passion before moving to the United States was pen and paper

role playing games. As a thirteen year old, every Saturday afternoon, I would gather with

my friends around a table, dice, character sheets, and snacks to fulfill heroic prophecies

and defeat evil wizards entrenched in their dark towers. Over the years, our characters

and scenarios became more complex. My friends and I played human street samurais and

cybernetic orc shamans hired by oligarchist corporations and dragons to do their bidding

across a futuristic techno-magical world. In high school, Saturday afternoons turned into

Saturday nights. We then took on the roles of gothic-punk vampires trying to find our

place in a London ruled by creatures of the night. The weekdays between our gaming

sessions were filled with plotting our next moves and discussing the political

ramifications of our decisions on the geopolitical vampire map of London. One summer,

I visited London with Benoît, my friend and Vampire storyteller. We stopped by St

Paul’s Cathedral. Benoît could not help himself and pointed out with a hellish smile that

this was the location where I had lost my beloved vampire character, Mike Powell. This

threw me back to that dreaded Saturday night. I had uncovered who the grey eminence of

the main story was. This ancient and obscure vampire had made St Paul’s his haven.

Unfortunately, he noticed me as I was conducting a reconnaissance mission. I remember

running to the upper level thinking I could use one of my powers to sink through the floor

and escape through the main entrance (it was highly unlikely the grey eminence had that

power and could follow me). Once upstairs, I told Benoît I was using my sinking power

called “earth meld.” He replied that this power only worked to sink in the soil of the

earth, not building floors. I froze. I had done this before. He had let me do this before.

Why change the rules now? Asking him that question would make me look like I was

begging or even worse, cheating. There was nothing I could do if he did not remember.

Benoît described the following scene. The grey eminence grabbed Mike and sunk its

fangs in his jugular draining the life out of him and turning my love for my music

composing vampire character into ashes of melancholy and nostalgia... I forgive you Ben.

I forgive you.

In these days, video gaming did have a place in my life, but it was less

pronounced than it is today. Role playing games were probably more visible to my sister

and family members. I had to leave for many hours to play. Moreover, the fact that none

of the friends I played role playing games with were Arabic must have stood out to my

sister. My relationship with video gaming did exist in these early years, it was less

obvious and less important than it is now.

I lost my role playing game identity when I moved to the United States. The

characters. The stories. The Saturday nights. The Saturday evenings. The weekdays in

between. The childhood friends. The hole was considerable. I had not anticipated the hurt

this would cause me. I spent years looking for role playing groups after coming to North

Carolina. I did find a few groups but their role playing habits were not the ones I valued.

They were all too worried about the number of dice they were rolling and how high the

resulting score was. In my group, we never let a dice roll get in the way of a good story.

These new groups did not work for me. Confronted with a growing sense of isolation and

loneliness, I overcame the stigma around dressing up and tried Live Action Role Playing

(LARP), an activity I had never dared venturing into while in France. While the depth of

the scenarios and political intrigues were captivating and reminiscent of my experience in

France, I realized that this sixty people group worked in cliques, cliques I was not part of

and never would be. One night, I overheard a specific clique speaking about World of

Warcraft. I knew of the game. My computer was not powerful enough to run it and

paying that monthly $15 subscription fee had been a deterrent. However, in the name of

forging bonds I decided to buy the game and try to make friends with them. As we say in

French “la mayonnaise n’a pas pris,” literally, the mayonnaise did not take. Despite my

efforts at fitting in (I even served as one of the storytellers for that LARP group), I did

not find what I was looking for. I was not able to make friends with any of them through

the LARP or through WoW. After about two years, I left the LARP but stayed in WoW.

There, I joined a guild and started playing with other people. I thought that maybe, in

WoW, I could find the community, friendships, camaraderie, and sense of wonder I had

lost and had been longing for. For the first time in many years, I felt hopeful.

I had played video games in the seven years between my move to the USA and

my finding WoW. Some of these games had online components but did not include

community building elements. Through guilds, WoW gives players a platform to take on

challenges that, by design, cannot be overcome alone. WoW deepened and enriched my

connection with video games in many ways. It gave me the possibility to regain what I

had lost.

My identities in the video gaming community. Even if I am member of the video

gaming community, I do not fit the “dominant white, heterosexual, male, teen gamer

image” (Shaw, 2012, p.29). My identities as an immigrant, son of immigrant, French

citizen, non-Muslim Arab, father, critical pedagogue, educator, teacher, and husband, to

name a few, set me apart from the perceived normative identities of the stereotypical

video game player. On the other hand, my identities as a heterosexual cisgender man and

able-bodied person fit the normative identities of the stereotype. The identities that set me

apart put me in a position where I am most likely to experience, feel, and see difference

and dynamics tied to the dominant identities of the video gaming culture. However, the

identities that place me in the dominant group play a role in blinding me to matters of

gender, sexuality, and ability. When it comes to sexism, heterosexism, and ableism, being

a member of the dominant groups puts me in a position where I have the “most narrow or

limited view of society” (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017, p.64). For example, as a man, I am

much less likely to notice sexism than a woman and will never experience it. To account

for this potential pitfall, I was mindful of my dominant identities in my findings, theming,

and coding to the best of my abilities. I held myself accountable to these identities by

looking for the absences of these facets of oppression in my findings, coding, and

theming. My intent in doing so was bifold. First, I wanted to bring more complexity to

my analysis. Second, as a student of critical pedagogy, I wanted to interrogate the ways in

which my experiences might perpetuate sexism, heterosexism, and ableism so that I could

reflect on and propose alternatives in order to stop or minimize my participation in these

oppressive systems.

Most video games, especially commercial ones, are designed for people of my

gender. Revisiting my findings, themes, and codes through the lenses of sexism,

heterosexism, and ableism is a method I employed to help me account for my gender,

sexuality, and ability. I asked myself the following questions as I revised my work. These

questions were:

1. How did my gender, sexuality, and ability inform this finding, theme, or code?

2. Where in my work are my gender, sexuality, and ability present?

These questions were not an afterthought or an artificial last step. I intended to account

for gender, sexuality, and ability throughout all of my work, but knowing that these facets

of oppression might be invisible to me, I added an additional layer of accountability. As a

student of critical pedagogy, I understand that these questions went against my

socialization, therefore they were all the more important. This was a difficult process. It

was not foolproof. However, it was an important step in accounting for my positionality

in dominant groups.

My privilege in video gaming. My playing video games was and is made possible

by several privileges. Having access to video games in my childhood and today is a

financial privilege. I have the finances that allow me to purchase video gaming systems

(even if I only play on the PC, I could afford more), games, and sustain a monthly

subscription to a game like WoW. This is a privilege not everyone holds. Computers are

not present in every household. I played with people who had to quit WoW because at

some point they could no longer afford the $15 monthly subscription.

Playing video games is not a passion my wife and I share. My playing privilege,

in terms of time spent in front of the computer, is also the result of a negotiation with her.

Most of the video games I play require dedicated attention, some for periods of time that

go beyond an hour. Being able to engage in these activities meaningfully demands that I

ignore my surroundings. This is especially true when I raid in WoW for an intense 3

hours. This absence from my family while we are physically under the same roof is only

possible through negotiations with my loved ones. I am thankful for the opportunity they

give me to engage in an activity that I enjoy.

Evaluating autoethnographic work. The evaluation of autoethnographic work

cannot and does not abide by the rigid and exclusive formulas of canonical research.

Autoethnographic work does not function according to a set of immutable norms in a

quest for certainty and Truth (Villaverde, 2008). Peer reviewers of qualitative work such

as autoethnography use different criteria. To craft and evaluate my work, I relied on the

combination of two sets of criteria. Those two evaluation sets (table 2) are those of two

prominent reviewers of qualitative work: Laurel Richardson (2000) and Art Bochner

(2000).

Table 3. Evaluation Criteria for Qualitative Work

Richardson’s Criteria

Bochner’s Criteria

● Substantive contribution: whether the

piece contributes to our understanding

of social life

● Aesthetic merit: whether the author has

crafted a complex aesthetic piece that

invites interpretive responses

● Reflexivity: whether the author’s

subjectivity has been accounted for as a

producer and product of the piece

● Impact: whether the piece moves the

reader

● Expression of a reality: whether the

piece carries an embodied sense of

lived-experience

● Abundant concrete detail: trivial

routines of everyday life and flesh

and blood of emotions

● Structurally complex narratives:

rotates between past and present

● Judgment about the author’s

emotional credibility, vulnerability

and honesty

● Tale of two selves: a believable

journey from who the author was to

who the author is

● Standard of ethical consciousness

● A story that moves the reader

Bochner and Richardson acknowledge that their lists constitute only two of many

others in evaluating qualitative research. I have chosen to use their criteria because their

work has been crucial to my understanding of autoethnography and the crafting of my

methodology. Rather than use one or the other, I opted to delineate my own criteria based

on theirs. In their lists, I see three main themes: reflexivity, aesthetic merit, and the

expression of lived experiences. Through reflexivity, I opened the possibility for my

study to change me and my understanding of the medium that has been part of my life for

many decades. Through aesthetic merit, I aimed to use vibrant details to evoke emotions

and move my readers. Through the expression of my lived experiences, I aimed to share

my memories in an honest and gripping manner. This means that I included memories,

actions, and thoughts that did not depict me in the best light. These standards informed

my work as I worked through this project.

Conclusion

Autoethnographies of video game players/scholars are rare. In this chapter, I have

drawn on the works of autoethnographers and video game ethnographers to describe my

methodology. Through this reflexive personal narrative, I present my findings in two

chapters. The first of my findings chapter addresses my first research question: How do I

navigate the video gaming culture as a student of critical pedagogy. That chapter tells the

tale of who I was and who I am becoming. This chapter’s focus is on reflexivity. Thanks

to the ongoing journaling and field noting, I identified a considerable gap between how I

was perceiving myself as a student of critical pedagogy and I was acting as a video game

player. The two identities I foregrounded in this study were at odds. Through the ongoing

analysis of my data, I surfaced concerning patterns. I refer to these patterns as enchanted,

unexamined patterns of play with a medium that gave me power and had power over me.

I detail these problematic patterns of behaviors and how I started addressing them

throughout my observation period.

In my second findings chapter, I answer my second research question: In what

ways do video games lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. This chapter

focuses on the expression of my lived experiences. I use the concept of dismantling the

clock to make sense of the careful examination of my experiences. Through their

analysis, I share four elements of video gaming that lend themselves to the teaching of

critical pedagogy. While each chapter works to elevate one of the evaluation criteria, I

did use each of the three criteria in evaluating my findings.

CHAPTER IV

BREAKING DOWN THE ENCHANTMENT: DECONSTRUCTING A CHILDHOOD

PASSION

Introduction

As a student of critical pedagogy, I strive to identify my assumptions, interrogate

the surface messages I grew up with, and unpack my experiences to ensure that my

actions are socially just. In chapter 2, I used the literature on critical pedagogy to question

my experiences as a student and educator. I showed how gaining literacy in critical

pedagogy helped me reframe important events of my life in a liberating way. I moved

from a naïve consciousness to a critical consciousness (Freire, 2009). Through this

process I saw my responsibility to act and do my part to bring this world closer to a just

one. As an educator, classrooms and schools were the first spaces in which I worked to

implement and nurture principles of critical pedagogy. In this chapter, I question my

experiences in another area of my life, one that has played a role in my education and

socialization: video gaming. As a member of the video gaming community and someone

who now has critical language and knowledge to question that culture and my position in

it, I wanted to know how I navigated this culture. As a student of critical pedagogy, I

wanted to better understand my experiences with oppressive forces and look for new

ways to implement critical pedagogy in my video gaming. I built this chapter on two

interlocked concepts. The first is the concept of enchantment. It corresponds to exposing

the naïve and unexamined aspect of video gaming in my life. The second is the concept

of dismantling the clock. It corresponds to the critical analysis of the then-naïve and then-

unexamined aspect of my video gaming. Dismantling the clock consists in breaking down

the enchantment into critical parts or cogwheels, both work to foster consent to

oppressive forces and work toward resistance. I detail these two concepts and then

explain how I use them as a rationale to organize this chapter.

The Concept of Enchantment

My roles as a teacher and immigrant advocate in and out of schools made it easier

for me to implement and embody critical principles in schools and other institutional

settings. While school is important to me, it does not have the same place as video

gaming in my life. Video gaming gave me experiences that helped me question the world

and make sense of my life. I found power and meaning in video gaming that helped me

forge my identity in a way that schools, especially K12, did not. Therefore, this study

brings in an additional layer of complexity to the study of critical pedagogy in my life.

However, while video gaming gave me the power to question, it also had power over me,

power that remained unexamined and therefore problematic until this study. It is this

relationship of power that I coin enchantment:

• The power it gave me to build myself.

• The power it had over me in terms of my consent to problematic forces of the

video gaming culture as well as its power in making me overlook, minimize, or

ignore that consent.

The term enchantment has a history in academia (Saler, 2012), but it is always described

as an external layer on people’s understanding of the world. In other words, these

definitions speak to the power of the enchantment on one’s understanding of the world,

but they do not acknowledge or recognize the power it gives to enchanted people.

Enchantment without an acknowledgment of the critical aspect of identity formation is

therefore painted as a nefarious spell clouding and distorting judgment.

“I hate that champion. He fights like a whore!” types one of the players just

dispatched by the assassin.

(...)

Unfortunately, I wrote this story because I am the one who used the sexist and

misogynistic slur. I am the one who was dumbfounded, incapable of explaining

the words I was using. I had read them online. They made no sense to me. And

somehow, in the heat of defeat, I typed them. I am not sure why I succumbed to

using that language. Maybe I thought that doing so would make me a full member

of the DOTA community. Maybe I thought this was just a new saying players were

using and that I somehow had to conform. No matter what, I ended up using them

without understanding them. Excerpt from the DOTA epiphany.

An analysis of this story that limits enchantment to a nefarious spell would

prescribe that I leave altogether a culture that normalizes sexism in my understanding of

the world. Defining enchantment in such a narrow way fails to account for the identity

building I found in video gaming such as through my ActRaiser story.

The Concept of Dismantling the Clock

Removing myself from this space is more complex than dispelling a nefarious

spell and thereby restoring my understanding and views of the world to some original

pristine understanding. The critical aspect of enchantment I stress in this study is not an

alien layer we can get rid of. Enchantment is a process that becomes part of us. It imbues

us. It does have power over us in that it shapes how we understand the world. It also

grants us the means through which we can construct our identity and build ourselves.

This is not a foreign layer added to our thinking. There is no dispelling it and going back

to some original or before state. There is no washing off this supposedly dirty layer on

our thinking and coming out clean. Therefore, the examination of our enchantment is not

a process of elimination.

In this movement from naïveté to critical pedagogy individuals grasp the social,

political, economic, and cultural contradictions that subvert learning. Teachers and

students with a critical consciousness conceptually pull back from their lived reality so as

to gain a new vantage point on who they are and how they came to be this way. With

these insights in mind, they return to the complex processes of living critically and

engaging the world in the ways such a consciousness requires. (Kincheloe, 2008, p.73).

Video gaming used to represent a naïve aspect of my life. I had never examined or

questioned my experiences with it. While I knew there were issues within that culture, I

somehow thought that the positive outweighed the negative. My thinking was superficial

and therefore problematic. In this study, I went beyond this simplistic good/bad binary,

what Kincheloe (2008) described as avoiding “reductionism” (p.37). I explored the

depths and complexities of video gaming. I engaged in a process that consisted in taking

an enchanted part of my life and putting it through a thorough and sustained analysis for

several purposes. I wanted to understand how I engaged with it and how it operated in my

life. I wanted to explore new ways in which critical pedagogy could be implemented in

video gaming spaces. I also wanted to show the necessity for other students of critical

pedagogy to examine their own forms of enchantment. I took something that I saw as

magical in my life and treated it as something mechanical in order to identify the

multitudes of components that constitute it. I use the concept of dismantling the clock to

refer to this critical process. I liken my work to that of the clockmaker who opens a clock

to study its different parts and mechanisms. The clockmaker carefully identifies and

examines each cogwheel to understand their role, how they work together, and how they

enable the whole to function as a single unit. The process of dismantling a clock relates to

this study in that I opened my experiences up to examination. I wrote my experiences

down, materialized them on paper, and analyzed them through critical principles. This

process allowed me to make the enchantment tangible. I broke it down in two main sets

of cogwheels. The first set helped me better understand how I have used the power of

enchantment in my life. The second set of cogwheels helped me better understand how

the enchantment worked on me. This process of dismantling the clock triggered a process

of self-actualization. Indeed, the latter aspect of enchantment, the questioning of how I

have consented to oppressive forces and overlooked, minimized, and ignored that

consent, showed me that the person I built did not correspond to the person I thought I

was. This dismantling involved the troubling of a foundational part of my being because I

was able for the first time in my life to place the globality and complexity of my

experiences in broader social, political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The

dismantling of the clock required that I question and rebuild myself to account for the

contexts I had overlooked, minimized, or ignored. This was a difficult and strenuous

process, as it should be.

That said, the enchantment is not something we need to be wary about, avoid, or

fight off as if we could ward off any degree of enchantment. Being enchanted is an

essential part of our growth as human beings even with all the problems it carries. The

enchantment testifies to our “quintessential human need to make or finding meaning”

(Shapiro, 2006, p.7) and to develop our own identity. While the enchantment inherently

bears problematic elements due to its naïve and unexamined nature, it also affords

essential critical elements such as identity formation or belonging in that it connects us to

other people who share the same enchantment. While video gaming was a powerful form

of enchantment in my life, the enchantment is not limited to video games. I argue that any

form of naïve and unexamined storytelling we build ourselves through is likely to carry

forms of consent to oppressive forces. This is especially true for stories we are exposed to

during our youth when we are most likely to be “unprotected by intellectual armor”

(Christensen, 1991, p.4). Disney is a powerful example of childhood enchantment and

how difficult it is for some adults to see past the stories of their youth (Sandlin & Garlen,

2016). But the enchantment can take less obvious forms of storytelling. Unexamined and

naïve stories such as Thanksgiving or the idea that statues of the confederacy stand as

proud testimonies of Southern heritage show how the stories that make up the

enchantment are more than a foreign layer added to one’s view of the world. Dismantling

these stories involves the questioning of one’s own identity, family, communities, and

place in the world. Therefore, while my project deals with examining my video gaming

experiences, the range and meaning of questioning the enchantment reaches further than

the pixels on my screen and further than the video gaming culture. This study connects to

an exploration of culture and community in which “our identities are anything but

permanent and immutable” (Shapiro, 2006, p.169). We are indeed always in the “process

of becoming” (Freire, 2009, p.84). It is in this unfinishedness and in our ongoing

education that we realize our humanity.

Rationale for Chapter Structure

As I drafted the outline of this project, I had initially foreseen my study as a

snapshot of my video gaming experiences: a frozen image of the ways in which I

consented to and resisted problematic messages in the video gaming culture. The first

part of my findings would list the few ways in which I consented and participated in an

oppressive culture, the second one would show how I resisted oppressive messages of the

video gaming culture. Somehow, I had envisioned that my resistance would outweigh my

consent. However, many questions and movements were triggered over the course of my

study. A synergy between autoethnography, critical pedagogy, and qualitative research

took shape. Wording my experiences in different formats and analyzing these experiences

in the contexts of that day and of my history with video gaming triggered reflections and

a troubling. The ongoing analysis advised by Saldaña (2009), Miles, and Huberman

(1984) moved me into meaning making through my two months observation period. As I

wrote my epiphanies, documented my play, and recorded my feelings and thoughts, I

noticed problematic patterns in my experiences especially in the ways I understood my

resistance. Surfacing these patterns made me question my play and how I existed in the

video gaming community. These patterns were problematic because they did not translate

a critical consciousness. They showed a gap between the two identities at the core of this

project. Through the wording of my experiences, I identified a chasm between my

identities as a video game player and student of critical pedagogy. My understanding of

my own experiences was troubled as I collected my data. The concepts of writing as a

form of inquiry (Richardson, 2003), ongoing analysis of qualitative data (Saldaña, 2009),

and “self-actualization” (hooks, 1994, p.14) synergized. One led to another, informed the

other, and opened the way for a tale of two selves: the journey of reconciling two

identities at odds. As a result of this troubling, I chose a different organization for my

findings, one that is grounded in principles of resistance and consent but also accounts for

change and becoming, a shifting space which was opened by this study and through

which I propose ways of resisting oppressive forces in the video gaming culture. I moved

away from my envisioned presentation of the frozen consent/resistance binary which

could not do justice to the criticality of this project. Instead, I have opted for an

organization that represents dynamism, complexity, and troubling rather than stillness. I

organized this chapter into three metathemes.

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Table 4. Organization of the Chapter into Metathemes and Subthemes

1. Chasm between

identities: how the

enchantment enabled

oppressive forms of

play

2. Enchanted resistance

3. Addressing the

enchantment

• The

thinking/entertainment

dichotomy

• Consenting to neoliberal

forms of play

• The gap of captology

• Alien in my own world

• Still born actions

• Non-actions

• The blind support of

others’ social justice

work

• Bridging the identity

gap: the gadfly

o Making sense of

the gadfly

o The praxis of

stinging: learning

to arouse,

persuade, and

reproach

Under Chasm between identities: how the enchantment enabled oppressive forms

of play, I list the problematic gaps between the two identities I placed at the core of this

project: my video gaming identity and my student of critical pedagogy identity. I

identified four themes that show a dissonance between the two. In the

thinking/entertainment dichotomy, I show how I segregated my critical analysis of video

gaming to a subset of games that tackle social issues. However, I seldom engaged in the

critical analysis of the games I played for fun. There were games I played to critique and

others were games I played to have fun. This dichotomy set the tone for my consent in

the games I played to have fun with. In consenting to neoliberal forms of play, I show

that I engaged in forms of play that devalue the humanity of people I played with. I

engaged in individualistic forms of play and valued numbers over people. In the gap of

captology, I write about the influence of capitalism on video gaming through captology

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(Fogg, 1999), the study of computers as persuasive technologies. The intersection of

captology and capitalism works to create game mechanisms that trap players in. The goal

is to make them spend time and money in these games. Whereas I was aware of

captology before this study, I still fell for many of these mechanisms. In an alien in my

own world, I write about how learning about racism and white supremacy in video

gaming pushed me to silence myself in the games I played and with the people I played .

As a student of critical pedagogy, I spoke out and acted against these forces in schools

and other institutions. However, I felt paralyzed and powerless in video gaming.

Under enchanted resistance, I detail a form of resistance in which I engaged

before and early in my observation period. I labelled this form of resistance “enchanted”

because it corresponds to a form of resistance which was naïve, not examined. This

resistance was not anchored in a critical analysis of my own actions. These were surface

acts of resistance which I believed to be in line with critical pedagogy. This enchanted

resistance contributed to the enchantment by leading me to think I was acting critically

when I was not. Satisfied, I never considered examining this enchanted resistance or find

additional ways to resist. In still born actions, I regroup actions I initiated but never

followed through with. I envisioned critical actions but stopped at the first barrier. In non-

actions, I write about acts I had perceived as meaningful and aligned with critical

pedagogy. However, through this study, I show that these clicks and likes required little

to nothing of me. They did not constitute praxis but worked to make me feel fulfilled. In

the blind support of others’ social justice work, I write about the shallowness of the

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support I gave to people and organization that claimed to tackle injustice and oppression

in video game space.

In the last section of this chapter, addressing the enchantment, I write about self-

actualization by reconciling my identities as a student of critical pedagogy and video

game player. In the first part of this section, I describe how Plato’s (2014) concept of the

gadfly helped me envision new meanings for the intersection of my identities as a student

of critical pedagogy and video game player. I describe how I saw myself as powerful and

critical when I was in charge of my raid team. I understood leadership as a position rather

than a process. Upon giving up the leadership of my team, I saw myself as giving up all

power and legitimacy to implement any aspect of criticality in the community I used to

lead. I saw myself as pushed to the margin and silent when faced with questionable

changes in my community. Plato’s concept of the gadfly gave me a blueprint for realizing

my power from the margin. In the praxis of stinging: learning to arouse, persuade, and

reproach, I show how this blueprint enabled me to see possibilities for stinging my

community into consciousness and action. I give concrete examples of the meaningful

changes I adopted through this new identity such as abandoning two of the main games I

played.

Chasm Between Identities: How the Enchantment Enabled Oppressive Forms of

Play

I have identified four themes that constitute the dissonance between my two

identities. The first one corresponds to a dichotomy I created between playing for fun and

playing to critique. The second theme is entitled consenting to neoliberal forms of play.

Through this theme, I describe how in my video gaming habits and experiences I engaged

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in ways of playing that perpetuated neoliberal ways of relating to one another. The third

theme is the captology gap. Through this theme, I show that I fell victim to psychological

and monetary traps in gaming mechanisms while I was aware of their existence. The last

theme is confining myself to being an alien in my own world. There, I unveil how even if

I saw myself as a member of the video gaming community, I restricted my interactions

with others and hid myself. Knowing the place of racism and white supremacy in the

video gaming culture, I was afraid that unveiling my minoritized identities would make

me a target or make me lose the people I played with. Rather than being present in my

community, I suppressed myself. I detailed each theme below. In doing so, I exposed

how an important part of my video gaming experiences revolved around habits that were

in direct opposition with my identity as a student of critical pedagogy.

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Table 5. The Thinking/Entertainment Dichotomy

Thinking

Entertainment

What is this game telling me? Passage from May 29th field notes on

the Housewife.

The major element in g jousting is the storyline about toxic

masculinity. The fact that John thinks of himself as a victim, as being

bullied, and the only answer he has is violence, virility, and an idea of

success that taps into patriarchy. This game does a good job at

portraying the complexity of toxic masculinity/patriarchy:

• Swallowed by corporate system (and think deserves more)

• High school reunion

• Buffing up/exercising

• Pressure to show success:

o Material

o Bringing girlfriend

• Claiming ownership of women (picking them up at bars)

• Everybody is a penis (men and women)

I still have some questions though:

• Why does a womanly voice narrate the game?

• Graphics of the game are so much better than TH. Is it easier

to achieve better graphic quality with symbolism?

• Nobody will ever love you. Troubling memory. Apparently,

John is a sexual predator. He does not remember what he

did. Which means it is not normal to him? He does not do it

all the time? Or this is something available to him on the

palette of responses to women saying no?

• What class could I use such a game in? Passage from May

journal entry about Genital Jousting.

Illidan’s quest is something

bateau (banal in French)

about sacrifices and more to

make… bla bla. Lore… falls

flat again. Passage from June

field notes on WoW

My blood was boiling. We

ended dominating bot lane.

Towards the end of the game I

was 5/0/4. This is a big score

for playing supp.” Passage

from May 9

journal on LoL

“That was great. Two different

scenarios. A game we should

have never won and somehow

pulled through. The other one

was huge steamroll. I dont

think it's adrenaline but it is a

great feeling to walk away

having achieved wins,

performed well, and

contributed to the team’s win.

Passage from April 24

journal entry about LoL

This theme sets the tone for the split between my two identities. I had forged a

dichotomy in my playing and in my thinking about video games. I had indeed created two

then-invisible sets of video games. One set consisted of games I played to have fun,

entertain myself, and escape my daily routine. The other set consisted of games anchored

in social commentary. I played these games to critique and analyze them. This dichotomy

worked to heighten my critique of video games which openly engaged with social issues

and lessen my critique of video games I saw as mere entertainment. The two sets of

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quotes I use in the opening of this section show that for the games that tackle social

issues such as domestic abuse for The Housewife (Colossal Wreck, 2016) or toxic

masculinity for Genital Jousting (Devolver Digital, 2018), I engaged in a complex

questioning of the design decisions made about the game and its meaning. I purchased

these games because they tackled social issues. I wanted to know how these themes

would transpire in a video game. My journaling and field notes showed that I engaged in

questioning the meaning of the possible actions within the game, the meaning behind the

size of the house, the meaning behind the sounds, animations, the choice of camera

angles… whereas, I seldom questioned the messages of the games I played for fun. My

field notes and journaling focused on descriptions of what I was reading, or commentary

on my accomplishments in LoL. In WoW, I rarely took the time to read quest texts, and

was never fully aware of what I was tasked with. I understood from the little I knew

about the quest that I was engaging in a superficial story about honor and necessary

deaths.

The way I thought and documented these two games, these two distinct forms of

thinking about my play testify to the dichotomy between how I engaged with the games I

play based on what I aimed to experience from them. This dichotomy between what I

played to enjoy and what I played to critique corresponds to a segregation of my identity

as a student of critical pedagogy to games that are advertised as socially engaged. Rather

than engage in a continuous and seamless critique. I abandoned my identity as a student

of critical pedagogy when playing games that may be the most problematic since they do

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not foreground a social responsibility in educating their players. The most glaring aspect

of this dichotomy is my Steam library.

Figure 3. Cropped Screenshot of My Steam Library Highlights the Categories I Had

Created

Note: The games in the Pedagogy category are the only ones I systematically

and consistently critiqued (screenshot by author, 2018),

Steam is an online platform through which players can buy games and organize

them in a digital library. An overwhelming majority of the games I play are launchable

through Steam (only WoW and LoL are not). Players can create categories of their own

making. I had named one of these categories “pedagogy” (figure 3). Under this heading, I

placed games which were advertised as taking on social justice topics such as No

Pineapple Left Behind (Subaltern Games, 2016) which is a critique of No Child Left

Behind or Soldats Inconnus: Mémoires de la Grande Guerre (Ubisoft, 2014) which

critiques war. Other categories in my digital library include “histoire” (for games with the

“rich story” tag in Steam), “coop” (for games I can play with my son), “finis” (for games

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I finished and would not touch again), “bla” (for games I found uninteresting or not

worthy of my time), and games (for games I found potentially fun and entertaining and

have not played yet or am in the process of playing). Through this categorizing, I show

that there are games in which I see potential for addressing social justice topics and

others for which I do not. This dichotomy created a setting in which I was most likely to

critique the games I placed in the “pedagogy” category. This setting also worked to

minimize my critique in all other games I played.

This idea is further exemplified by the way in which I took my field notes. For

example, when I played The Housewife (Colossal Wreck, 2016), a game that tackles

domestic abuse and which I had placed in my “pedagogy” category, I wrote about how

the graphics, animations, mechanics, sounds, and music weighed against the theme that

game aimed to tackle. I paid attention to and documented the decor, the landscape, the

mechanics instilled in completing levels, the main screen animations, and other details of

the game. However, when I played League of Legends (Riot Games Inc., 2009), a game I

perceived as simple entertainment, my field notes focused on the type of competitive

game I played (ranked or normal), which position I selected to play (similar to choosing

to be a striker or goalie on a soccer team), whether I played well, if I executed good

plays, and whether my team won the game or not. The ways in which I documented my

engagement with video games depended on how I perceived them. If I played a video

game that foregrounded social commentary, I would center social commentary in my

documenting. If a video game did not foreground social commentary, I would center how

I played the game for entertainment. This is all the more striking because LoL and other

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games I play to have fun do have stories, graphics, sounds, animations, and a social

message. For example, LoL does have a rich story. LoL takes place in a world named

Runeterra. It has a lore, comic book style stories, character backgrounds, and other

elements that bring life to the game beyond the typical matchmaking and competition at

the heart of its gameplay. However, I never engaged with the background story and rarely

made notes of the game’s sexism, violence, and other social systems of oppression LoL

echoed and reinforced. Shapiro (2006) writes that “we are, in some way, compelled to

take the separate and nominally unrelated fragments we encounter in our world, and find

ways to connect them together so that they can be understood as whole and related

phenomena” (p.78). I engaged in bringing the two fragments that are video gaming and

critical pedagogy solely in the context of socially conscious games. I enacted critical

principles in only one subset of games. Therefore, I consented to the oppressive systems

in the video gaming culture by focusing my criticism on a minute set of games, those

which dedicate themselves to social commentary. In that process, I minimized or blinded

myself to the toxicity and problems in all the other video games I played. The dichotomy

worked to numb my identity as a student of critical pedagogy.

The problematic categorization of my Steam library showcased the segregation of

my critique, of my student of critical pedagogy identity, to a minority of video games.

This dichotomy between what I have fun with and what I critique shows a naïve and

enchanted posture toward the problematic messages of video games that are not

advertised as social justice oriented. This is all the more concerning since video games

that tackle social issues are usually independent games that are played by few players and

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the games I play for fun are more likely tied to mass markets and work to socialize a

much larger number of players. There was what I played and what I critiqued. I rarely did

both. I kept the enchantment strong by minimizing or making invisible the messages of

entertaining games. However, some games I played to have fun did trigger critical

reactions. Wildstar (NC Soft, 2014) is one such game.

The Case of the Colonizing Heroes

Wild Star was a mmorpg (the same genre as WoW) in which players could choose

a role, level up, and take on challenges on their own or as a team. Wildstar brought

uncommon and new features to the mmorpg genre. Some of them included player

housing, the possibility for players to design their own house, and a vibrant cartoonish

style (figure 4). The game’s story focuses on Nexus, a “newly discovered” planet. Nexus

contains vestiges and secrets of a lost civilization. Fahey (2011) summarizes the story and

possibilities behind the exploration of this “new” planet.

Players can choose different paths to take in order to exploit the richness and

mystery of the planet Nexus. Explorers conquer the world by climbing its highest

peaks and penetrating its hidden inner recesses. Soldiers conquer the land by

force, taking on the native creatures left agitated by the Eldan's passage. Scientists

comb the planet for secrets, attempting to unravel the mystery behind the

powerful race's sudden absence. And Settlers just want to make a new life for

themselves. (para. 5)

Two opposing factions venture to Nexus. Players are to pick one of these two

factions as they create a character: Dominion, portrayed as evil, and Exiles, portrayed as

good. I read the background story as an invitation to colonize a planet. I was given the

choice between playing a bad colonizer or a good one. That message was difficult to

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swallow for me, a child of colonization. I had hoped that somehow that backbone story

would become more elaborate, complex, or nuanced. I enjoyed the cartoonish graphics

and the opportunity to play a different mmorpg, a genre I enjoyed. I thought that playing

something different from WoW might bring something fresh to my video gaming. I

wanted this game to work for me.

Figure 4. Wildstar was a Mmorpg Set in a Futuristic Universe.

It shut down in November 2018 (McWerthor, 2018).

I did not go far in Wildstar. My history, my identity as a child of colonization flared up.

While I wanted this game to work, the normalization of colonization was impossible for

me to overlook. I tried both factions. One of the first Dominion quests involved torturing

an NPC. I could not do that. I could not engage with what I perceived as gratuitous

violence. I deleted that character. Playing an Exile was not much better. Early in the

game I was tasked with killing native beasts. What may have been a casual quest for

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some players was a mark of colonialism for me. While my intent was to play WildStar

for fun, the messages it sent trivialized an identity that defines me. The game banalized

colonization at best. The analysis of this moment brought more complexity to the

dichotomy. It showed that I deemed intolerable games that targeted my minoritized

identities. Therefore, it unveiled that I deemed tolerable and playable games that did not

target and hurt my identities. This allowed me to play and support problematic video

games that did not target or attack me directly. While an aspect of my video gaming

experiences is to escape my mundane life, video games that demeaned my oppressed

identities were impossible to enjoy and play.

Escapism, Self-suppression and Their Limits

I launch WoW. I can’t focus on my writing. Hoping to find some sense of

satisfaction and come back to it refreshed. Passage from April 16

field notes.

M+ not to gouge my eyes out cos of Jenny’s paper and request. Passage from

May 2

field notes

Horrible paper to grade. Need mental break and distance. No new posts on

Discord. Log in Wow to do Maw M+ to cooldown. (...). Dungeon done. (...) log

out. I think about Jenny’s paper with less anger. Passage from May 3

field

notes.

Stenseng, Rise & Kraft (2012) provide a helpful theory to ground one aspect of

my “play to have fun” experiences. They describe self-suppression as one of two escapist

types of play. In self-suppression playing games is interpreted as “an instrument to avoid

apprehension of negative aspects of the self and to temporarily direct one’s attention

away from disturbing memories, current stressors, or future obstacles” (Kraft, Rise, &

Stenseng, 2012, p.22). In other words, self-suppression consists of playing to avoid

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“unpleasant thoughts, perceptions, emotions” (Kollar, 2013, para. 3). Players who engage

in self suppression play to escape their life difficulties and realities. One aspect of my

playing video games is to unwind. I play to have fun and entertain myself at the end of a

day. I also play to take a break during the day. For example, I may take a 30mns break

while grading papers to play a game of LoL. After that game, I go back to my duties and

work refreshed and re-energized. While my stories of escapism are rather soft, other

players have engaged with video gaming in ways that have been labelled as signs of

addiction. Stories of players preferring video games rather than tending to their family or

professional responsibilities make the news regularly. Parents have left their children

unfed to die (Thompson, 2011), others have played themselves to death (Ruddick, 2015;

Sieczkowski, 2012; Spencer, 2007). My play is the result of a negotiation with Yessica,

my wife. These discussions serve as a safeguard against extreme gaming and escapism.

I build on the theory of escapism to explain that in order for the play experience to

provide an escape, whether rejuvenating or harmful, two factors must be at play. The first

is perceiving a video game as neutral. If the messages a video game sends are aligned

with the player’s identities, that player is likely not to see these messages. They are

perceived as normal. For example, someone who has no understanding or experience

with colonization is unlikely to find a game like Wildstar problematic. The second factor

is dismissing the problematic messages of video games by not understanding or

minimizing their impact and role in the socialization of its players. Stating that games are

not serious, that they are mere entertainment, that they are “just” games ignores the role

of media as the “third educator” alongside family and schools (Spring, 2011, p.7). Video

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games are an important and growing part of the socialization of players. In both cases, the

denial of the problems tied to video games involves some degree of positive emotional

and historical relationship between the player and video gaming. We cannot escape to

and through video games if they send us back to our minoritized identities, if they remind

us that our places in society is on the margin.

The enchantment hid the dichotomy. Isolating the critique of video games to

socially engaged games has worked to segregate my identity as a student of critical

pedagogy. I saw myself as doing good work with games that tackled social justice issues

all the while abandoning my critique of video games I played to have fun (unless they

clashed with my minoritized identities). When games fed into my dominant identities, the

identities that correspond to dominant groups in society (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017),

escapism worked like a charm. Escapism and my dominant identities contributed to the

gap between my student of critical pedagogy identity and my video game player identity.

This gap, and more importantly its invisibility, made it more likely for me to consent to

oppressive messages in the video games I played. Wording my experiences brought this

dichotomy to the surface. The dissonance became visible.

Consenting To Neoliberal Forms Of Play

It does bother me though that there is no community, that they made the game

neoliberal in its mechanics. WoWing alone. I do that. I do it so I can save time

and do in the game what I find meaningful. Journal entry, Thursday April 10

Community, a sense of belonging, and realizing our connectedness are important

elements of critical pedagogy. Every semester, I show the movie “Precious Knowledge”

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(McGinnis & Palos, 2011) to my students. It retraces the battle of Tucson Unified School

District school students and teachers to keep their Raza studies program alive. They

fought to raise awareness of their demand. One of their initiatives was to jog 110 miles

from Tucson to the Arizona state capitol in Phoenix. Their run involved crossing the land

of Native Americans. The students and teachers asked the local tribal council for

permission to run on their land. Not only did Natives grant them permission, they also ran

with the students and teachers. They connected with the students’ protest. They saw in it

their fight to keep the stories of their people alive, the fight for minoritized people to

learn about themselves. Every semester, I fight back tears when I see this moment of

togetherness. While I strive to find and form such connections and community in my

video gaming experiences, I have found that despite my commitment to my guild and

raid team I engage in neoliberal playing practices that stress individualism,

dehumanization, and meritocracy. My play experiences contradict my identity as a

student of critical pedagogy. In this section, I use two examples that show how I engaged

in such neoliberal forms of play. First, I use Braithwaite’s (2018) concept of WoWing

alone to make sense of my using the “looking for dungeon” tool (Dungeon Finder, n.d.)

or LFD. Second, I use the example of Recount (Resike, 2007), a WoW addon that gives

numerical data to players regarding their performance and the performance of those they

are grouped with.

LFDing alone. One of my favorite activities in WoW is taking on challenges with

other players. Dungeons constitute such a challenge. Dungeons are instances that require

five players to coordinate their actions to defeat bosses. These dungeon groups are

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composed of one tank, a character who attracts the attention and the attacks of

surrounding enemies, a healer, that heals the tank allowing them to more easily survive

the attacks of the enemies, and three dps (damage per second), characters who deal a

significant amount of damage and are tasked with defeating enemies. This trio of roles is

sometimes referred to as the “holy trinity.” Years ago, WoW players had to communicate

with one another to group up and form dungeon groups. For me, this meant spending

time in Orgrimmar, the capital city of my faction, to chat with other players of the same

level and lead a group to take on dungeons. Organizing such groups required

communication and time. It also provided the grounds to forge relationships with other

players as building in-game friendships made the game more enjoyable and sped up the

process of finding dungeon partners. Rather than spending time looking for new players

to group up with every time, I would start by contacting players I had grouped with in the

past and ask them if they wanted to group up again. This system provided the basis for

meeting players, and nurturing relationships.

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Figure 5. The Looking for a Dungeon Interface, also Known as Dungeon Finder

Allows players to be matched by a piece of software rather than communicate

with one another (cropped screenshot by author, 2018).

On October 14th 2014, Blizzard implemented the Looking For Dungeon tool

(Dungeon Finder, n.d.). This tool is an interface through which players can select their

role (tank, healer, and/or dps) and choose the dungeon(s) they wish to queue for (figure

5). LFD will then look for other players in the system and automatically match them to

form a group of five random players. This tool saves players the time and responsibility

to communicate with one another. The implementation of this tool has hurt an important

aspect of the game. It replaced communication and engagement with other players with

an automated matchmaking tool.

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LFD is one of the elements Braithwaite (2018) qualifies as having “drastically

altered WoW as a multiplayer experience and environment” (p.120). Braithwaite

identified trends in WoW’s game design that moved the game away from “its early

emphasis on small- and large-scale group effort and social encounters”, Braithwaite

continues and states that today “WoW is less of a sociable space—there are fewer

opportunities or incentives to work toward the same virtual goal with others” (p.120).

Over time, game developers added incentives to use the LFD tool. They implemented

rewards such as gold, experience points, and random item rewards for roles that are in

high demand (usually healers or tanks). The prime reason for the creation of such tools

was to eliminate the time required for players to build a social structure to play the game,

therefore bypassing an essential element of the MMORPG genre. The rationale was to

allow a category of players who did not have time to form groups to access game content

for which communication, time, and community was required. Dungeon groups used to

be composed of players who were working together to accomplish a common goal

(defeating bosses) and possibly create in-game relationships for future dungeons. LFD

erased the requirements and benefits of forming community. In LFD, it is highly unlikely

that players will want to communicate with one another and work as a team. WoW counts

millions of players. It is therefore highly unlikely that they will ever be matched again by

this tool. This has created a shift in the running of dungeons and the WoW community.

Forming relationships is no longer an aspect of running dungeons. Because players are

grouped together by a software, they tend to work toward individual goals without

consideration for communication and community. This system makes it more likely that

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players run dungeons in order to collect loot, that is to benefit themselves. This is what

Braithwaite (2018) refers to as “WoW-ing alone” (p.123), the experience of engaging in a

group activity for individual rewards.

While every Thursday night I raid from 8:30 to 11:30 with my team, using the

LFD tool was also part of my WoW play. I regularly ran dungeons through LFD. I did

not communicate with the players I was matched with. I usually stayed silent. No “hi,

how are you doing?” No “good job” or “thank you for the group.” I did not acknowledge

being grouped with other human beings. Even worse, there were times during which I

behaved out of spite and resentment toward LFD players.

When on the last boss, I was blamed for not tanking a tentacle. I became furious. I

had never seen 2 tentacles on that fight. Not because it is a rarity or a bug, it’s

because they took so long to kill the first one that a second popped in (…).

I stayed in the group nevertheless because it was the last boss and I could have

used a +13 reward and weekly reward. On the next pull, they took tons of dmg. I

also fell in a hole on the ship and died. I minimized and closed the game from the

taskbar. I did that because I did not want to read potential hateful words or blame

from them. I also thought “bien fait pour eux. J ai ruiné leur clé. Ça leur

apprendra.” These aren’t the words of a loving critical pedagogue. Extract from

April 20

2018 journal.

Here is how I made sense of my LFD experiences: I played the game with people

I did not know and whom I would never see again after that dungeon. Why bother with

being polite or friendly? My intent was to get in and out, smash buttons and keys to

release stress, find quick loot and reward, and be out. I could have been playing with

artificial intelligence and would not have noticed. This neoliberal view of group work and

relationships is described by Turkle (2011) as “expecting more from technology and less

from each other” (p.xii). Turkle describes the many ways technology is enabling us and

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driving us to be “alone together” (p.1). She writes that robot pets are introduced in

nursing homes to counterbalance the fact that we are spending less time with our aging

loved ones. Robots who respond to a name and show affection become a substitution for

family members. Teenagers grow up with the idea that a Facebook friendship status or

like is the equivalent of a meaningful face to face friendship. Humanoid robots are

designed and programmed for the purpose of offering meaningful romantic relationships.

WoW is following the same trend. It is moving away from a focus on community to a

neoliberal model of play. It fosters a view of community that foregrounds personal

benefits at the expense of meaningful connections. I contributed to this dehumanizing

trend by embracing a “"thing"-oriented” tool rather than engaging with a “"person"-

oriented” community (King, 1967).

While I belong to a mega guild and could have found players to run dungeons and

quests with through this social structure, I have fallen prey to the convenience of LFD. I

have consistently ignored guildmates and guild chat outside of raid time to run dungeons

and other game content. I wanted to save myself the time to type and find players to

group up with. I casually engaged with individual play in a game that has a history of

meaningful social structures. I relied and sought my raidmates for challenges I found

engaging and challenging only once a week. My belief in community was enacted

punctually. The six other days of the week, I engaged and perpetuated neoliberal ways of

playing and being, therefore adding to the rift between my beliefs and values as a student

of critical pedagogy and my actions as a video game player.

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Recount

I am thrown off the platform (by the boss). Dead. (...). I do not dare looking at

recount. Passage from April 12

field notes.

Another marker of my engagement in neoliberal play is my use and interpretation

of the Recount addon (Resike, 2007). Addons are community created tools that players

can download and install to compliment the default game interface. Curse (Curse LLC.,

2006), a popular addon website, lists over 6,500 WoW addons. These addons add various

functionalities to the game. TomTom (Cladhaire, 2009), among other things, shows one’s

character's coordinates on the map. Deadly Boss Mods (Mysticalos, 2008) gives visual

and/or audio warnings when a boss is about to use a powerful ability signaling to the

player that they need to dodge it. Recount records the damage, heals, and other numerical

values generated by characters. One of its most popular features is measuring the damage

per second of each member in the group (figure 6). This number can be used for several

purposes. It can be used as a self-evaluation tool. Players can also use it to see how much

or how little each player is contributing to the efforts of the group in downing a boss.

Figure 6. A Screenshot of the Recount Addon

This shows that Crucix is doing by far

the most damage in their group. The

players at the bottom of the list are

also listed (Wowace, n.d.).

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I have used Recount to judge my value as well as other players’ value in LFD

runs and in my own raid team. Using recount this way presents two issues. The first is

that it constrains a player’s performance to their damage output. Through this addon, I

have reduced a player’s worth to a numerical value produced by a piece of software. In

my opening quote, I show how knowing that by dying early in the fight, I could not do a

lot of damage on the boss. I was not going to be able to contribute to the team’s effort.

The bar associated to my name became a mark of shame. There are other factors in the

game that comprise a player’s performance beside the numerical value indicated by

Recount. For example, the ability to execute a boss’ mechanics, that is dodging deadly

abilities or switching from damaging the boss to targeting minor enemies that may buff

the boss. The second issue with using recount to judge a player’s value is that it erases

that player’s identity. Their name is washed from existence. They become a number.

Their contribution to a group, their relationships with other players, what they can bring

to that community is reduced to a numerical value that cannot account for who they are.

You think it was that easy. You think that I did not struggle with that decision. It’s

all good to speak from where you are. You have no pressure. You face no

consequences. I coached that kid for weeks. We play the same class. We both play

warriors. I quested with him to strengthen a bond. I know what he should be

pulling in Heart of fear. I gave him advice. I researched his rotation. I gave him

resources. I pointed out gently that he needed to up his DPS. But how many times

did we wipe on Wind Lord Mel’jarak because of his low DPS? Enough for

raidmates to start whispering me about him. They wanted him out. He is

consistently at the bottom of the DPS charts. Everyone noticed. No one can hide

from recount. We had reached a wall. The team was not progressing anymore. We

were in danger of collapsing. I had to make a decision.

Oh. I see what you are pulling. “It’s not me. It’s the DPS numbers.” That sounds

like what administrators say when they ignore their own values. Or maybe the

DPS meter is your value. You see, you are not so different than these behind-the-

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desk people you despise. It’s when situations get tough that we find out what we

are made of. You showed who you are. Numbers over people.” Passage from the

‘You kicked him’ epiphany.

This way of thinking is aligned with a neoliberal view of relationships. Identities

and the sense of community are replaced with numbers produced by software. I

contributed to that neoliberal/numerical way of seeing worth in people. I have reduced

players I have been matched with through LFD as well as raidmates to their damage

output. This reducing of relationships to numbers contributes to the gap between my

identity as a video game player and my identity as a student of critical pedagogy.

The enchantment hid neoliberal forms of play. By engaging with neoliberal

forms of play, I supported ways of dehumanizing WoW and the players I played with. I

reinforced the harmful idea that playing WoW and video games is about in game rewards,

numbers, and charts. My use of tools provided by Blizzard Entertainment and the WoW

community has revolved around values that are not in harmony with my identity as a

student of critical pedagogy. I consented to neoliberal forms of play and therefore I

consented to neoliberalism.

The Gap of Captology

As a student of critical pedagogy, I am aware that, online or not, we are constantly

engaged with problematic and oppressive systems. Capitalism is one such system. It

elevates profit above people. Some major video game companies have foregrounded

revenue generation in the design of their games through the theory of captology. Fogg

(1999) explains that captology is about using computers as persuasive technologies. He

defines this type of technology as:

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a computing system, device, or application intentionally designed to change a

person’s attitudes or behavior in a predetermined way. (...). Intentionality

distinguishes between a technology’s side effect and its planned effect. Captology

focuses on the planned persuasive effects of computer technologies. (p.27)

While in some cases, captology has been harnessed to foster positive behavior

change such as in health-related matters (Albert, 2004), most the theory of captology has

been implemented to orient player behavior toward spending money. Through this

theory, video game developers have included mechanisms that keep players tethered to

the games they play. I was well aware of captology and its mechanics in the games I

played before this project. However, I had failed to question my gaming experiences

through the lens of this theory. As a result of this study, I have identified three ways

through which I succumbed to captology, three ways that as a student of critical

pedagogy, I should have identified and stayed away from or engaged with in a different

manner. My non-questioning of my behavior in light of this knowledge contributed to the

gap between my identity as a video game player and student of critical pedagogy. The

first of these three ways is the gambling aspect of reward mechanics in video games. No

matter how low the odds of receiving certain rewards, I kept engaging with specific video

gaming activities in hope of receiving these rewards. I entitled this aspect of my playing

experiences “Doing it again and again no matter the odds.” The second of these three

ways is my engagement in activities I did not enjoy for the sole purpose of scoring a

reward. I named this aspect “doing it again and again even if I do not like it.” The last of

these three ways corresponds to the time I would spend seeking rewards obtainable

through dull or unchallenging play. I named this “doing it again and again no matter how

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dull.” I detail my succumbing to captology in the next section by sharing an example for

each of these three ways.

Doing it again and again no matter the odds.

Cracked fel-spotted egg ready. I get an aged yolk :(Passage from June 9th field

notes.)

The cracked fel-spotted egg is a WoW item obtainable by defeating rare monsters.

Only four such monsters exist. Once the egg is obtained, I, like any other player, have to

wait seven actual days before it hatches. Once the wait is over, the egg has a minute

chance of containing a valuable item. The most prized item for me was a mount. After

having obtained an egg early June, I was able to click it to hatch it on June 9th. My prize,

like many other times, eluded me. The egg cracked to reveal a useless aged yolk. There

are many such items in the game that present players with opportunities to try their luck.

The most emblematic is the mount of the Lich King, arguably the most epic character of

WoW lore: Invincible (figure 7).

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Figure 7. An In-game Menu Allows Players to See All the Mounts Available in the Game

(cropped screenshot by author, 2018)

This bat winged undead horse mount was a reward for defeating the Lich King on

25 player Heroic difficulty when that encounter was current, that is between December 8

2009 and December 7 2010. Blizzard released other expansions after that date. Players

were then able to outlevel the encounter. The Lich King fight became obsolete. To

account for this change, Blizzard drastically reduced the drop rate of this mount. When it

was current, defeating the Lich King on 25 player heroic difficulty had a 100% chance of

dropping one Invincible. The team of raiders would have to decide which of the 25

players was to keep the mount that week (like any other raid encounters, the Lich king

and his loot resets weekly). With the release of further expansions, defeating the Lich

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King on 25 player heroic difficulty now bears a 1% chance of dropping the Invincible

mount but the fight is now doable by one character, a team of 25 players is no longer

needed.

I tried obtaining that mount once during my observation period. However, I have

tried obtaining that mount twenty times since the encounter has become obsolete. The

ludicrousness of these attempts is highlighted by the fact that in order to face the Lich

King all other bosses of that instance had to be defeated. The Lich King is located in the

Icecrown Citadel instance. It counts twelve bosses. Timewise, this represents an

investment of roughly thirty minutes of dull boss fighting before reaching the Lich King.

I spent thirty minutes dispatching unchallenging enemies before reaching the Lich King

and trying my luck at this one arm bandit. That is thirty minutes to get a chance at a 1%

gamble.

Invincible is not the only 1% mount run I have engaged in. I attempted such 1%

mount runs for Deathcharger’s reins (three times), Swift Zulian tiger (one time),

Mimiron’s head (three times), Onyxian Drake (sixty nine times), ... Most of these mount

runs involve less than twelve bosses before reaching the one arm bandit. However, they

all culminate to a 1% lottery. All these attempts, all this time spent on trying to obtain

these 1% mounts attest of the power captology had on me.

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I also fell into the captology trap when I incessantly chased ranked wins in LoL:

I raged! I could not get over the fact that this adc ruined our game. 1mn in the

game and he steals red and leaves. I was so pissed. I could not help but chat and

complain. I don’t like doing this but I had to vent. I had to let it out. I typed and

hated on that guy. I dropped the f bomb… a few times. I played to get some air

and to resource in order to go back to my work refreshed. I ended up getting so

upset I could not focus. It was a ranked game. I was in my promos. There was a

lot of pressure. I exploded. At the end of the game I was so upset that I could not

get back to work. I had to play another game. Extract from May 9

2018 journal.

Ranked games constitute the end game of LoL. Each season, players can climb the ladder

ranging from bronze to challenger by amassing wins. Each season, players are assigned a

starting rank based on last year’s performance and a series of ten placement games. Once

they are assigned a rank, the goal is to move up. Games can be tense as the stakes are

high. Moving up is always a rush. Moving down on the ladder is infuriating and

discouraging. Every season, my goal was to reach the gold rank because of its associated

reward. In the journal entry above, the pull of that reward was so great that even after I

nerd raged (a common gaming term used to note a video game player’s anger) I felt

compelled to play again. My goal in playing another game and seeking a victory were to

quell the anger, fill me with feelings of accomplishment, and take a step toward gold rank

season rewards. I succumbed to captology even when playing enraged me and triggered

feelings that were not aligned with how I perceive myself.

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Doing it again and again even if I do not like it.

Figure 8. A Graphic Explanation of the Hextech Crafting Loot System in LoL

(Jarettjawn, 2016)

On March 15, 2016, LoL introduced Hextech crafting (Hextech Crafting, n.d.).

Through this system (figure 9), LoL offers the possibility to earn chests by earning an S

rank in a match against other players. Ranks correspond to grades players earn after a

match. This rank is determined by an algorithm which translates a player’s performance

into a letter grade such as A, B, C, or S. S is the highest letter grade possible. While there

is no official meaning, S is understood as Super or Special. Players can earn one chest per

champion per season, roughly a year. The content of these chests is random. They can

contain cosmetic rewards and game currency. Skins are a cosmetic reward that is

particularly interesting to me because even if LoL is a free game to play, skins cost actual

dollars. Their price ranges from $4 to $25 (Friedman, 2016). Skins have no influence on

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gameplay. They provide a variety of aesthetic choices. In LoL, their main purpose is to

offer different themes for champions. Cheaper skins change the appearance of a

champion. More expensive skins change the appearance, animations, voices, and sound

effects of a champion.

Figure 9. A Side by Side Comparison of the Default Brand Champion on the Left (Plesi,

2016) and the Zombie Brand Skin on the Right (leaguesales.com, n.d.)

Zombie Brand is a skin that includes, among other features, unique sounds such as

zombie grunts and unique animations such as a dance choreographed after Michael

Jackson’s iconic Thriller video (Jackson, 2009).

I catered to that system. Earning S’s on champions I played rather well granted

me a sense of gratification and recognition. Through these chests I also got a taste of the

rewards: I won a few skins. Based on these successes I took the next step and decided to

spend time playing with champions I did not like or did not master hoping that I would

somehow earn an S. My hope was that I would either be matched against lower skilled

opponents or that my teammates would carry me towards that S. I did not obtain an S in

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that manner but, lured by the reward, I kept playing (and failing) in such a way. I invested

time in playing champions I did not enjoy for that reward. More concerning is the idea

that these rewards are totally random. I was likely to win skins for champions I did not

play or enjoy. Moreover, these skins were temporary. They lasted a few days. To obtain a

random permanent skin, I had to combine three temporary skins. I had to obtain three S’s,

each with a different champion, to obtain a permanent random skin. Each one of these S’s

gave me a 50% chance of obtaining a skin shard (Chiptek, 2018). The work of learning to

play champions I did not enjoy, the time spent underperforming in games, and the

unlikelihood of obtaining these rewards made this whole endeavor unrealistic and a waste

of my time. I had to document my actions to see their repetitions and understand how far

down the captology hole I was.

Doing it again no matter how dull. Another form of my succumbing to

captology was my chasing rewards through disinterested and dull actions. For example,

The Secret World Legends (Funcom, 2017) offers daily login rewards. Through the mere

act of logging in to the game, I gained rewards such as skill points and random items

(figure 10). Every morning, I would get up, get my breakfast, walk to my computer,

launch a youtube Late Show video, eat as I listened to Stephen Colbert, and logged into

SWL to collect my daily reward. Most of the time, I would not do anything else in that

game. I would log off as soon as I had clicked my reward on the screen. It took me longer

to load the game than it did validating the reward.

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Figure 10. The SWL Daily Rewards Interface

The SWL Daily

Rewards interface

pops up as soon a

character is

loaded for the

first time of that

day. While SWL is

free, players who

pay a monthly fee,

known as patrons,

obtain an

additional Daily

Reward (u/Elrigh,

2017).

As I documented my experience, such routines became more and more dull.

Engaging with these tasks felt normal or ok as long as I did not word them. However, my

field notes highlighted this mind numbing repetition. As a matter of fact, I used the term

“morning routine” in my field notes as a shortcut to write about morning activities such

as the SWL Daily Reward. “Morning routine” became an in vivo code. Below is a list of

the activities my “morning routine” referred to:

• In SWL:

o Logging in to SWL

o Confirming the daily reward

o logging out of SWL

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• In WoW:

o Logging in to WoW

o Completing missions

o Recruiting troops

o Starting new missions

o Using Blessing of Mjolnir

o Starting the preparation of next Blessing of Mjolnir

o Logging out of WoW

Describing all these actions would be tedious. The main point I wish to make here

is that all these actions were accomplished from one location. These actions barely

required me to move my character. They were all doable from the location I logged in. At

most, I would have to move my character from one NPC to a neighboring one. All I did

was to click maps and menus. I stress this aspect because it differs widely from the

gameplay I enjoy which involves communicating with my raidmates, strategizing,

engaging enemies through action packed gameplay, executing said strategy, and

restrategizing in case of failure.

I also engaged in what I referred to as “weekly routines.” These actions and their

respective rewards reset every Tuesday at 10:00am EST. These were actions I would take

on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, depending on how much time I had available

on Tuesday night. These weekly routines were all tied to WoW and included:

• Checking pvp chest

• Defeating the world boss

• Opening Mythic+ cache

• Purchasing two tokens

• Picking up weekly quest

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I found myself checking these routines multiple times a week because there is no

way in the game to track the completion of these weekly actions. I was afraid I would

miss them. The behavior triggered by these rewards was robotic. It was scripted in two

ways. First, I followed a set of actions that I repeated from day to day and week to week.

Second, my behavior was scripted in the sense that it was coded into the games I played.

These mechanics were scripted into the codes of these games. These game mechanics

were meant to keep me playing. I knew they were. I followed the script nevertheless

because I had not scrutinized my play. I engaged with video games without questioning

my behaviors and therefore I acted in ways that did not align with my identity as a

student of critical pedagogy.

The enchantment hid captology. Knowing about captology and failing to

recognize when I succumbed to it shows that the enchantment numbed my critical

consciousness. The knowledge I had was not enough to stop or prevent me from

engaging in these problematic behaviors. I allowed these game mechanics to own my

time and shape my play. However, captology was not the only element informing my

play. Captology was connected and interlocked with other aspects of my play. I had come

back to WoW after a four month break. Four months without loot put me behind my

raidmates. My outdated equipment placed me among the last players on Recount. I did

not want to hinder my team’s progress. I wanted to be an asset to my team. I did not want

to be looked at the same way I viewed rock bottom LFD players on Recount. Completing

my routine was linked to the progress of my character, which in turn played a role in

maintaining my spot on the raid team, which was also linked to playing with my friends.

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This made my relationship with WoW and my succumbing to captology more complex.

However, this was not the case for SWL and LoL. I had no friends to come back to in

SWL, no community to be and play with. LoL was not much different. I only had two

friends and we were rarely online at the same time. When my captology-infused

behaviors were linked to critical aspects of my video gaming such as friendship and

community, there was a complexity I needed to entangle. I could not justify these

behaviors when they were not connected to critical aspects of my video gaming

experiences. I could no longer engage in these behaviors and therefore could no longer

engage with these games. I have indeed stopped playing SWL and LoL as a result of this

research during my two month observation period. Later in this chapter, I detail this

decision and other actions I have taken to reconcile my identities as a student of critical

pedagogy and video game player.

Alien in My Own World

In that podcast, Kevin Roose shared how he joined a discord server to investigate

the American white supremacist movement. Discord. They fucking use discord.

Passage from the “Unite the Right epiphany."

Being present in the world is an important aspect of critical pedagogy. I believe in

affirming one’s presence in order to live fully and maintain our humanity (Freire, 2009).

While I work to embody this principle in my life, I have identified ways in which I

silenced myself in my video gaming experiences. For the purpose of this section, I define

silence as recognizing oppressive dynamics at play, knowing that I could and should

intervene in some way, choosing not to do or say anything to remain invisible, and

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therefore allowing oppression to go on unchallenged and spread. To make this point, I

focus on one aspect of the video gaming culture: it perpetuates oppression. Like

schooling, video gaming is shaped by the same social forces that are present in society.

Video gaming does not exist in a vacuum. Racism, sexism, and white supremacy in the

video gaming world are well documented. Gray (2014) wrote about the racist attacks

against black women players on Xbox live and their fight against it. Massanari (2017)

wrote about the ways in which technologies promote, defend, and allow video game

toxicity, such as racism, sexism and white supremacy to exist, subsist, and thrive online.

Mukherjee (2018) wrote about the racism and imperialism of video gaming through the

lens of Indian players playing games that privilege a colonial view of the world and their

country. Once again, I knew about these issues in video gaming but the enchantment, the

abandonment of my critical consciousness, worked to numb me and shield me from the

realities of my very culture. As a student of critical pedagogy, I tackle many of these

issues outside of my video gaming life. I do it through my work as a teacher and

immigrant advocate. However, my video gaming behavior is totally different. Silencing

myself in the face of oppression is a dominant theme in my video gaming experience. My

silence was a sign of my “fear of denouncing injustice;” I was washing my hands in the

face of oppression (Freire, 1998, p.101). I identified two main types of such silences.

Silences in online games with LoL matched players.

DOMINATING WIN + Hextech chest. I click on Twitch and go to my ADC’s

channel. He shows his desktop. His background is that of anime girls wearing

mini shorts and flaunting their backside. I could use his help to get my gold rank

though. He sends me a friend request. I wait till he is in game to accept. I did not

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want to play another. I add a note to his name on my friend list: great adc-Jhin.

Passage from May 9

field notes

I silenced myself when matched with random LoL players who made sexist, ableist, or

racist comments in the chat interface and their Twitch.tv channels, a popular streaming

website. I felt it was not useful for me to challenge this casual sexism, racism, and

ableism with online strangers. I thought that my words and actions would be futile

because I did not have any connections with these randomly matched players. To them, I

was most likely a nobody they had been randomly grouped with. Someone who would be

forever gone after the game. However, in the case of the event I refer to in the excerpt, I

saw myself as benefitting from associating with such players. I accepted the friend

request from someone who had no issue with being sexist. I even noted on my interface

that he was indeed a great player. This shows that I was willing to play with him again

because he could help me win games. The pull of the reward annihilated any sense of

injustice or obvious dissonance between my identity as a video game player and student

of critical pedagogy. My naïveté was a testimony of the internalization of oppressive

forces in the video gaming culture (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). As a cis-gender man and

someone who is aware of my position of power in the gender and sexuality binary, I

should have better embodied the principles I value. I should have questioned my actions

and decisions.

Another reason for silencing myself during the game deals with LoL’s gameplay.

Lol is fast paced and unforgiving. The gameplay presents a barrier to chatting and

confronting hateful language. The structure of the game makes it difficult to report

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players during the action therefore allowing racist comments and other oppressive

comments to exist and flourish. I had to make a choice between playing for a win and

enacting principles of critical pedagogy. I chose the former. Kincheloe (2008) writes that

“critical pedagogy is dedicated to resisting the harmful effects of dominant power.

Advocates of critical pedagogy work to expose and to contest oppressive forms of power

as expressed in socioeconomic class elitism, Eurocentric ways of viewing the world,

patriarchal oppression, and imperialism around the world” (p.34). Rather than work to

resist, expose, and contest oppressive forms of power in video gaming, I chose to silence

myself and allow them to go unchallenged. I also benefitted from them. I told myself

stories about not being connected to the random players I was matched up with to justify

my silences. However, I stayed silent in the face of oppression even when playing with

people in my immediate video gaming community. I tell these stories next.

Silences with raidmates.

Don’t look there.

Yes, that tiny highlighted “2” tells you exactly how many new messages are in

that channel. Don’t Look.

Yes, it’s your raiding group. Yes, it’s the team you created. Yes, a few of them are

still your friends.

Don’t look.

You got VERY upset the last time you looked in that channel. Maybe this time, if

someone put a racist or sexist meme or link, you will find what it takes to call it

out.

Don’t look. Passage from the “Don’t look there” epiphany.

I silenced myself when my own raid mates made sexist and racist comments. I saw my

position in the raid team as that of an unknowledgeable and undergeared DPS. This

means that in my eyes, because I did not pull big numbers on Recount and was not

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knowledgeable about the encounters we faced, I had little influence, social capital, and

power in the team. This is all the more disconcerting because I am the founder of this

team, which I understood as being responsible for the group’s values and reputation. I

saw myself as the guardian and enforcer of norms I had worked on implementing from

the beginning of this team. I chose the team’s name, recruited players, and organized

everything from our website to our schedule when the team was officially formed several

years ago. Because of work and school, I had to step away from this leadership role and

had named a new leader to succeed me. Over the years, the composition of the team

changed. New players flooded in and original ones left. I no longer recognized the team I

had founded, a team in which casual racist and sexist comments would have been

addressed. This statement is not about trying to identify who my teammates are and how

they think. The scope of this project is autoethnographic and not ethnographic. I am

focusing on my experiences and perspectives, in this case my silences, to make sense of

my experiences. These comments presented an opportunity to engage with my raidmates

and explore the “unstated ideologies hidden between the sentences” (Kincheloe, 2008,

p.16). I could have communicated with them in order to help them expose the roots of

their words and thinking. Instead, I repeatedly failed to honor my identity as a student of

critical pedagogy.

Don’t look.

Just yesterday someone mentioned the Pewdiepie story in raid chat, one of these

youtubers who makes money by insulting his viewers and making racist jokes. “I

really don’t care for this. We are here to down bosses and make progress. Your

discussion has no place here. Focus!” That is how one of our leaders shut that

conversation down, in the name of ‘playing.’ How do you think they would react

once you point out their racism and sexism? How do you think they would react if

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you actually engage with what they are saying and laughing about. Don’t look.

Passage from the “Don’t look there” epiphany.

The identity of the team had shifted and with it mine. I went from an official

position of leadership to feeling like an expendable player. Many of the newer players on

the team were unknown to me as I was to them. I felt powerless in addressing these issues

and therefore did not take action. I silenced myself. The quote I opened this section with

captures this alienation and silence, this refusal to face my responsibilities as a student of

critical pedagogy. It is taken from a story I wrote about a specific channel on our discord

server. This channel is dedicated to posts that are deemed silly and funny. It is an

amalgam of posts that include jokes and memes on all kinds of topics, quite a few on

questionable topics. My refusal to consult this channel was grounded in my impossibility

to imagine power from anything else but the position of leader. I made the conscious

decision never to click on that channel. I did everything I could to stay away from it,

especially when I would see notifications about new content posted there. Freire (1998)

writes that “women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they

are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished” (p.58). I played in a space where I

saw myself stuck and incapable of movement and action. My identity became a ball and

chain. I had failed to recognize my power and the possibilities I had to change and to act

in a more socially conscious way.

These silences contributed to my feeling as the “other” in my own video gaming

community. The more I read and learned about the oppressive facets of video gaming the

more I felt like an outlier. Instead of feeling enraged and moved to act as I was in my

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advocacy work, I felt overwhelmed, paralyzed, and impotent. I had internalized power

and its exercise in terms of position. I saw possibilities for speaking up and shaping my

team’s values only when I was the leader, only when I held an official position. While my

actions might have not always been aligned with my identity as a student of critical

pedagogy then, I saw my rank as powerful and exercised the power I saw in it. Because

of this view of power, leaving the leadership of the team also meant abandoning all

power and possibility to act. I locked myself in a space where I could no longer envision

possibilities for action. As I continued researching video gaming, any new information

that deepened my understanding of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchal

grip on video gaming worked to feed my impossibility to envision just actions in my raid

team. Such was the case when I heard about the connection between video games and the

Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville.

Discord and Charlottesville. On August 12, 2017, white nationalists gathered in

Charlottesville, VA to protest the removal of a confederate statue by local officials

(Astor, Caron, & Victor, 2017). Members of the Proud Boys, Identity Evropa,

Traditionalist Worker Party, Ku Klux Klan, and Vanguard America marched on

Charlottesville to protest this removal (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2017). Their chants

included “blood and soil,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “white lives matter” (Heim,

2017). This protest was organized through an application named Discord (Roose, 2017).

Discord is described on its official website as an application that aims to “bring gamers

together” (Discord, 2015; figure 11). It is a platform that resembles a combination of

Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.

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Figure 11. A Screenshot of the “About” Section of the Official Discord Website

(Discord,2015)

Available on smartphones and computers, Discord is a platform for players to

communicate in and out of the video games they play. My raid team has a server, a home,

in Discord. We use it to talk strategy and coordination when we take on challenging

content. Outside of raid, we post comments about the latest WoW features. We share

videos and songs. We also organize events similar to Secret Santa.

Organizers of the Unite the Right rally created such a server. They used it to

discuss their plans. They posted pictures during the rally for those who were unable to

attend. After the killing of Heather Heyer by one of their members, they gathered to

brainstorm future rallies. My finding out about the connection between Discord and the

Unite the Right rally shocked me. It should not have. I knew that white supremacy was

sheltered in my culture, that the tools put in place to address it were inadequate and

inefficient. My emotions are a testimony of my naïveté. My identities, as an immigrant,

an Arab, a student of critical pedagogy placed me on the margin of world, video gaming

or not. While I felt these were identities of action outside of video gaming, I saw these

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same identities as powerless in video gaming. My margin identities became heavy, static,

passive, and shackling in front of my screen. The more I learned about the video gaming

culture, the more paralyzed I was. I somehow was not influenced by my knowledge of

critical pedagogy. It took a back seat. I proceeded to seeing myself as an alien in my own

world. I realized my place on the margin and stayed there. I accepted it quietly and

meekly. Part of me was afraid of losing the team I had created. I was longing for a group

which I mistakenly thought I had shaped as an island of justice in an ocean of oppression.

However, it took this examination of my experiences to understand that in many ways, I

had been leading from a pyramidal view of power. I understood power starting from the

top and ending at the top. I was longing for that, a group in which I had held power and

could fight back against comments made by my teammates. It is only through the critical

examination of my experiences that I was able to name this longing for what it was: a

longing for power based on a failure to see and implement leadership from a critical

model. Writing about my actions in my video gaming experiences has forced me to

reflect on my silences in this culture, in my guild, and in my own raid team.

At the onset of my study, I did expect to find problematic behaviors in my

experiences. The gap between my identities as a student of critical pedagogy and video

game player is the first set of problematic cogwheels at play in my enchantment. While I

did not expect to expose such a chasm between two of my core identities, the second set

of cogwheels is the one that surprised me the most. Through the scrutiny of this study, I

found that the ways through which I thought I enacted critical principles were a mirage. I

detail this supposed praxis, another facet of my enchantment, in the next section.

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Enchanted Resistance

Through this study, I have examined my video gaming experiences and therefore

the ways in which I enacted critical principles in this hobby. I have found that there is a

disconnect between the way I perceived these actions and their actual alignment with

critical pedagogy. These enchanted ways of enacting critical pedagogy were clouded by

the unexamined memories and joys this medium had provided me with. I have identified

three themes that compose this enchanted resistance: still born actions for actions I

initiated but did not support long term, non-actions for being content with refusing to

engage in oppressive behavior and doing nothing more, and the blind support of others’

social justice work for finding solace when supporting questionable so-called social

justice initiatives. For each of these forms of enchanted resistance I share one example of

that resistance and show how disconnected it is from praxis.

Still Born Actions

Hey

I know that there is a "no politics policy" in our rules but I would like to know if

there have been any talks among officer or members regarding an initiative about

the decisions made by the current administration. Our guild is US based but we

count people who are not American and who may want some support or simply

hear a message of compassion. Is that off the table? Passage from the Softbear

epiphany.

On January 27th, 2017, President Donald Trump signed what is commonly known

as the Muslim ban. The ACLU (2017) describes it as “an Executive Order that banned

foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country

for 90 days, suspended entry to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and

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prohibited any other refugees from coming into the country for 120 days” (para. 1).

Protests erupted as many opposed this Islamophobic and demagogic act. I too felt I

needed to do something. As an immigrant, as the son of Muslims, as the father of a child

who is connected to Islam, and in view of the storm of hate that was being unleashed

since the involvement of candidate Trump in the political and social landscape of this

country, I felt it was my duty to intervene. The national stage was out of reach, but I

could do something locally. The core of my actions was done through advocacy groups I

was already a member of. I spoke at community meetings and pointed out the

shortcomings of local school leaders in addressing the rise of racist language and attacks

in their schools. I had not thought about acting through video gaming when one evening,

as I was surfing the web, I ran into online posts about Muslim players acting in a game to

bring awareness and resistance to the Muslim ban. A player had decided to dress their

character with a hijab, an option allowed by the game they played. These actions made

me want to act online, to act within my guild to bring awareness to this ban and to

Islamophobia. I felt that my guild was the most meaningful space to act in because it

connected me to my guildmates. My guild counts thousands of players mainly located in

the US. Acting through my guild could therefore reach many people.

My guild, like many others, has a set of policies that members must abide by. One

of them includes leaving politics out of game chat, Discord, and other ways of

communication. I knew that any intervention regarding the Muslim ban would break

these policies. To avoid being kicked out of my guild and no longer be able to act as an

agent of change in my community, I contacted Sharphammer through a private message.

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Sharphammer was an officer, someone with high standing in our guild, but he was also a

member of my very own raid team. He was someone I had a gaming relationship with. I

was not an anonymous member of the guild for him. By reaching out to a powerful

member of the guild who knew me, I hoped to alleviate the chances of forceful feedback.

The private message I sent him asked about possibilities for addressing the creeping of

hate in the USA. I asked how the guild could show support for our guildmates who are

immigrants and/or Muslims. I crafted that message stressing the importance of nurturing

a supportive environment, one of our shared guild values. I sent this private message on

March 12, 2017. Sharphammer never answered it and never mentioned it in our weekly

raids. Scared of being banned, I never followed up. The rules of our guild muzzled me. I

risked being kicked out by sending a public message or reaching out to other officers.

This was not something I took lightly. The only content I enjoy in WoW requires team

work and skill, also known as end-game content. A team of dedicated players is therefore

necessary. To gauge player commitment and skill, many end-game guilds have developed

complex procedures to test and recruit members. These range from online applications to

trial runs. Moreover, I have been part of two guilds that counted just enough members to

put together one raid team. In each case, the raid leader left WoW and the guild fell apart.

I found myself guildless and having to start the application process again. Being part of a

megaguild eliminates this issue. When players leave the game, there is still a large pool

of guild members to tap into. This goes further than video games though. Video games in

general and WoW in particular have given a platform in which to find people to play

with. WoW has become a space which has come the closest to filling the hole of losing

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my friends in France. Leaving this megaguild involves more than having to redo the work

of finding other people to play with. Leaving this megaguild would send me back into a

space of loneliness and isolation I suffered from for several years before finding WoW.

As imperfect as my video gaming relationships are, I see myself as needing them in order

to continue working toward filling that hole.

Cider is ok but not that sweet.

It tastes of apples and defeat.

Trying to drink my way to friends.

Trying to drink my way back to France.

Nerd screams are good.

Give me a sense of brotherhood.

They just aren’t enough.

Nothing like Pierre’s laugh.

--Passage from the “Stuck with songs and cider” epiphany.

An important aspect of my playing WoW is the endless pursuit of home, the

fleeing of a country where I became the other as I entered it. I long for a sense of

belonging. WoW and my megaguild have brought me closer to that goal even if they may

never help me reach it. This epiphany captures this longing and the inevitable failure of

looking for the replication of connections I lost when I left my friends in France. I was

trying to recreate the same sense of belonging I had with pen and paper role playing

friends through video gaming. While these two activities share similarities such as

fantasy world and character building, they also involve starch differences such as not

being in the same space together, and the possibility to hide behind an interface or refuse

to share certain aspects of our identities that can’t be hidden in face to face interactions.

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I am stunned. How long has it been? We journeyed together from the mountains

of Icecrown citadel to the green hills of Pandaria for close to three years. Here is

someone I have called a friend for that long. I realize now that I had never heard

his voice before. No, not exactly. It is not his voice that stuns me. It is what his

voice says about him. How much his voice says about my prejudice and

ignorance. Orzul. The troll hunter. The tamer of wolves. Orzul. One of our

Canadian players. Orzul. The one who occasionally misses raid night to attend

his girls’ school plays.

Three years without a word in vent or mumble. Three years of listening and

typing. And then, after what looked to be a usual Thursday night, while we were

casually debriefing and talking, he unloaded a bomb on us all. Was it an Indian

accent? I thought he was Canadian? Well, now I know I thought this meant White

straight “flawless” English speaking Canadian. Really all I knew was that he

lived in Canada, my prejudiced story about him flowed from that. I was so

ignorant. In what other ways am prejudiced? How much do I actually know about

those I play with? How much are they holding back? I am not telling them

everything about myself, why am I expecting them to? Passage from “The

Accent” epiphany.

The assumptions I made in my connections with the players in my team served to

give me a naïve sense of connection with them. This also played a role in making me

think that I had created a community aligned with critical principles. Through this study,

I understand that the connections I had worked to forge were not as ideal as I had thought

them to be. Nevertheless, because, we as people, need connections and one another to be

fully human, I engaged in the pursuit of meaningful relationships because my happiness

and sanity depended on it.

Beyond my raid team, our guild policies are designed to keep players shielded

from politics, to create a blissful bubble. However, in light of this silence, our guild

values of support and community do not extend to those under political attack, those who

are rejected to the margins of society. Our guild policies work to keep privileged players

shielded from the struggles of our most vulnerable guildmates. They shield those

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unaffected by oppression from the stories and lived experiences of minoritized

guildmates. I never pushed further. I felt restrained by the community I called my own

and have been part of for seven years. Under the guise of an apolitical community, my

guild keeps certain players safe and ignorant while reminding those on the margin that,

whether in or out of game, they are outliers. This action, like others that fall under this

theme, were still born. I stopped at the first barrier. I felt I could not do more. These

unaccomplished plans contributed to my enchanted resistance: the illusion that I was

doing something critical and meaningful.

Non-Actions

After the game, the adc friended me. I accepted. He linked his twitch channel. I

went there and saw that he had his desktop up… a drawn girl laying down on her

side wearing tiny shorts. Nvm. I did not follow the channel but the guy is still on

my friend list. Journal entry, Wednesday May 9th.

Sexism is rampant in the video gaming culture. One of the most glaring examples

of sexism in the video gaming culture is #gamergate. I use the # in #gamergate to mark

its social media origin as the toxicity of anonymity in social media played a role in the

aggressivity and propagation of this movement. # is a tool used on Twitter to highlight a

keyword. It allows for posts about that keyword to be searched and found easily. # allows

for discussions about that keyword to spread widely and rapidly.

#gamergate started in 2014 when Zoë Quinn, a female game developer, was

accused over social media of trading sex with a game reviewer for positive reviews about

her video game “Depression Quest” (2013). Even if the reviewer had never actually

reviewed the game (Morano, 2014), the accusations took a life of their own. They turned

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into a “harassment campaign” on websites such as 4chan and Reddit (Johnston, para. 2,

2014). The campaign included “detailed discussions and investigations into her sexual

history, the leaking of nude photographs, ‘doxxing’ to find out her real life details, death

and rape threats, and attempts to bully her and her supporters out of the industry” (Heron,

Belford & Goker, p.23, 2014). The perpetrators of #gamergate claimed their efforts were

about “retaining the ethics in game journalism” (Heron, Belford & Goker, p.23, 2014).

Indeed, members of the #gamergate movement “allege that there is corruption in video

games journalism and that feminists are actively working to undermine the video game

industry” (Chess & Shaw, p.210, 2015). There are many issues with this statement. One

of them is the prejudice that feminists are not part of the video gaming community, that

they are outsiders. Through this statement, #gamergate proponents are affirming that the

video gaming culture belongs to players who do not identify as feminists.

I have seen many elements of sexism in my own video gaming experiences. I

myself even engaged and perpetuated sexism in the video game culture. One of my

epiphanies retraces how, some fifteen years ago, I used to use the word “whore” to

tentatively demean an opposing player’s dominance in a team match. At that time, I used

the term without understanding its connotations and ramifications. I used it because I had

heard it. I acted like a parrot replicating what other players had typed. That term did not

make sense to me in that context. I did not understand how qualifying someone as a

“whore” was connected to their dominating performance. However, my exposition to its

constant use and my wanting to fit in led me to see that term as normal. It took the

intervention of an unknown player to make me question this insult and my using it.

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Because I was incapable of justifying my use of the term to them, because I was forced to

face my own ignorance (Diller, 1998), I decided to stop using it. In doing so, I saw

myself as cleansed. By no longer typing sexist insults and comments, I saw myself as

resisting sexism in video games, never mind that I played video games like Shank 2

(Klei, 2012), WoW (Activision Blizzard, 2004), LoL (Riot Games Inc., 2009), The

Witcher (CD Projekt Red, 2008), Castle Crashers (The Behemoth, 2012) and others that

depict women as sexual objects or damsels in distress and men as brutal warriors guided

by fame and/or lust. I use the term “non-actions” to qualify this non perpetuation of overt

oppressive messages while tacitly engaging in others. Schwalbe (2007) writes that

“choosing not to support arrangements that are harmful or unjust” (p.27) is a way to resist

oppressive facets of the social world. He sees in this choice a conscious act. While this is

indeed a form of resistance, it is individual. It does not accomplish much in terms of

impacting the culture I am part of. “Non-actions” do not constitute praxis.

I have found many other forms of non-actions in my field notes. For example,

when surfing Twitch.tv (the most popular website for video gamers to stream their play),

I refused to watch or click the “follow” button on video game streams that use sexist

terms or include degrading or sexualized depiction of women. Of course, “follows,”

“likes,” and “dislikes” can play a role in a culture where the accumulation of such clicks

can generate revenue, visibility, prestige, and influence. However, identifying as a

student of critical pedagogy implies the understanding of one’s responsibility to enact just

change, the responsibility to enact praxis. While supporting social justice work can be

aligned with critical pedagogy, the context in which I did so was problematic. “Not

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clicking” is superficial. Seeing praxis in the continuous practice of not engaging with

problematic behaviors is not representative of acting for just change. Even more

problematic is that these non-actions reinforced the illusion that I was enacting principles

of critical pedagogy in my video gaming experiences when I was doing close to nothing

to implement meaningful change. These non-actions worked to make me feel fulfilled.

Through non-actions, I navigated my culture gleefully and content with this illusory

praxis. This contributed to my enchantment. I thought of myself as doing good work and

therefore made actual significant actions impossible. Through non-actions I kept the

enchantment strong and vibrant.

The Blind Support of Others’ Social Justice Work

I did find this bully hunter website. These women are on a mission. I will do what

I can to support them. Journal entry, Thursday April 12th

This type of action, the blind support of other people’s social justice work, is the

third component of my enchanted resistance. This type of then-perceived critical action

required little of me. These actions were punctual and isolated. I did not have to follow

up with them and never did. A few clicks here and there and my ‘work’ was done. I detail

one such example below.

The case of bullyhunters.

I read the Polygon.com article ‘bullyhunters.org.’ I go to Twitch and subscribe to

that channel. Passage from April 12th field notes.

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Bullyhunters.org was formed in the middle of 2018 to intervene and address toxicity in

Counter Strike: Global Offensive (Valve & Hidden Path Entertainment, 2012) also

known as CS:GO. This game is a first-person shooter in which two teams of players face

each other in different scenarios. No matter the scenario, the game involves killing the

opponents either because that is the only goal of that specific scenario or because

opposing players stand in the way of the goal, such as capturing their flag. CS:GO is

referred to as a Players Versus Players game (PvP). Harassment is rampant in games that

pit players against one another. The stress on competition and winning coupled with the

anonymity of online gaming exacerbates feelings of domination and failure especially

toward minoritized people. Bullyhunters.org aimed to curb this harassment. Any player

who was being harassed could signal members of bullyhunters.org through that website.

The report would then be assessed and upon validation of the complaint a member of the

bullyhunters.org team would be sent to the harassed player’s game in order to “take out

an offending player if the case is determined to be severe enough“ (Alexander, 2018,

para. 7). I decided to support that initiative because it took harassment head on. I did have

some concern over how they would determine what consisted in a “severe enough”

offense, but I had understood their goal as similar to that of the black women players

Gray (2014) had written about. After reading the article, I followed their social media and

twitch accounts to give them more visibility and to contribute to their mission. I felt I was

doing something meaningful and helpful. I relied on Twitch.tv to notify me when their

stream would go live. I wanted to see how this initiative would unfold. At that time, I saw

this as a connection between critical pedagogy and video gaming. I believed this was

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critical work. Using in game violence to address in game bullying was problematic but

something was being done about toxicity in video gaming and this was enough for me. I

thought that whatever was wrong with bullyhunter.org could eventually be fixed.

Bullyhunters.org could work as the foundations of a socially just action or movement. I

had blindly liked the few social media sites I was present on to help this initiative.

There are many issues with this blind support. The first is that it relies on “likes”

and “follows”, mechanics Massanari (2014) has shown are promoting a toxic culture. I

was using the master’s tools in a futile hope of dismantling the master’s house (Lorde,

1984). My clicks bore no potential for dismantling the systems I was actually

participating in and complicit with. The second is that I found fulfillment in a quasi-

meaningless series of empty clicks. The third is that this action required no follow up, no

continuous engagement. The emptiness and meaninglessness of this blind support was

highlighted months after my social media clicks.

When analyzing my data, I researched bullyhunters.org and found out that the

website and initiative had been shut down just 72 hours after it had started. Concerns

were raised around the methods used to evaluate and address the bullying (Grayson,

2018). Taking down bullies was perceived as a way to inflame a situation rather than to

address it. Moreover, social media posts of Nati Casanova, a member of the

bullyhunters.org team, were dug up and shared (Alexander, 2018). Casanova had used

misogynic insults in her social media accounts (figure 12). The anti-bullying initiative

was then portrayed as disingenuous and illegitimate. Sponsors fled the organization.

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Within a few days, the initiative’s website and social media accounts were taken down.

Bullyhunters.org went nowhere.

Figure 12. Mysogynic Insults

Nati Casanova posted

misogynic insults a few

months before

bullyhunters.org went

live (Alexander, 2018).

Learning about the failure of bullyhunters.org months after its death adds to the

ineffectiveness of my support and to the shallowness of my actions. I had then interpreted

my liking and following as critical actions. The comforting thoughts and feelings of these

blind actions colored me happy. The questioning, an essential characteristic of critical

pedagogy and social justice (Hytten, 2006), of my feelings and thoughts was absent. I

was in a stagnant and unproductive space. The enchantment worked to anesthetize my

capacity to question my actions. I was oblivious to the realities and emptiness of these

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clicks. After the sparkles of the clicks faded, I still had a colorful and false memory to

latch on. The enchantment worked like glitterdust in my eyes.

Other examples of my blind support include my clicking video gaming articles

that tackled topics such as racism and sexism in the video gaming world, following social

justice oriented Twitch channels, and adding social justice games to my Steam wishlist

for the purpose of supporting them by giving them visibility. In the end, all these actions

share a sense of shallowness in regard to their impact on the video gaming culture. They

also worked to keep me blissfully ignorant. They kept me naïve. They kept me

enchanted. Video gaming as enchantment provided me with a space to build my identity,

it gave me powerful moments that helped me find myself. I was aware of these aspects

throughout my life. The questioning of religion through ActRaiser helped me build an

identity as a non-religious person. Other epiphanies along the way gave me powerful

experiences in terms of identity building. Video games like Soldats Inconnus: Mémoires

de la grande guerre (Ubisoft, 2014) have given me a space to question and develop my

identity as an immigrant father:

Through that game, I talked to Ulysse about France and Algeria. Beyond the

geography, I also shared the story of his great grandfather, an Algerian man who

fought under the French flag during World War two. I wanted him to know about

this now, not in his late thirties like me. I wanted him to understand the

complexity of his identities. I found in a medium we both enjoy a way to connect

to one another and to our stories. As father and son, I want us to spend time

together, to build bonds. Tonight, as I play that song, I see that he is shaken. His

eyes are red.

“What’s happening? I thought you liked this song. I thought you liked piano.”

“I do but it is sad. It’s a sad game. It reminds me of it.”

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I stop the song and find another more cheerful tune to listen to.

Should I have played a game about war with him? Do Children in Syria have a

choice about the war they are in?

I can’t help but feel that as sad as the game is, the song created a bond between

him and I. I created a memory. Is this traumatic though?

When do you talk to your child about the horrors of life, especially those they will

face? Should I shelter my son from hurt or prepare him for a world that sees him

as an aberration? When do you give your children a talk about the place that has

been forged for them in the world? How do I as a parent know if what I am doing

is right? Passage from the “Mémoires de la Grande Guerre” epiphany.

My identities as an immigrant and parent intersect in a way that echoes that of my

parents. I have used video gaming to link my son to my root countries in a way my

parents did not attempt or were never successful with. There is a lot I do not know about

Algeria. I know that it will take considerable effort for me to educate my son into his

French and Algerian roots. The distance between him and these countries is a barrier.

Therefore I see it as my responsibility to dive into these discussions and experiences with

him. Video gaming offered me a space to do that. However, like any other enchantment, I

was blind to the full spectrum of my engagement with this medium. I was aware of issues

in the video gaming culture such as using video games to parent Ulysse that could affect

him in problematic ways. As I gained literacy in critical pedagogy, I was able to better

identify problems in my engagement with video gaming. However, the power of the

enchantment is that it worked to blind me to the problems of actions I saw as

representative of my identity as a student of critical pedagogy. Holding critical

knowledge was an important step in my self-actualization process. I reinterpreted my

schooling experience and moved away from thinking that my ignorance about the

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Algerian War of Independence was the result of my failures as a child. I gained a sense of

agency as a public school teacher and immigrant advocate and worked to improve the

lives of students and immigrants in my communities. In comparison, my identity as a

student of critical pedagogy in video gaming was muffled. Because video gaming had

served as an identity building tool, I felt I had power over it and I did. I used the video

gaming space to build a raid team and used video gaming experiences to question the

world and my place in it. However, its power over me remained invisible because it was

entangled with powerful stories I have held dearly. Becoming a student of critical

pedagogy is not an end point though, it is a process. While I adopted principles of critical

pedagogy in many aspects of my life, it was easier to do that work in institutions and

spaces that were detached from me and my identities. My point is not about whether I

was a good or bad student of critical pedagogy, but on the necessity as students of critical

pedagogy to question the very elements that have brought us happiness and meaning

since our childhood, that is to examine the stories and media that have helped us build

ourselves as children, before we gained critical literacy.

Addressing the Enchantment

The documenting and journaling of my video gaming experiences provided a

mandatory space for me to reflect on the intersection of my video gaming and student of

critical pedagogy identities. The process of collecting data was more than the recording

of information to be analyzed later. Coding was ongoing (Saldaña, 2009). It occurred as I

collected data. I made preliminary sense of the data I was gathering. I identified two

major concerning patterns during the documenting of my play: a chasm between two of

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my core identities and an enchanted resistance. I was under the spell of unexamined

experiences and was happy to be subjected to it. The enchantment allowed me to

continue my blissful engagement with a cherished medium while allowing me to think

that I was in alignment with my critical self.

My daily journaling and field noting made this chasm and enchanted resistance

intolerable. The high frequency of the documentation and journal reflections made it

impossible for me to forget, ignore, or escape what I was wording. The structure of the

study played an essential role in exposing the enchantment. I could no longer continue to

pretend that there was a strong alignment between my identities as student of critical

pedagogy and video game player. I opened myself up to a process of continuous self-

examination and “self-actualization” (hooks, 1994, p.14). I was exposing the cogwheels

that composed my video gaming experiences, many of which did not reflect critical

pedagogy. I exposed the enchantment. In the next section, I focus on the changes I made

to my video gaming habits as a direct result of this autoethnographic study. As I educated

myself on my own thinking and behavior, I formed myself as a more reflective being

more in sync with his core principles (Freire, 1998). My goal is not to move from being a

bad student of critical pedagogy to being a good one. This good/bad binary is value laden

and not helpful. There is no good or fixed state for students of critical pedagogy. There is

no point at which we cease to question. Rather, my goal is to continue engaging in the

process of liberation and becoming. I did and do recognize that the unexamined video

gaming aspect of my life was problematic and that my enchantment created a chasm

between my identities as a student of critical pedagogy and my identity as a video game

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player. I therefore saw the necessity to reconcile these two identities. I explain how the

metaphor of the gadfly helped me in envisioning and embodying this process.

Bridging the Identity Gap: The Gadfly

Each man, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual

activity, that is, he is a “philosopher”, an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a

particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and

therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is,

to bring into being new modes of thought. (Gramsci, 1971, p.9).

Researching how I navigate the video gaming culture was more than writing

down a description of my behavior and playing habits. It became a way to question my

practices. The cogwheels I had identified were not the ones I had anticipated. They made

the clock function in a way I did not expect. This project also created a space for me to

reflect on the dissonance between how I thought of myself and how I acted in my video

gaming. It triggered a process of self-actualization. I unveiled the enchantment and in

exposing it, I broke it. As I examined my play, I worked to reconcile my two identities. I

have made choices and found ways of playing and navigating video gaming that better

represent my identity as a student of critical pedagogy, the identity the enchantment had

worked to subdue. Plato’s metaphor of the gadfly has been helpful to me in shaping this

new identity. That metaphor now serves as the overarching theory for my being and

acting in my video gaming experiences. In this section, I start by explaining Plato’s

metaphor and how I made sense of it in my video gaming experiences. I then write about

the changes I adopted during my observation period to embody and enact the gadfly.

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Making sense of the gadfly. Powerful Athenians saw Socrates as a nuisance.

They saw in him someone who questioned society and the powerful as well as someone

who taught youth to question everyone and everything around them. This did not sit well

with people in power who preferred obedience. As a result, they tried Socrates for

corrupting the minds of youths. He made the following statement in his defense:

And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may think,

but for yours, that you may not sin against the God by condemning me, who am

his gift to you. For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who,

if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the

state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions

owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which

God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always

fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. (Plato, 2014,

p.29)

While making a case against those who wanted his death, Socrates explained that

he and they were connected. No matter how alien they considered him, Socrates saw

himself as linked to them. They were part of the same Athenian society. The horse and

the gadfly are different but they are not strangers. Their relationship is necessary for both

of them to move forward. They have an interdependent existence. I interpret this aspect

of Socrates’ monologue as the need to do critical work in my community. I cannot be a

gadfly to a community I do not have bonds with. I can only do critical work among

people I have a relationship with. I can only embody the gadfly in a State I share with

other people, with other players. That State is my guild.

This realization has led me to make the most drastic and meaningful changes in

my video gaming experiences. I understood that I needed a community to embody the

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gadfly. I already had a community to work with in WoW. This was not the case for SWL

and LoL. I saw only two options for these two games. I could look for SWL and LoL

communities and join them or I could leave the games and dedicate myself to the only

online game I had a social structure for: WoW. I chose the latter. As a result of this study,

I stopped playing two of the main games I had been involved with for years. On April

21st 2018, I uninstalled LoL and SWL from my computer. While this decision has a clear

cut date, leaving these games was a process. I faced constant reminders of the presence of

these games in my life and of the pull they had on me.

Over the rest of the observation period I documented deleting tabs related to these

two games on my desktop and laptop, unsubscribing from youtube channels tied to these

games, unfollowing Twitch channels… I still had to deal with the presence of these

games weeks after they were gone from my hard drive. This led me to see how invasive

these two video games were in my life, first in terms of time (mainly through captology)

but also in terms of space as I continuously ran into saved screenshots, Discord messages,

and other video game articles tied to these games. Even after erasing ties to LoL and SWL

I was still getting youtube video suggestions on my devices (phone, desktop, and laptop).

Every time I opened a new tab on my phone, I was offered new suggestions based on

these games. They included news articles about sales, upcoming games, youtubers, and

Twitch communities. I was also receiving ads for these games on many websites I visited

as well as on my yahoo mail page. The invasiveness of internet algorithms was at play

(Dewey, 2015). Ads that catered to the websites I had visited and videos I had watched

worked to imprison me. Video games were on my every screen. These parasitic invasions

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of my space were so frequent that I started using shorter and shorter abbreviations for

them in my field notes. For example, youtube ads became YT ads, and then simply YT as

every time I entered YT in my field notes it was because of such ads. I also had to change

how some programs operated. For example, I disabled the Steam and Discord autoload

features on all my devices. I wanted to see less of these suggestions and ads. The

intersection of video gaming and internet algorithms was flooding my space in a way I

had not been aware of. I wanted to reclaim my space and I had to work at it to make it

happen. This reclaiming was a process. Uninstalling these two games was not enough to

erase them from my sight, from my life. This lengthy process comforted me in the idea of

reducing and better controlling my involvement with video gaming.

During that process, I even journaled about cancelling my WoW subscription and

leaving that game altogether. However, I came to see that, as a student of critical

pedagogy, I had a responsibility towards my community and towards the world. Leaving

a space I felt a sense of belonging to was not a critical response. As problematic as the

video gaming culture is, I am attached to it. I have a place there and a possibility to do

meaningful work in it. As an educator and community activist, I constantly address issues

of race and white supremacy in schools. It would not occur to me to remove myself from

these spaces because racism and white supremacy are present there. I see my relationship

with schools and my identity as a student of critical pedagogy as a responsibility to tackle

these issues. For me to leave these spaces when critical work needs to be done would go

against my beliefs as a student of critical pedagogy. The communities I belong to, the

relationships I have with people in these communities are meaningful and necessary to

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create critical change. Moreover, seeking a community that better fosters critical

principles would “contribute to the fragmentation, intolerance, and divisiveness of our

world” (Shapiro, 2006, p.88). I therefore decided to continue my involvement with

WoW, all the while reminding myself to keep questioning this involvement in order not

to fall back into patterns of problematic play I had engaged with. In light of this decision

and adopting the gadfly identity, I started making further changes to address the

dichotomy in my playing and thinking about video games, my engagement with

neoliberal practices of play, and my succumbing to captology:

• Limiting Recount to evaluating my performance

• Paying attention to the story and lore of WoW to better understand what my

actions mean in that world and better understand what I may consent to. This

includes reading quest texts and paying attention to NPC names.

• No longer using the LFD tool.

• Restraining myself from binge buying video games during Steam sales.

• Unsubscribing from youtube channels that trivialize oppression.

• Reducing, if not eliminating, my routine play.

While minor, these actions constituted an important element of my engagement

with video games. Implementing these changes derailed my habits, as it should have. I

found myself in a new time and space. The erasing of SWL and LoL took more than a

simple uninstall. In fact, I found that video games had imprinted my thinking as well. For

example, I read time as LoL units. If I had a thirty minute window in the evening I would

think that I had time for 3v3 LoL match. If I had one hour, I would interpret that as

enough time for a 5v5 LoL match. This was difficult to erase. There were other aspects of

this lingering pull toward games I had left. During my observation period, I subbed in a

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second grade class at a local elementary school. One of the students was named Taliyah.

This brought a strange smile to my face. Taliyah was one of my favorite characters in

LoL. What are the chances I would run into a person with that name as I am trying to pull

away from that game? These events made me feel trapped. I would have liked for such

encounters not to happen. With time away from these games, the pull has become weaker

and weaker. This process is still ongoing. As I worked to weaken and cut ties with video

games I could not engage with critically, I also started to enact the blueprint of my gadfly

identity. I share this blueprint and initial actions next.

The praxis of stinging: learning to arouse, persuade, and reproach. Socrates

describes the work of the gadfly as arousing, persuading, and reproaching citizens and the

State. While I see connections and synergy between these concepts, I offer a distinct

definition for each of these terms. These definitions helped me frame the stinging of the

gadfly and therefore my actions in my community.

• Arousing is about moving people to think. The stinging provokes an intellectual

and emotional stimulation. My role as gadfly involves encouraging my fellow

guild and raid members to think as we play and think about what and how we

play.

• Persuading is about helping people move in their thinking.

• Stinging is about provoking shifts in perceptions and worldviews.

As a gadfly, I see myself introducing my stories, because I have to expose who I

am in order to teach critically (Freire, 1998), and other counter narratives to help my

guildmates and raidmates examine their own thinking, rethink unexamined aspects of

their play, consider connections to their lives, and come up with their own epiphanies.

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Reproaching is about calling out the actions and inactions of citizens and those in power.

Stinging is an intervention that aims to point out problematic behaviors that do not serve

the common good. As a gadfly, I see myself calling out policies, silences, and other

initiatives that work to exclude members of our community.

As a gadfly, I aim to participate in changing oppressive aspects of the video

gaming culture. This work starts in my own community with the people I share a video

gaming home. While arousing, persuading, and reproaching are individual actions, my

goal is to have an impact on my community. I aim to speak the truth to my guildmates to

create a more just and fair community for all of us. Like Socrates, I aim to show how the

rules of our community work to replicate social norms by isolating and alienating

minoritized players rather than creating a welcoming space for all. While this aspect of

the gadfly is the most important, it is also the riskiest. I would argue that Socrates used

this daring strategy because he was fighting for his life. There may be less

confrontational ways to do this work, especially since being kicked/killed seriously

hinders the possibilities to carry on that work. However, I am working on becoming

someone who is “not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled” (Freire,

2009, p.39). I continue to challenge my understanding of my experiences as I move

forward as the gadfly. In the next section, I share examples of how I have started to

reconcile my identity as a student of critical pedagogy and video game player. These

actions constitute my first steps as a gadfly. These actions constitute an important step in

assuming my right and duty “to opt, to decide, to struggle, to be political” (Freire, 1998,

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p.53) in a space in which I used to be silent. They enable me to exist and affirm my

humanity and presence in my video gaming experiences.

Early examples of the gadfly. I thanked Sharphammer for starting a new

initiative, even if he never addressed my request regarding taking a stance against the

Muslim ban. He interviewed guildmates and posted these discussions on youtube. In my

message, I stressed the importance of knowing who we play with, connecting with one

another as people, not only as players. My hope was to arouse Sharphammer’s thinking

by showing the depth of the work he was doing. My message was also an attempt at

persuading him of the importance of our connections as guildmates if he was not already

aware of it. I still had to be careful in treading these new waters. While I did not risk

Socrates’ fate, being kicked out of the raid group or guild would put an end to critical

possibilities within my community. Dancing with the political line drawn by guild

policies is unknown territory. This was well on my mind after I read an ambiguous

Discord post about French people by Sheepysheep. He was a newer member of the team

but had quickly risen to a position of leadership. I am not sure he knew I was the founder

of the group. I considered these factors in whether I should respond to his post, in

whether I should question and reproach his words like Socrates would and sting back.

Based on my new identity, I put my finger on it and called him out. I felt empowered and

validated based on his answer.

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Conclusion

I like to be human because in my unfinishedness I know that I am conditioned.

Yet conscious of such conditioning. I know that I can go beyond it, which is the

essential difference between conditioned and determined existence. (Freire, 1998,

p.54)

I had envisioned the answer to my first research question as a still picture. I

thought that my navigating the video gaming culture was going to fall into two buckets:

consent and resistance. My autoethnographic journey was quite different. The

documentation of my actions through my epiphanies, journal, and field notes surfaced a

chasm between the two identities at the core of this project. The gap was considerable

and unforeseen. The dissonance I was faced with moved me into action. As I carefully

examined the cogwheels of my video gaming experiences, I realized that the watch did

not work as intended. My actions did not represent who I thought I was. By breaking

down experiences that had shaped me since I was a teenager, I had exposed an

enchantment. In doing so, I started the endless process of breaking that spell.

Examining my play has helped me take important actions to minimize my

enchanted video gaming practices. The most meaningful being the abandonment of video

games for which I had few to no possibilities of doing critical work either because of a

lack of community or lack of time to create such a community. Another major result of

this study is the bridging of the two identities at the core of this project. The concept of

the gadfly has given me a new identity and a theoretical blueprint to make sense of

myself and my actions from now on. It has helped me reclaim agency within my raid

team, be present in my community, and address patterns of enchanted resistance.

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On Having Power, Losing It, and Reclaiming It

I can’t tell you that in person because you are my friend and I don’t want to hurt

you and our relationship. I loved the team we had. But I don’t recognize what you

have made of it. I am going to step out for some time. I just don't know how long.

Passage from the “the message I could never send you epiphany."

From 2011 to 2014, I led the team I am now a simple member of. During that

time, I shaped the group’s philosophy and culture. As I gained literacy in critical

pedagogy, I foregrounded community, listening, and service in my leadership role.

Sometimes I did this with questionable results. Nevertheless, during the three years I held

social capital because of my leadership status, I took actions, even if flawed, to forge a

community, a team culture which I saw as an island of justice in the broader video

gaming culture.

While there were issues with implementing these principles, I saw in my position

as raid leader the legitimacy to act. I chose who made the team, who did not, what our

actions would be, which strategies to use, but also which jokes were off limits, what

language would be allowed… I held power in that group and was able to put into practice

principles of critical pedagogy, in incomplete ways or not. After stepping down, I saw

myself as powerless and without any legitimacy to talk or act. I saw myself in a new role,

that of dispensable dps. I became disappointed and upset with Fluffybunny, the leader I

had chosen to succeed me. These feelings came from what I had lived as the death of my

raid team. I kept thinking and writing about what I would do if I had been in his shoes

when confronted with casual or supposedly inoffensive racism and sexism in my team.

This anger was a manifestation of my incapacity to find power and possibilities in my

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new role. This failure to envision power without an official position of leadership played

against my role as a student of critical pedagogy. While I had gained critical language, I

had not critically examined my experiences. I had consented to a normative model of

leadership which placed leaders in official positions as the source and sole holders of all

power. I was no longer a leader, therefore I saw myself as holding no power. My thinking

and behavior echoed that of my young self, the young Arab who did not know about the

history of Algeria and felt like less of a person because of it. Gaining critical language

helped me understand how hegemony, consent, and power were at play in creating the

conditions to keep me ignorant, voiceless, and powerless and how agency is/can be

developed through and within various vantage points. Documenting my video gaming

experiences helped me see that I had fallen in the same trap. Without wording my

experiences, I was ignorant of the ways in which I could exercise power from my new

position in the raid team. Without wording my world, I could not understand how I had

consented and silenced myself in my group and guild. Without a critical examination of

my video gaming experiences, I could not imagine a new identity to reclaim and exercise

power in my team. Documenting my silences and reflecting upon them made them visible

in a way that I could not tolerate. My repeated silences clashed with my identity as a

student of critical pedagogy. I saw my video gaming identity as cemented. As a student

of critical pedagogy, I should have understood that identities shift, that we are always

incomplete, and that this “incompleteness implies for us a permanent movement of

search” (Freire, 1998, p.56). However, I had become immobile. I had to change

something. I had to reconcile how I saw myself and how I acted. Socrates’ concept of the

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gadfly provided me with such a possibility. Seeing myself as a gadfly, allowed me to

envision and act as a student of critical pedagogy in my video gaming experiences. The

gadfly showed me how to hold and use power from the margin. I no longer deprive

myself of influence, voice, and agency. Praxis (Freire, 2009, p.79), the process of acting

and reflecting on the world, here in my video gaming world, in order to change it became

a possibility. While I do feel liberated and no longer caged by my silences and perceived

impossibilities, I understand that liberation is a process and that I need to continue

questioning my engagement with my enchantment. This study has empowered me and

helped me envision a new role and a new meaning for the intersection of my identities of

student of critical pedagogy and video game player. I am no longer hiding and shying

away from who I am.

My review of critical pedagogy showed how becoming a student of critical

pedagogy gave me a new way to make sense of my educational experiences, of

education, of my world, and of myself. Through it I wrote how I was changed and

empowered to act for justice. In this chapter, I made sense of my critical

autoethnographic journey in video gaming in a similar manner. Answering how I

navigate the video gaming culture as a student of critical pedagogy became the story of a

journey. It started with understanding who I was. It led to who I am becoming. My

critical inquiry into my video gaming experiences continues in the next chapter. There, I

return to the concept of dismantling the clock. I share four cogwheels, four video gaming

elements that lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy.

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CHAPTER V

ASSEMBLING THE CRITICAL CLOCK

Introduction

In my previous chapter, I used the concept of dismantling the clock to explain the

examination of my video gaming experiences. I opened the clock that is my video

gaming experiences and inspected its different components. I made sense of their

complexity and contradictions to better understand how I navigated the video gaming

culture as a student of critical pedagogy. I return to this concept to answer my second

research question: In what ways do video games lend themselves to the teaching of

critical pedagogy? In this chapter, I strategically reassembled four cogwheels that lend

themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. Piece by piece, I put this critical clock

together.

While critical learning involves spending time with oneself to contemplate,

reflect, stop and think (Duarte, 2001), it also requires communication (Freire, 2009) and

connection. Therefore, it is unlikely that video games will bring players to critical

consciousness, self-actualization, and action on their own. A community is needed

(hooks, 2010). Moreover, there is little to nothing in American culture, in that social

world, that encourages and fosters critical questioning and critical thinking (Schwalbe,

2007; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). It is highly unlikely that playing games in isolation

will help players connect with critical ideas. It is only when I started my doctoral

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program and was introduced to critical principles that I was able to name and connect

social forces that had shaped my schooling and my life and the world. Therefore, the

presence of a guide, a teacher, a question nurturer alongside the player bears the most

promise for drawing players into critical questioning of the world and themselves.

Without a space and community to word and examine video gaming experiences, players

are not likely to reflect critically on their experiences and make connections to their lives

and the world. I use the example of Braid (Number None, 2009) to make this case.

Braid

Braid is a puzzle game with 2D platformer elements in the style of the original

Mario (Nintendo, 1985). The player controls Tim and goes looking for his princess. To

do so, the player guides Tim from one castle to another to find the one she is imprisoned

in. That damsel-in-distress trope is deceitful as the ending of the game unveils an

underlying narrative that troubles this stereotype and invites the player to ponder their

experience. Other components of the game provide genre troubling elements that can

invite reflection. For example, one of the main characteristics of Braid is that it has no

game over. At any point in the game, the player can press the X button of their controller

to rewind time. This command is available even after Tim dies (figure 13). When Tim is

hit by a monster or falls into a pit, the player can press X to rewind time till Tim is alive

and safe. They can then modify their strategy and action in order not to fail again. I

connected Braid’s rewind mechanics to Diller’s perspective of angles. Diller (1998)

describes the perspective of angles as “the capacity to view issues from different,

contrasting, as well as unfamiliar viewpoints” (p.4). Braid relies and teaches a view of

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failure I had not experienced. In Braid, failure is part of learning and progressing through

the game. The common sense understanding of failure as punishment is far from this

game. Braid echoed Diller’s perspective of angles by introducing me to a different and

unfamiliar meaning of failure. I made this connection because I was familiar with critical

pedagogy and Diller’ theory.

Figure 13. Braid- a Puzzle Game with 2D Platformer Elements

After Tim’s death, the game informs the player that they can press X to

rewind time. They have the opportunity to adopt a different strategy to defeat

the enemy (screenshot by author, 2018).

Not every player will see or be encouraged to ponder the game and its mechanics

in the way I did. For example, the rapper Soulja Boy played Braid. This artist is the

“youngest person to write, produce, and perform a number-one single on the Billboard

Hot 100” (DX Staff, 2008) and someone who has more media exposure, social influence,

and socializing power than I will ever have. Soulja Boy spoke about Braid in a video he

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uploaded to youtube. He made his thoughts about the game and its rewind mechanics

clear as he said laughingly: “there ain’t no point to the game” (Chafenhimer, 2009).

Diller (1998) writes that without the assistance or intervention of “someone who can

introduce students to broader perspectives or demonstrate shifts they might make to new

angles of vision, most students will find it difficult to engage in non-conventional

reflections on their own education.” (p.6). While Diller writes about students, her point is

relevant to video game players as well. Because the presence of a “critical someone” is

needed, I envision the four cogwheels I share in this chapter to be used alongside a flesh

and bone educator who will arouse students’ thinking. As an educator myself, I see in the

classroom the most meaningful space to do this work and implement my findings. To

account for the classroom context in which these elements are to be experienced and

analyzed, I use the term player/student to refer to the people who are to play/study the

games I use as examples.

Identifying the Four Cogwheels

In analyzing my data, I have surfaced an important aspect of my play that is

directly tied to identifying critical elements of the game I play. This aspect of my play is

a meaningful overlap between my identities as an avid video game player and student of

critical pedagogy. I have identified that as I play, I aim to make sense of the choices the

developers have made in terms of game design. I ask myself questions such as why did

the developers want their game to look that way, why did they choose that particular

music or instrument, why did they implement a silence there, why does the story arc that

way… I question the intentionality behind the game I play and how the elements of the

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game translate this intentionality. I name this aspect of my play “playing like a critical

game designer.” I derive that term from the more common term of “reading like a writer”

(Bunn, 2011, p.71). There are two most pertinent characteristics of “reading like a writer”

that apply to “playing like a critical game designer.” The first is to question the author’s

purpose for creating this piece. The second is:

to locate what you believe are the most important writerly choices represented in

the text—choices as large as the overall structure or as small as a single word

used only once—to consider the effect of those choices on potential readers

(including yourself). Then you can go one step further and imagine what different

choices the author might have made instead, and what effect those different

choices would have on readers (Bunn, 2011, p.72).

I ask myself similar questions as I play such as the reasons behind the creation of

the game I play, the meaning of the game designers’ choices, the potential reactions of

players (including myself) when they experience various elements of the game, and

potential alternatives to these choices. If I played video games that did not center social

commentary I would wonder how the elements implemented in the game could be

adapted to a socially engaged game. In other words, when I play I seek to understand the

relationship between the why and the how. I ask myself why the designers created that

game and how this purpose translates into the game. This process was at play in my

experiences no matter the games I played, however it used to be heightened for the games

that foregrounded social critique. I identified four cogwheels that lend themselves to the

teaching of critical pedagogy through the naming and studying of this process. They are

procedural rhetoric, transgression, introducing critical language, and breaking all walls. I

start by offering a definition for each cogwheel. I then give an example of a video game

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that showcases how this cogwheel works. Some of these cogwheels are present in video

games that are directly tied to social critique. In these cases, these examples fit the critical

classroom like a glove. In other cases, the cogwheels are present in video games that are

not directly tied to social critique. In these cases, I show that these cogwheels bear the

promise of criticality. My work on criticality and video games can therefore be used in

two ways. In the case of cogwheels used in video games that lend themselves directly to

the classroom, my research shows how these games could smoothly become part of the

critical curriculum for such classes. In the case of cogwheels that are not present in video

games that foreground social commentary, my work shows how these cogwheels could

be leveraged for creating moments that challenge players/students’ assumptions and

prejudice in future games. Such challenges to players/students’ thinking constitute an

important step in moving from naïve consciousness to critical consciousness (Freire,

1998). In this case, my findings can be most helpful to video game designers who want to

create games that make their players question their own thinking.

Procedural Rhetoric

As a scholar and game designer, Bogost (2007) developed the idea that video

games make claims through procedural rhetoric. He defines procedural rhetoric as “the

art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the

spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures” (p. IX). Procedural rhetoric is a

unique tool for video games to make claims. What is possible for the player within games

corresponds to a specific vision and a particular message of the game developer for the

player. Through this tool, video game designers can frame video games to implement

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specific experiences and ways of being in the world. This component is aligned with

critical pedagogy in two ways. First, it creates a space for minoritized and silenced

experiences to be represented through game rules. Second, it allows for oppressive

systems to be made visible in society by translating them into game rules and mechanics.

The example I use illustrates the former point. I show how the rules and mechanics of No

Pineapple Left Behind (Subaltern Games, 2016) make the rampant influence of

neoliberalism in schools visible.

Exposing neoliberalism through No Pineapple Left Behind’s procedural

rhetoric. No Pineapple Left Behind (NPLB) is a resource management game.

Players/students take on the role of a school principal. As such, players/students have a

starting budget and must make financial choices such as who to hire and fire in order to

achieve goals specific to each level. I focus on the first two levels. Each level takes place

in a specific school. The first school players/students oversee is the Midvale school for

the gifted located in the fictional city of New Bellona. The stated objective of that level is

to “learn to be an effective administrator.” In the game, that translates to getting

acquainted with the different units available to the player/student namely children,

pineapples, and teachers (figure 14). The second level focuses on the Ananas Pleito

school. There, players/students learn the basic mechanics of making money through

schools.

Level 1: an introduction to units. This level functions as a tutorial. Through it,

players/students are taught the specifics of each unit. I breakdown down the mechanics of

each unit below.

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The Tutorial teaches us that children:

• “are complicated” which means that they possess quests and traits such as ‘crush,’

‘dating,’ ‘rejected,’ or ‘frenemies’ which modify their behavior and distract them

from getting good grades.

• Have a grade score and a humanity score.

• Turn to pineapples when they reach 0 humanity.

The Tutorial teaches us that Pineapples:

• Do not have names, they have numbers.

• Take tests and get grades.

• Have a grade score and a humanity score.

• Turn into children when they reach 100 humanity.

The Tutorial teaches us that teachers’:

• Lesson plans correspond to spells.

• Spells affect student grades and humanity. For example, the “Memorization” spell

brings grades up by 6 and lowers humanity by 6.

• Spell success depends on teachers’ energy. Energy is affected by fatigue and

salary.

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Figure 14. No Pineapple Left Behind

Clicking Mathyn Bilsig the layer/student accesses that student’s information window. With a

humanity of 85, Mathyn can sustain several spells before turning into a pineapple (screenshot by

author, 2018).

Level 2: an introduction to game mechanics. The second level focuses on the

mechanics of the game by introducing the following goal: do not lose money for two

consecutive days. This level teaches players/students a basic strategy for making money.

That strategy consists of hiring teachers at the beginning of the day and emptying them of

their energy by casting spells and raising student scores throughout that day. Once they

can’t cast any more spells, that is they are unable to raise student scores, the

player/student can fire them. Repeating that strategy the next day ensures no teachers are

paid a salary, therefore maximizing profits and fulfilling that level’s goal of not losing

any money.

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NPLB claims. I share here some of the most pertinent procedural claims made by

NPLB:

• The goal of the game/education is to turn in a profit.

• Learning is an act that is initiated by the teachers and received by students.

• Students’ only function is to score high grades for the purpose of increasing

school revenue.

• Students’ desires and issues constitute burdens toward making money. They must

be ignored.

• Teachers are a disposable workforce.

The game is built so that players/students have to conform to these rules and

views to be successful. NPLB’s procedural rhetoric brings to the surface a view of

education that, in many ways, goes against principles of critical pedagogy. By

playing/studying NPLB in the critical classroom, players/students can gain an

understanding of neoliberalism, its impact on schools, and on their own schooling. It can

help them see under the hood of education and better understand how laws of the market

can impact education and other social institutions. Procedural rhetoric can bring social

systems, just or not, to the surface and to consciousness. Playing/studying such games in

the critical classroom can help students gain an understanding of systems at play in

education and in the world for the purpose of changing them when they are unjust.

Transgression

This element refers to the deliberate transgression of a video game genre,

atmosphere, or style, for the purpose of triggering a moment of reflection, surprise,

and/or discomfort. Diller (1998) writes about these moments as “moments of stuckness”

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(p.1). She explains that these moments lead to the examination or re-examination of one’s

knowledge and oneself. I connect these moments to Shapiro’s memory of the Shofar, a

ram's horn, blown during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah. He writes that “it produces a

sound like no other, at once a plaintive cry and a shrill demand for alert attention” (2006,

p.190). He continues and explains that as a child, this sound “represented a kind of wild

and primitive eruption in the ordered drone of the prayer service during the holy days of

the Jewish New Year. (...) Its sound was intended to shake us out of the habitual routines

of our existence in which our actions and behaviors lacked adequate moral and existential

consideration” (p.190). Poulos (2012) describes these moments as:

moments in a life when something—an insight, an epiphany, an image, a sign, a

trauma, a loss, or even a shadow or an insult or a transgression (real or

perceived)— seems to just “break through” into the ordinary flow of everyday

life—out of nowhere, so to speak. A vision, a dream, a metaphor, a conversation,

a significant person, a hint, a sign, a clue, a memory, or a sacred/spiritual

experience . . . just sort of “shows up.” And a crisis (split/separation) is born!

Something . . . bursts into consciousness and grips our awareness (p.323)

These moments are signs that our world is breaking down and that we need to

rebuild it, to make sense of it in a new way. Such moments lend themselves to critical

pedagogy because they open a space for reflection. They trigger self-actualization. Video

games can transgress and offer the possibility for such moments to occur in several ways.

In this section, I detail two ways transgression has operated through my play and how it

made me question my own thinking.

Transgressing genre rules and conventions. Doki Doki Literature Club (Team

Salvato, 2017) is a visual novel developed by Team Salvato. Visual novels are games that

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resemble “choose your own adventure books” (Lebowitz & Klug, 2011, p.194).

Players/students are presented with multiple choice answers. Their choices matter as the

story forks onto different paths depending on these answers. In Doki Doki Literature

Club (DDLC), the player takes control of a male high school student who is invited to

join a poetry club led by Monika, another student. As seen on the game’s website (Doki

Doki Literature Club, 2017), many aspects of the game led me to think that I was playing

a romance simulator:

I'm super excited for you to make friends with everyone and help the Literature

Club become a more intimate place for all my members. But I can tell already that

you're a sweetheart—will you promise to spend the most time with me? ♥

However, the game takes a dark twist and the promise of romance turns into a

horror trap. The game transgresses its own conventions and genre through several means.

While the narrative and questioning surrounding these elements do not lend itself to

critical pedagogy, reading these moments through the lens of a critical game designer

gave me insights on how to adapt the underlying mechanics of transgression to create

moments of stuckness in other games. I describe this potential next.

The forced choice. An important element of the visual novel genre relies on

offering multiple choices to their players. One of the many choices the player/student is

offered in DDLC is who they wish to share their poems with. As the game progresses,

Monika turns into a power hungry character who takes over the game. She hacks the

game and the choices offered to the players. Throughout the game, I had been taught to

pick one answer out of multiple choices. Monika’s takeover transgressed that rule. For

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example, I was about to be prompted for whom to share my poem with when Monika

changed all the answers to her name and bugged the question so that it did not show in an

intelligible language (figure 15).

Figure 15. A Troubling Consequence of Monika’s Game Hacking (Joshiball, 2017)

DDLC uses other means to transgress its own norms. It also uses animations and

graphics. During my first playthrough, the game seemingly and abruptly ended with

Sayori, the main character’s best friend, hanging herself. The ending sequence led me

back to the main screen. I expected to see the main screen I had seen when I first played

the game. However, a graphically bugged version of Monika stood in the space initially

occupied by Sayori (figure 16).

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Figure 16. On the Left, a Seemingly Bugged Version of Monika Stands in

Sayori’s Place (Joshiball, 2017).

As I loaded my game to continue playing, the narrative was eerily the same as

during the first playthrough however there was no mention of Sayori or her existence. As

I progressed, the game continued “bugging.” There were glitches in animations and

visuals. It seemed as if it was corrupted or about to crash. A quick google search to make

sure my computer was not faulty led me to player posts which shared that this “bugging”

was an actual part of the game. I struggled to make sense of that. I knew something was

at play but I was not sure what. Finding the reasons behind the appearance of bugs and

disappearance of Sayori became my main reasons to continue playing the game.

The hijacking of multiple choice answers is a transgression of the genre. A

moment that disrupted the narrative and the possibilities offered to me. The bugs further

contributed to this transgression. I saw in these moments a cogwheel that could work to

orient the possibilities of players/students toward unexpected and unexamined paths.

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What if Monika was the social world and her influence worked to narrow or influence the

life possibilities of characters based on their social markers such as gender, race,

ability...? I started envisioning a game which would work as a textbook. This is one of the

ways through which I make sense of my play, asking how elements of video games that

send me into moments of stuckness could lend themselves to the teaching of critical

pedagogy.

Transgression can take many forms in video games. DDLC transgresses its own

genre by presenting false multiple choices. It also transgresses its visual style by using

pixelated bugs. Other transgressive tools are available. The Surge (Deck 13, 2017)

transgressed its own futuristic theme with an acoustic song, ActRaiser (Quintet Co., Ltd,

1990) transgressed its promise to make the main character a God by presenting an ending

in which all believers abandoned the deity. Visuals, sounds, and narratives can play roles

in creating transgressive moments for the players/students. These moments lend

themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. Transgressions introduce dissonance and

contradictions. They create or expose a gap in a narrative and invite players/students to

make meaning of it. Cowhey (2006) writes about the essential role of contradictions in

teaching students to think critically. She explains that “whether in history or current

events, contradictions are opportunities to ask larger and deeper questions” (p.158). I do

find the term transgression more fitting than contradiction to this element because

transgression implies a high degree of intentionality. Transgression is a design choice.

The transgressions in DDLC invited me to ask questions about the metanarrative of the

game. This element shows critical promise. Implementing transgressions in socially

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engaged video games could invite players/students to engage with larger and deeper

questions about the social world and society.

Introducing Critical Language

Language is not neutral. It is a representation of a specific view of the world

(Nieto, 2011; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). I had no words at the end of 12th grade to

connect the absence of the Algerian War of Independence to questions of power and

imperialism. Without them, I blamed myself for my ignorance. Gaining literacy in critical

pedagogy helped me understand the impact of power and imperialism in keeping such

knowledge out of schools and out of my hands. Thanks to critical pedagogy, I considered

historical and social contexts to make sense of that experience. Introducing critical

language in video games can help players/students gain literacy in critical pedagogy.

Such vocabulary and ideas can give the critical teacher a basis to help players/students

questions their assumptions, their education, and the world. Video games can introduce

critical language to players/students in several ways.

Introducing critical language through quest text in the secret world legends.

As I was exploring Marquard’s basement, I hacked a computer and ran into this

sentence: “What are names but a way of shaping reality.” It was weaved around

the names of fantastic creatures Marquard was studying. Journal entry, Saturday

April 14th.

“Into the fold” is a Secret World Legends (Funcom, 2017) mission which requires

the player/student to infiltrate the mansion of a South African cult leader, Philip

Marquard. In the basement, which is also used as a prison and lab, I accessed a computer

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containing information about gruesome experiments. One of the memos (figure 17)

included the following line: “What are names but a way of shaping reality?”

Figure 17. A Memo Including Reflections on Creating Monsters from Local Animals

(69quato 2018)

This sentence points at the critical idea that language is a mark of the cultural,

political, and social interpretation of the world (hooks, 2010). The scientist who was

stitching animals together knew that the locals would make sense of his creatures through

the lens of their myths and culture. By identifying them as such, the local population

would also grant these creatures all the traits associated with the creatures they knew as

kishi and gagorib hence the “glamour and majesty of horror.” However, this text was

rather lost in the middle of a mission. There was not much else in this mission that tapped

into the power of that sentence. A larger statement about language and reality could have

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been made. That sentence was not anchored in a sustained message. A game that would

specifically be aimed at teaching critical pedagogy could sustain that message.

Nevertheless, the Secret World Legends (SWL) used other means to include scholar

language and powerful ideas. For example, while venturing Tokyo, I encountered a boy

named Jung on an empty playground (figure 18). Approaching him launched a cut scene

and started a mission entitled “The Shadow.”

Figure 18, A Boy Named Jung on an Empty Playground

Jung is a boy with psychic abilities. He introduces himself by reading the main

character’s mind and answering their question before they are verbalized

(Leniaret, 2016).

By speaking to Jung, I learned that the boy earned this nickname because of his

“propensity in quoting the famous psychologist’s thoughts on the topic of the collective

unconscious.” Jung is indeed named after Carl Jung, a famed psychologist. “The

Shadow” (Jung, 1973) is one of Carl Jung’s theories. My point here is not to find out

whether or not the game did a good job with implementing Jung’s theory, the game may

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or may not have succeeded in that endeavor. What I want to show is that there is a

possibility in video games to introduce critical principles to players/students. This

cogwheel is most helpful to video game designers, especially those who foreground

social issues in their design. They could leverage this cogwheel in two ways. The first is

by introducing critical ideas and naming them as such. The “What are names but a way of

shaping reality?” sentence works to introduce players/students to language as a way to

shape reality and understanding (Moore, 1976). And as Kincheloe (2008) writes, “The

curriculum of critical pedagogy “names names”” (p.35). Giving our players/students

vocabulary to materialize and crystallize concepts is an important element of teaching

and learning. Critical language would unveil a new lens for them to make sense of their

thinking, of their identity, and of the world. These concepts could be weaved into quest

text as done in the “Into the fold” mission. They would however need to be reinforced

and positioned as a central message or else run the risk of being overlooked and lost by

the player/student.

Another way critical language can be introduced to players/students is by using

characters such as Jung in “The Shadow” mission. Introducing Paulo Freire, bell hooks,

or Duncan-Andrade as mission givers may be problematic, but creating representation of

ideas as mission givers could work to introduce critical pedagogues or principles of

critical pedagogy in the language and design of a critical game. The creators of SWL did

not plug Carl Jung in their game. Instead, they used a boy with psychic powers to

represent Jung and his ideas through a cut scene. I can envision how a video game set in

an apocalyptic future might take players/students to a library where holograms of various

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authors might speak directly to them and give them options on how to heal their now

desolated world.

Breaking All Walls

Breaking all walls is about linking the player to actual people by relying on first

accounts. I derive this element from the concept of the fourth wall. The idea of breaking

the fourth wall has been used in theater, movies, books, and video games. Conway (2009)

writes that the fourth wall works as “the demarcation between stage and audience, the

wall of the cinema screen, the television set, it was the barrier that allowed us to see into

another world without becoming part of it” (para. 2). In theater, where this term emerged,

the fourth wall signals to the audience that the performance is detached from them, that it

is not real. Breaking the fourth wall happens when a character addresses the audience or

faces the camera, therefore acknowledging the audience and their own existence as a

character and not a person. Breaking the fourth wall can be used to produce various

effects such as to create a moment of comedy or emphasis. In video games, breaking the

fourth wall has been done through several means such as splattering blood on the screen

in some of Total War: Shogun 2 - Blood Pack’s fights (The Creative Assembly, 2011).

The blood hitting the screen signals that there actually is a screen. It stresses the

separation between the player and the game. As Conway stresses though, rather than

reinforcing the idea of detachment between the two, such uses of the fourth wall in video

games tend to heighten player engagement. They work to bring the player onto the stage

rather than to push them further out. By breaking all walls, I signal that rather than a

performance or experience detached from the “real world” video games, when they rely

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on first accounts, can link players/students to actual people. Breaking all walls can work

to connect players/students to social issues. Through this cogwheel, video games invite

students into experiences that may be removed from their own. I am not stating that

players/students who play games built on first accounts can claim to know how it feels to

be in the shoes of person(s) the game is based on. However, these experiences, as

incomplete as they can be, could be used by the critical teacher to spearhead reflections

and questioning. Such games can introduce players to historical accounts and minoritized

stories that have been silenced. Seeing multiple perspectives is an essential component of

critical thinking (Cowhey, 2006; hooks, 2000). It also serves to teach players/students to

seek multiple accounts on a single event or topic (Cowhey, 2006). I share one such

minoritized narrative in my next example. Through it, I show the potential of this

cogwheel in making the stage disappear and how video games can invite players to

ponder social issues.

Minoritized narratives of war in This War of Mine. This War of Mine (11bit

Studios, 2014) is a survival strategy game. The game’s website describes the overall

premise through this sentence: “In This War of Mine for the first time you do not play as

an elite soldier, but a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city; struggling

with lack of necessities and constant danger” (This War of Mine Description, 2014).

Players/students control a group of people who have been thrown together by war. Their

only purpose is to survive (figure 19). Game developers researched first accounts of war

survivors who were not soldiers to build their game. Pawel Miechowski, senior writer at

11bit studio, speaks of his team’s work when he (Preston, 2015) states that:

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we did the research – we were looking for memoirs and stories from people who

survived different wars, and within these memoirs and interviews we searched for

particular events that stuck in the person’s mind, using these to understand how

civilians perceived war. (para. 3)

In that interview, he explains that the sieges of Sarajevo and Warsaw were “the most

important inspirations” in designing this game (para. 3). In addition to documents telling

the stories of survivors, they also used their family stories. Miechowski and his co-

workers implemented their grandparents’ survival stories during the Nazi and Soviet

invasions of Warsaw.

Figure 19. This War of Mine – a Survival Strategy Game

As characters scavenge for food, medicine, and materials at night, they also reminisce about life

before war. Pavle used to attend this Church with his parents. Tonight’s visit is about survival

(screenshot by author).

By breaking all walls, This War of Mine invites players to reconsider war as

honorable and necessary by relying on the stories of war survivors. The choices

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players/students are asked to make are drawn from these accounts. I document one of

these drastic choices in one of my epiphanies. I had sent Pavle, one of the civilians I

controlled, to a dangerous neighborhood to scavenge food for our group and find

medicine for Bruno who was sick. I lost Pavle on that run. He was killed by snipers,

leaving the rest of the group starving and Bruno ailing. The next night, I decided to send

Katia after an easy target she had visited a few nights ago. There, she broke into the home

of an elderly couple. The husband had begged her (and therefore me) not to take

anything. He pleaded and stated that he and his wife were weak and old. He implored

Katia not to take the medicine because his wife was sick. I had felt terrible and had left

the house without taking anything. After Pavle’s death, I could not risk sending another

group member to their death or come back empty handed. I sent Katia back to the house

of the elderly people. I took what I needed while the powerless husband kept begging and

begging. Here is the passage I wrote after Katia came back from her scavenging.

Bruno has his pills now. Today might not be the day he dies. He swallows his pills

and rolls over. Katia is still in the entrance. She has not moved from that cold

gray room. Her eyes are open but she sees nothing. Her bookbag drops to the

floor. So does her mask. The scenes are coming back. Everything is imprinted in

her memory. The voice of the old man echoes in her head. She knows what she

did. She picked the weakest people. She chose those who couldn't fight back.

Katia, a few months ago a reporter, someone who wanted to do good, is now

preying, stealing, feeding on the weak. The weight of her own shame and

inhumanity brings her knees to the ground. “Is this really me? Did I really do

this? Is this the price to pay to survive? War took Pavle. I think I killed this old

couple. How much of me is still alive? How much of me will survive?” (passage

from the “This war of mine” epiphany)

Knowing that these stories were anchored in people’s experiences and survival

opened me up to realities of war I had never foreseen. These first accounts forced me to

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make ethical choices for which I found no acceptable solutions. I found it difficult to play

a game in which no option corresponded to my morals. Had the game not been based on

first accounts, I would have most likely stopped playing it and dismissed the game as not

for me. However, knowing that these choices were based on actual first accounts made

me ponder. Turning off the game because I was presented a choice I did not enjoy bore a

drastic contrast with those who had to make these choices when stranded by war. There

was no game to exit for them. These first accounts helped me think beyond the screen.

The game introduces more complexity by including multiple characters and therefore

multiple minoritized perspectives on war. By playing/studying this game,

players/students can get into minoritized narratives of war that contrast with the

American view of war as glorious and honorable. These video gaming experiences are

only a reflection of the first accounts the game is based on. While players/students face

drastic choices, the option of turning the game off is always present. The hunger and

feelings of fears and despair experienced by civilians stranded by war is hardly replicable

in video games. So, while player choices have an impact on the game, I see these choices

and the moments of stuckness they may create as starting points for thinking about our

ignorance of war rather than first hand claims about war and survival. It is still possible to

educate ourselves on the meanings and contexts of war, but playing the game offers a

good start rather than an ending point in that process. The critical teacher can use this

starting point to offer opportunities for educating players/students on these experiences.

The concepts of honor, self-sacrifice, and patriotism portrayed in American culture are

far and distant from the stories of This War of Mine. This game is about humanity and

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the struggles of civilians to cling to it in war zones. By connecting players/students to

social issues through the lives of actual people, by breaking all the walls of the stage,

critical teachers can invite player/students to think beyond pixels and expose hegemony,

expose their own limited thinking. Through its use of first accounts, This War of Mine

has shown me that my thinking about war was limited. The game has opened a space for

me to consider my ignorance about war and civilians. Through the support of additional

materials, the critical teacher can help students link This War of Mine and other video

games they play to other stories, other people, and other topics. For example, juxtaposing

an analysis of ROTC and its socializing messages next to the counter narratives of This

War of Mine can open a discussion in which critical questions can be pondered.

Discussing questions such as ‘who benefits from the messages surrounding ROTC?’ and

‘who is hurt by these same messages?’ and then answering the same questions about the

messages of This War of Mine can help players/students understand war and this country

with more complexity. Another powerful analysis would be to compare This War of

Mine to other video games that glorify war such as the popular Call of Duty (Infinity

Ward, 2003).

I have shown how procedural rhetoric, transgression, the inclusion of critical

language, and breaking all walls lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. All

these elements can be used in the critical classroom to bring players/students’ attention to

social systems, hegemony, critical ideas, and counter narratives. However, an additional

element needs to be accounted for when assessing whether a game can be used in the

critical classroom or designing a critical game to be used in such a classroom. While the

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four elements I present in my findings are essential, there is an additional component not

tied to critical pedagogy that must be accounted for: engagement. Without engagement,

there is no guarantee that video games will draw in players/students. The four

components I identified in my research work as cogwheels. They are inherent elements of

the clock that work as critical components. They can work together in a video game to

trigger moments of stuckness and force players/students to rethink their assumptions.

Engagement however is different. Engagement can serve critical purposes, but it can also

be used to foster behaviors and ways of thinking that go contrary to critical pedagogy.

For example, using extrinsic rewards in schools as an engagement tool can push students

to do work no matter what that work is, be it debilitating worksheets or writing a

collective poem based on a student group’s understanding of photosynthesis. Therefore,

engagement does not qualify as a critical principle. It does not work as a cogwheel, but as

something different. Video games that tackle critical pedagogy must work as engaging

games that draw their players in. Their critical aspect does not mean that they can

sacrifice engaging gameplay. If players/students are not drawn into the game, they will

not be able to access its critical message. For the game to work, engagement needs to be

present. For the critical clock to operate smoothly, the cogwheels must be oiled. In the

next section, I discuss the theory of flow, a non-critical element that focuses on

engagement. Without it, players/students may find the messages of the games they play

hardly accessible or too dry.

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Oil in the Machinery: on the Necessity and Limits of Flow

Flow is the “extreme neurochemical activation that happens in our brains and

bodies when we start to play a good computer game or video game” (McGonigal, 2011,

p.40). It involves “being focused, highly motivated, creatively charged, and working at

the very limits” of our abilities (McGonigal, 2011, p.40). Flow is experienced by gamers

when their engagement is at its peak. One of the consequences of flow is that players lose

themselves in the game through immersion and engagement. Flow is not restricted to

video games. Other activities such as sports or even work can produce flow. However,

video games can produce flow much faster which makes them more favorable than other

media (McGonigal, 2011). I use a video game example to illustrate how flow functions. I

then critique flow to show that it is detached from criticality. Flow indeed works to

heighten player engagement no matter the messages of a video game, harmful or just.

Therefore, critical educators must be mindful of it.

Example: Night of the Living Debt. Night of the Living Debt is an app

developed by New Mexico State University Media Productions (2016) available to Apple

users through the App store. The game is designed for “high schoolers, it is also suitable

for youth or adults interested in learning about credit issues and debt” (Night of the

Living Debt, 2016). The purpose of the game is for players/students to learn how to

manage their credit. Players/students navigate the game by collecting supplies that can be

traded for cash. With that cash, they can pay their rent. At the end of the day their

character goes to sleep. The next day, they can once again collect supplies and trade them

for cash. The cycle repeats itself. After the player/student has understood the basic

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mechanics of the game, a message appears informing them that they should now aim to

buy a car, get an education, and purchase a larger house. They must up their credit score

to reach these new goals. The interface informs them that they can do so by using their

credit card strategically and paying off their credit card debt as soon as possible.

Players/students are given ten nights to accomplish these goals. The game becomes a race

against time to build a manageable debt and paying it off before being charged interest

(figure 20).

Night of the Living Debt (NOLTD) is set in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere in

which all vendors are zombies (the car salesman, the insurance vendor, the supplies

buyer, and the different debt collectors). At the end of each credit card cycle (every two

nights), a debt zombie appears to collect its due. Through a third person view, the player

can touch the screen and slide money from their different money pools to pay the zombie.

These money pools are cash, savings, credit card, and payday loan. A credit score meter

is located at the bottom right of the screen. It is adjusted according to the player’s

choices. For example, paying off a debt zombie brings the credit score up. Taking a

payday loan brings that score down. A high credit score unlocks access to higher

education and more onerous cars and homes. The graphic interface is engaging and fun.

The cartoonish style allows for a humorous take on the zombie theme.

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Figure 20. Night of the Living Debt

Failing on the 10th night with an abysmal credit score grants the player/student the title

of “another victim of the living debt” (screenshot by author, 2017).

The game is aligned with the theory of flow because it is engaging. Its structure

slowly introduces basic mechanics of the game during the first two nights. On the third

night, the main goal of the game is unveiled: getting the education, the car, and the home

within ten nights. Offering a timed challenge adds to the excitement. The player/student

is on a mission and choices matter. All of the tools are present for players to feel a sense

of agency and urgency. The game offers all the ingredients for a quick immersion in this

zombified world. Successful player decisions can bring them a sense of fulfillment and

happiness. Everything is there for them to experience flow.

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The limits of Flow. Flow is useful in creating engaging and immersive video

games. NOTLD teaches players that in order to obtain the things they want in life they

have to master and tame their credit score. This knowledge and these skills are indeed

deeply needed. Bankruptcies have constantly and steadily increased over the last century

(Krulick, 2012). This game constitutes a noble effort in addressing this issue. However,

NOTLD does not raise critical questions about the concepts of credit and debt. It does not

ask questions such as who created that system, for whose benefit, who does this system

hurt, and what alternatives are possible. By turning a blind eye to issues of power the

game perpetuates the dangerous idea that credit and debt are a natural part of our society,

that it is up to individuals to navigate these concepts, and that their only option is to play

the credit card game. Flow works no matter the messages of a game. Csikszentmihalyi,

one of the proponents of flow argued “that the failure of schools, offices, factories, and

other everyday environments to provide flow was a serious moral issue, one of the most

urgent problems facing humanity” (as cited in McGonigal, 2011, p.36). Some advocates

of flow see in video gaming an opportunity to bring flow in classrooms and make

schooling engaging. Because they identify engagement and fun as the main issues tied to

poor schooling results, their answer is to implement flow in schools. Their message does

not address issues tied to critical principles such as whose knowledge is taught in schools,

whose knowledge is devalued, who benefits from the current system, and who is hurt by

it. The theory of flow does not address them. It does not look for them. Therefore, while

flow plays an essential role in engaging players/students, it does not make the cut as a

critical cogwheel. Flow alone does not guarantee that a video game addresses societal

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issues. However, video games that do not consider flow are likely to create a clunky

experience and may turn off players/students. Both need to be present.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I identified four video gaming cogwheels that lend themselves to

the teaching of critical pedagogy. I have drawn these elements from the critical analysis

of my experiences, especially the “playing like a critical game designer” process I engage

in when I play. I have assembled these elements in this chapter to outline possibilities for

teaching critical pedagogy through video gaming. I advocate for the use of these

cogwheels in a communal space. As an educator, I see that space as the classroom.

Outside of the classroom these video gaming elements can still spark questioning but it is

highly unlikely they will bloom into critical consciousness without someone who has the

knowledge to push players into questioning their experiences, if players’/students’

capacity to question has never been nurtured.

Each of the four cogwheels has its own purpose. Procedural rhetoric can bring

social systems to the surface. Transgression can create pivotal moments and dissonance

in their players’ thinking through visuals, animations, and sound. The use of critical

language can help players/students name critical ideas and therefore recognize them in

games, and with practice, outside of games as well. Breaking all walls invites players to

contemplate their ignorance and consider the experiences of minoritized people. This

element connects a game’s message to realities beyond the screen. These four elements

provide a basis through which to teach critical pedagogy through video gaming. They can

also help the critical teacher identify these cogwheels in the games they play. This list is

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an unfinished project in the Freirean sense of the term. It is not exhaustive. These

findings were compiled through the critical analysis of my lived video gaming

experiences. While my data was quite large, other players with different identities and

experiences could identify other such cogwheels. However, as a long-standing member of

the video gaming community who has gone through a vigorous documenting and

questioning of his experiences, I have shown that this list is comprehensive and a useful

piece in the discussion on video gaming and education.

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CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

Through this dissertation I have engaged in a robust autoethnographic study to

answer the following questions:

1. How do I navigate the video gaming cultures as a student of critical pedagogy?

2. In what ways do video games lend themselves to the teaching of critical

pedagogy?

This ongoing process opened a space in which I documented and questioned my

experiences methodically and thoroughly. I used the concepts of enchantment and

dismantling the clock to make sense of my work and findings. I examined the underlying

mechanics of an aspect of my life that was magical and unexamined. By writing, I

crystallized my video gaming experiences and turned something magical and intangible

into something mechanical, visible, and understandable. I unveiled the complexities

behind the joys and wonders of a medium, hobby, and passion that had been part of my

life for over thirty years.

Summary of Findings

I surfaced a gap between my identities as a student of critical pedagogy and video

game player. I exposed my enchantment. I could not unsee what I was writing. The

dichotomy I had created between the games I played and those I critiqued, the neoliberal

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forms of play I engaged in, my succumbing to captology, and the ways in which I

behaved like an alien in my own community were hidden by the enchantment. The

powerful memories and emotions tied to video gaming worked to conceal this rift. In

deconstructing my enchantment, I started the never-ending process of breaking it. I

exposed its blinding power and what it had blinded me to. Through what Bochner (2000)

describes “as a tale of two selves” (p.270), I addressed this chasm and worked on

reconciling the two identities at the core of this study. The metaphor of the gadfly gave

me a theory to make sense of a new identity at the intersection of critical pedagogy and

video gaming. Seeing myself as a gadfly has allowed me to become present in my video

gaming community and to regain power and agency within that community to do

meaningful critical work. I became an agent of change that aims to sting its community

into consciousness and action.

Through this critical autoethnographic process, I also identified another important

aspect of my play: thinking like a critical game designer. When I play, I pay particular

attention to the messages the game designers aim to convey in their games and what tools

they use to convey these messages. I compiled a list of four cogwheels, four video

gaming elements that lend themselves to the teaching of critical pedagogy. I shared that

procedural rhetoric can be used to make invisible social systems visible, that we can use

this procedural rhetoric “as a new way to interrogate our world, to comment on it, to

disrupt and challenge it” (Bogost, 2007, p.340). I showed how the concept of

transgression can lead players/students to critical moments of stuckness through which

they can examine their assumptions. I explained how including critical language in games

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can give players/students access to vocabulary and ideas that reinforce player/student

critical literacy. I added that breaking all walls by including multiple first accounts on a

same topic can introduce or foster complexity in players/students’ thinking. I stressed the

importance of a community to use video games in teaching critical pedagogy. I explained

that, as an educator, I make sense of that community as the classroom.

Recommendations for Future Research

My research suggests further study for two main branches. The first is continuing

to critically study the ways in which players who see themselves as agents of change in

and/or out of the video gaming culture enact that identity in their experiences. This

includes but is not limited to studying how players resist oppression within the games

they play and within the communities they play with. I insist on the critical study of these

topics since people who play games are likely to do so for entertainment and, therefore,

their play and/or resistance is likely to be enchanted, that is unexamined and therefore

naïve. Examining my play and resistance has helped me gain a better understanding of

my play, my resistance, and myself. Such a study was necessary for me to better do what

I thought I was doing, to better act as who I aim to be.

The second branch my research suggests is to continue studying the use and

impact of video games in nurturing critical principles in players. As an educator and

video game player, it is in this branch that I plan on dedicating the core of my research. I

aim to create curriculum to help players/students question their assumptions and see the

world with complexity. I envision the implementation of these cogwheels through two

possible means. The first is to create a pool of existing video games to serve as texts for

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students. For example, as a teacher of future teachers, I see myself using NPLB in the

classroom to help students reframe their education through the lens of neoliberalism and

the banking system. By asking students to make connections between their experience in

public schools and the procedural rhetoric of NPLB, I aim to bring oppressive systems of

schooling to the surface. By reframing students’ experiences with schooling, I aim to

plant the seeds of dissent in their future teaching. I plan on assessing my students’

understanding of the banking system and neoliberalism in education by using post video

gaming surveys. These surveys will prompt students for qualitative data through

questions such as: how do students show they learn in the banking system? what kind of

society does the neoliberal model of schooling foster? The second possibility for my

research is to partner with independent video game makers to design critical video games.

Such games would draw on the four cogwheels I identified in this study to create

moments of stuckness for their players/students. Because of my background and personal

ties to the immigrant and refugee communities, I see myself relying on first accounts of

members of that community to design my first video games. Video games like This War

of Mine (11bit Studio, 2014) and Soldats Inconnus: Mémoires de la grande guerre

(Ubisoft, 2014) provide good templates for the creation of video games based on first

accounts. These games used documents such as letters, interviews of war survivors, as

well as memories (the developers of This War of Mine used stories of family members

who lived through two occupations of Warsaw) to frame their game in terms of narrative

and possibilities available to their players. Many facets of my identity connect me with

immigrants and refugees. I have stories of immigration as the French son of Algerian

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immigrants and as a French immigrant to the USA. Documenting my experiences would

constitute an important step in the gathering of first accounts. I would also interview

other immigrants and refugees to document their experiences. This multiplicity of

accounts would give me a solid basis to better understand the complexity of immigrant

and refugee experiences. I would also consider the possibility to create a game in which

players/students play several characters immigrating to various parts of the world. This

could work to introduce the multiplicities of experiences in regard to immigration. As

someone who does not have programming skills, I would have to seek partnerships and

grants to make such a game happen. Grant writing is an avenue I would have to explore.

Connecting with video game designers is something I have already engaged with. As a

matter of fact, I have contacted Seth Alter, the creator of No Pineapple Left Behind

(Subaltern Games, 2016), when I contemplated using his game in my teaching. While our

discussion has not gone to great length yet, I do see possibilities in terms of partnering

with independent video game developers to bring critical games to life.

Implications for Practice

Current technology means that our culture is inundated with visual and textual

designs from the minute we wake to the minute we go back to sleep (Villaverde,

2008, p.86).

Because my work is located at the intersection of education and video gaming as a

growing socialization force, the implications for practice flowing from this study touch

various fields. The first deals with the four cogwheels I identified. These video gaming

elements can be used by socially engaged video game developers in the creation of their

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games. They can use these elements as a theory and blueprint to plan, inform, or evaluate

their work. Games that are socially engaged are still a minority in the mass marketing of

video games. The cogwheels I have identified can help a greater number of designers

think about their work as socially meaningful.

These cogwheels could also be used in preparation programs for future game

designers. Classes that blend video gaming design and social commentary can help future

video game designers understand their role and responsibility in shaping thinking and

culture. Using the cogwheels in this context can also avoid the danger of separating

classes that address social responsibility from what is mistakenly seen as neutral core

design classes free of politics and social meaning. Moreover, these cogwheels are based

on my experiences as a member of that community. This factor can help future game

designers better connect with my experiences and findings as we share the same culture.

They may be more open to listening to the impact of video gaming on society from one

of their own. They can also encourage designers examine their own thinking and

practicing in their creative process.

The third implication is meant for public school educators and administrators who

are flooded with the latest apps, tools, and other such 21st century gadget or craze. This

fever for technology is coined technophilia. Tenner (2002), who identifies as a

technophile, proposes the following definition: the “enthusiasm for the products of

human ingenuity, for the craft, skill and cultural influences they reflect and exercise, and

for their beauty - or sometimes their inspired ugliness” (p.135). I propose another

definition of technophilia: an unexamined hunger for technological advancement

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informed by an idea of progress directly shaped by neoliberalism without regard for

justice or social responsibility. Schools are rushing down the technological path faster

than we can question it or understand where it may lead us. With the fall of virtual reality

prices, VR goggles are entering schools and homes. Applications, games, and VR

experiences that focus on empathy are already blooming. For example, VR experiences

such as Injustice (Kalpana VR., 2015) place the player in the shoes of a bystander as they

witness a young black man brutalized by police. Welcome to Aleppo (Ryot Studio, 2015)

takes players to war-torn Syria. This centering of empathy can work to deflect from

questioning our own responsibility in creating and perpetuating conflicts and social

issues. By focusing on creating empathy and pity for the other, we are failing to question

our own thinking, actions, and inactions in creating injustice. The four cogwheels I

present can help steer discussions toward technology that fosters questioning citizens

rather than paternalizing and patronizing individuals.

Limits of My Research

While I aimed for a holistic study and tried to consider all aspects of my video

gaming experiences I saw limits to the scope of my study. As I discussed this project with

my good friend Chuck, a photographer, he pointed out that it would have been interesting

for me to film myself as I played. Our discussion made me aware of an important dead

angle in my study. I did not account for my body, its movements, placements, or

immobility. He suggested placing a camera on top of my monitor to record myself and

analyze the video later. His comments showed that the study of the body is in many ways

absent from this project. However, a couple of months ago as I was deep into writing up

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my findings a lower back pain flared up. It had been intermittent for years but became

consistent and sharp. I visited a physical therapist who gave me clear recommendations:

do not spend more than one hour sitting down at a time, take breaks, and move. I now do

daily exercises to soothe the pain. This event made me further think about the invisibility

of my body in my play and work. It had been taking a silent toll on me. While I would

not call the work of an academic back-breaking (I saw back-breaking work in my father’s

forty plus years in the construction business), I am asking myself a few questions about a

professional future that marries two activities that are now causing me pain. I have

ignored my body and it is now screaming at me.

Another limit of my study deals with the difficulties I have had accounting for my

dominant identities namely being cis-gender, heterosexual, and able bodied. I am not sure

how to evaluate whether I did justice to my accounting for them. I did surface

problematic behaviors around sexuality and gender but my ability was seldom visible in

my project. If anything, I showed that I was blind to it when I played The Surge (Deck

13, 2017). I was wary about playing that game because the game trailer presented the

hero as “just another white guy.” As I started the game, I found Warren, the protagonist,

in a wheelchair. That put me back in my place. From that point on, I looked for messages

about disability and the body in the game. I thought like a critical game designer around

this idea. This questioning about ability and disability mainly took place in that game

because I had experienced a moment of shame at the beginning. This suggests that I need

to educate myself on my ability and better work to account for it in and out of my video

gaming and scholarly life.

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Another limitation of this study lies in the system I use to play games. Before I

moved to the USA, I only played console games. Since my move, I could not afford both

a computer and a console system. Since then, the PC has become my main everyday tool.

I only play games on this platform. There are many popular and acclaimed titles that I do

not have access to. I do not have and have never played games like God of War (SIE

Santa Monica Studio, 2018), Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Ubisoft Quebec, 2018), and The

Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013). The popularity of these games alone makes them

worthy of study. They sold millions of copies and have an important cultural impact

(Arif, 2018; D’Angelo, 2018; Sarkar, 2018). Studying the play of these games is

important and something this study did not do or aim to do.

Closing Thoughts and Questions

In birthing my rage

My rage has rebirthed me. (Stryker, 1994, p.248)

This study took off when the literature I read on video gaming and education

worked to silence my experiences. An important piece of knowledge was erased from the

video gaming and education discussion. My ensuing rage was the sign of this injustice. A

major aspect of my study was the birthing of this rage. By my studying my experiences, I

honored these feelings. I engaged with my experiences and made sense of them in a way

that changed me. I have shed light on changes I needed to implement to better act as who

I aspire to be. My rage has helped me grow. In my growth, I hope to have shared some

valuable knowledge on the video gaming culture and how the enchantment of critical

players can work to subdue, blind, and silence them. My rage has rebirthed me into

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someone who, through the critical analysis of his stories, has a better understanding of

himself and his role in his community.

In a conversation with Art Bochner (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011), Mitch Allen

stated that an autoethnographer must:

look at experience analytically. Otherwise [you're] telling [your] story - and that's

nice - but people do that on Oprah [a U.S.-based television program] every day.

Why is your story more valid than anyone else's? What makes your story more

valid is that you are a researcher. You have a set of theoretical and

methodological tools and a research literature to use. That's your advantage. If

you can't frame it around these tools and literature and just frame it as 'my story,'

then why or how should I privilege your story over anyone else's I see 25 times a

day on TV? (p.276)

This critical autoethnography and the breaking (down) of my enchantment was a

thorough and shattering study in which I used all the scholarly tools Allen describes.

Through my work, I do not ask that you privilege my story. I only hope that I made a

good case for wording and validating my experiences, the changes they have triggered,

and the hopeful messages they convey for video gaming, critical pedagogy, and for our

world.

This critical autoethnography did not stop after the two month observation period.

I am still questioning what I do, sometimes to a debilitating point. I have learned to

engage more meaningfully with a culture that is toxic and oppressive. Engaging with my

passion is and will continue to be a struggle. Being a student of critical pedagogy is not a

static shield that protects me from engaging with oppressive communities I am connected

to. As problematic as it is, I feel a sense of belonging to the video gaming community. I

have relationships with raidmates I find meaningful. These relationships and this sense of

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belonging give me the responsibility to effect change. Rather than end my relationship

with video gaming because that culture is marked with oppression and because I engaged

with it problematically, I see in my community the opportunity to practice who I say I

am. I also hope my work serves as an invitation for other critical scholars to examine

their enchantment. May we find ourselves in these examinations.

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APPENDIX A

EPIPHANIES

My ActRaiser Story

The oldest of four siblings, I am the only one who has a room to himself in my

parents’ apartment. Maybe that’s the one of the rare advantages of being the only

teenager in the house. I am sitting in front of the screen ready to roll. I put the cartridge

in. The game loads quickly. Control pad in hand. I am set for a challenge.

“Ok, let’s play this.” I press start. “Alright, what’s this one about?” I speed read

through the scrolling introductory text eager to start hacking and slashing:

This world is in disarray. Bla bla bla. Monsters and demons roam these lands.

Bla bla bla. humans need a savior. They call upon ‘you’, a minor deity to rescue them.

“A minor deity? I guess that’s all they could muster. Sure, I can do that.” And so it

started. Hours of fighting followed. As I took the minor deity through the levels, it grew in

power. After the first city was founded, I was able to call upon magical fires, then came

thunder bolts and fire breath. The stage was set. I needed more victories, more

believers, and more power ups to defeat the Evil forces that plagued these lands. With

each freed region, more humans believed. With each new temple, more worshippers sang

the praises of their savior.

ActRaiser was a good game. It was entertaining but not a blockbuster like The

Legend of Zelda. It offered a mix of genres. One level was about hacking and slashing,

imagine Mario with a sword and spells. The next level was a city managing game, think

about Simcity, a simulation in which players can place buildings and create a town.

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Basically, I spent one level dispatching demons clearing a piece of land, and then the next

level was about managing that land in order to grow a city and help humans settle.

Towards the end of the game, my character had become a powerful deity. Many

humans believed in it. All along they had erected statues in its image and built kingdoms

in its name. After hours of play the time for the final fight had come. That boss, the

scourge of humanity, did not leave a particular mark on me. Defeating it was no

challenge. I had finally saved humans. Their world was free of all they feared. My

character headed back to the capital, head high, chest out, ready for glory. I thought I

had won.

As in many games of the early 90's, the ending sequence offered a series of

scrolling texts and short scenes during which I, the player, was limited to reading and

watching the epilogue.

My character triumphantly marched back to his city. I thought I knew what’ was