Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing

Computer games fundamentally incorporate composition into their game play. Highly symbolic constructs, whose photo-realistic graphical environments are often produced by combining pre-existing elements, computer games not only require players to read and to make meaning of symbols presented on the screen but to write and ultimately to revise their actions in the game relationship to these symbols. This activity, which is often constructed as “play” rather than writing, is significant in that, although its effects appear to be limited to the conversations taking place on the screen, its focus is ultimately on how players read and write (compose) themselves in relationship to the game and to the larger socio-political structures upon which the game is beholden. Computer games thus have the potential to help students not only understand the fundamentals of the compositional process and the larger socio-political structures within which this process occurs but to recognize how these socio-political structures construct reading and writing and in doing so determine the way that the individuals subject to them construct (read and write) themselves.