I’m currently in the process of writing a chapter for the upcoming World of Warcraft and Philosophy (edited by Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger for Open Court), so my thoughts have turned back to the chapter in The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy that Jim Gee and I wrote. Out of curiosity, I popped onto Amazon to see what kind of reaction users there had given it — the book has received largely favorable reviews on Amazon from the few that have reviewed it so far, with one notable exception. One reviewer’s very negative review of the book spawned an interesting exchange with the book’s editor, Luke Cuddy.

Now, I’m normally not one to publicly flaunt criticisms of my work, but the exchange between this reviewer and Luke was rather interesting, and touched on the chapter Jim and I wrote a number of times. Here are selected posts by Luke and the reviewer, John Grusd (perhaps the same John Grusd who worked on the Super Mario Bros. Super Show!?). Warning, wall o’ text ahead, with a few of the more potent comments by both bolded by me:

Grusd:

There’s a section on the “controversial” chronology of the Zelda games that I found particularly ridiculous. Sorry, I did not pay to read some 13-year-old’s half-baked theory lifted straight from a random online forum, every mangled word faithfully replicated.

Cuddy:

John G. says that the chapters in this book are undergraduate quality. He even criticizes the inclusion of a timeline theory from the online forums. But he neglects to tell the potential reader that this chapter uses the creation of timeline theories to point out the similarities between the way knowledge is constructed in academic circles and the way Zelda fans construct knowledge (two seemingly disparate activities). This has drastic implications for epistemology and is actually saying something NEW. It does not fall under the category of simply introducing a philosophical idea and tying it arbitrarily to Zelda.

Grusd:

I stand by my criticism of the timeline chapter. I understand what the author is doing here and while I agree with you that this particular essay is not “simply introducing a philosophical idea and tying it arbitrarily to Zelda,” it is also extremely difficult to get through because of whose arguments the author is pasting in from online forums: the kids he quotes might as well be illiterate. Even if the massacred arguments were specifically chosen to support the essay’s opening thesis, that “it’s increasingly common for everyday people to ‘compete’ with experts” (p. 85), the Zelda stories’ chronology is such a mess precisely because there is a devastating dearth of evidence in the games (perhaps intentionally…). Literally, no more knowledge is going to be unearthed on subsequent playthroughs. It’s always going to be a combination of conjecture and wishful thinking, and in the case of a hole, a subjective whim to provide the makeshift continuity. This is epistemological heresy, in my view. In this respect, it IS a disparate activity compared to the way other knowledge is gained and formulated.

Cuddy:

I’m sorry but I have to again challenge what you said about the timeline essay. You write the following of the ordinary formulation of knowledge and of the formulation of knowledge in timeline theories: “In this respect, it IS a disparate activity compared to the way other knowledge is gained and formulated.” So how is other knowledge gained and formulated then? This, again, leads me to believe that the point of this essay escaped you entirely because of your annoyance with having to read badly-written timeline theories. As proof of their claims, the authors provide (on p100) criteria for the way knowledge is constructed in academic circles. It is the very fact that Zelda fans follow similar guidelines (unknowingly) that makes this interesting. Thus it is entirely irrelevant that, as you say, “no more knowledge is going to be unearthed on subsequent playthroughs.” That’s not the point. It’s the PROCESS the Zelda fans are going through that’s important, not the end result. If this is so far off from the way “real” knowledge is constructed, as you say, then how is real knowledge constructed? The authors give a good argument for the idea that knowledge in science and academia is constructed socially. This argument has also been made by other respected academics. What’s your argument that this is not true?

As for now, that’s where it ends. It seems like Grusd has probably let the conversation drop and hasn’t posted a reply since February 22nd.

So, where to begin? First of all, here’s a public thanks to Luke for a very impassioned defense of our chapter. He summarized exactly what we were trying to do: Provide an account of how the forms of discourse in the forums around Zelda mirror the kinds of meaning-making processes we often value in the rarefied air of academia. This apparent disconnect — that “illiterate” fans of videogames are enacting many of the same practices (at the very least, the same discursive forms) as professionals — is, to many, non-intuitive at best and deeply controversial at worst. But, as you probably know from reading other content on this site, it’s a central thrust of my research.

Grusd brought up a few issues that I thank him for raising, as they raise two broader implications of this work:

• Doesn’t replicating the spelling mistakes and poor grammar of forum posters undercut our argument? Doesn’t this mean they’re “illiterate”?
• Aren’t these “timeline debates” a huge waste of time for everyone involved unless there’s a definitive answer for the participants in these discussions to discover?

The answer to both of these lies, I believe, in a reconception of naive notions of “literacy,” as well as in attempting to understand what motivates passionate gamers to engage with one another online to begin with. In his excellent 2004 book, Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling, Jim wrote about the concept of an “affinity space,” or spaces (often online) where fans of a topic can come together, argue about whatever it is they care about (in this case, a game series), and begin to develop affinity toward one another and to the topic at hand. This encompasses many online fan communities from Zelda timeline arguments to fan fiction forums (like Rebecca Black has studied) to fantasy baseball leagues (as Erica and Rich Halverson have studied).

Now, are motivated, excited fans going to (sometimes? often?) jump into sophisticated kinds of affinity spaces before mastering basic spelling and grammar? Anyone who’s spent more than an hour on the internet knows this to be obviously true — however, I argue, this is a good thing. One of the things about games (and, I argue, “gamer” communities) that makes them so appealing for education researchers is the notion that we see “performance before competence” enacted in these spaces. Jim has written about (and talked about, even recently) his experiences learning to play Deus Ex, then having the embodied experience of play later informing his understanding of the text of the game’s manual. I suggest that something similar is happening in these forums — spelling and grammar can come later, after the participant has a context in which they find spelling and grammar meaningful. That is, shouldn’t we be focusing on the fact that the participants in these threads are enacting all sorts of complex reasoning practices in support of constructing timelines? Isn’t this a deeper, more advantageous form of “literacy” than the mechanics of spelling — a skills which is, to be honest, managed for the majority of us by Microsoft Word?

Additionally, the overriding sense one gets from these kinds of fan activities is that players are driven to participate because of their love of the material, and because of their desire to interact with others in hashing out a creative artifact of their own. Many view these timeline constructions as “theories,” but many are also critical — oddly enough, Grusd’s comments mirror quite well some of the comments of participants in the forums. Here’s a snippet of one:

In my opinion, the timeline is Fan-Made… the player decides how he/she wants the timeline to be. It’s pretty clear guys almost none of the games can relate to each other ((Except OOT-MM-WW and ALTTP-Oracles-LA)) it’s all fan-made. How many different timelines have been floating around that older thread anyway? In the end no one’s gonna be able to agree with the other because of silly contradictions, mistranslations or just random phrases you guys put in to better solve things.

(Emphases replicated from the original post).

That is, the above poster (and Grusd) seem aghast that there is a lot of activity in these discussions without a clear consequence for these actions. I agree to an extent — it’d be a shame if the participants in these threads only ever focused their energies at Zelda timelines — however, let’s not deny that there’s some potentially powerful identity play going on here! Fans of Zelda have to work in social groups to further their timeline theories, iterating proposals, developing arguments, and refining their reasoning. When someone repeatedly enacts the role of some constructing and designing “things” with others, what do they learn about how to be a designer?

I argue that it’s something akin to a designer identity that players are developing in spaces like this (and fan fiction communities and, yes, even fantasy baseball leagues). There is frankly no consequence that really matters other than that which the participants in these affinity spaces agree is of consequence — what’s important is the activity itself, of taking elements of a pre-existing system (in this case, the stories of the various Zelda games) and rejiggering them to work in new configurations. Players need not have a definitive solution for the activity to be meaningful. Why does it matter that we do not see this activity “paying off” with a definitive, final timeline?

Neither encouraging performance before competence nor allowing students to develop identities as designers is something we do well in schools, and should be of central concern for anyone interested in revitalizing and redesigning America’s lagging educational system. Of course, the topic of The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy was not about education per se, but if questions of educational import aren’t simultaneously epistemological concerns, then what’s the point of either education or philosophy? That sounds flippant, but it ain’t — why care about education if it doesn’t tell us something about how knowledge is made? And why care about how knowledge is made if it can’t help us to improve how knowledge is shaped?

Further developing accounts of how learning occurs in the affinity spaces that learners of all ages are increasingly drawn to means wrestling with underlying theories of meaning-making, and the stances on what good knowledge should be. Grusd and Cuddy’s exchange was helpful for me, in that it brought out a few themes in the work which (for various space limitation reasons) we couldn’t delve into in the chapter. Thanks to both Luke and John for their comments; they’ve helped me to work through some of this stuff again!