| The Subject at Play argues two main claims: first, computer games are valuable to study from a writing researcher's perspective. Second, computer game-based writing environments can introduce important paradigm shifts in composition studies: gamer-authors have different motivations; they compose in non-traditional writing spaces; and the writings they produce are hybrids of traditional texts and sophisticated multimodal compositions. Gamers compose copious amounts of prose from diverse perspectives in various genres. The Subject at Play examines computer role-playing games, which have long been ignored by scholars, yet are uniquely suited for writing projects. The games' character- and story-driven adventures easily allow for additional narratives to be written and stories to be told, and inspire gamers to produce fanfiction, blogs, and module creation. Gaming forum participation, game walkthroughs, FAQs, strategy guides, and related documents serve as examples of less expressive prose works---cultural and textual analysis, technical and procedural writing, evaluations and critiques, and even meta-analysis about the gamer-authors' own texts. The types of textual production that "gamer-authors" initiate also promote community development and authorial collaboration.; Composition researchers need to be aware of the writing that gamers do, but also understand the spaces in which gamer-authors compose, their motivations, the processes they employ, and the effects their writing has within and beyond their gaming communities. In addition to showing how writing practices already well-known to composition scholars are practiced in gaming environments, The Subject at Play also investigates how computer games and the online writing sites they inspire allow writing researchers to revisit traditional notions of writerly subjectivity and authorship, bringing new concepts to the forefront of writing scholarship, including productive authorial competition, writing community creation, and textual usability. |
