Walter Holland, Henry Jenkins, and Kurt Squire, "Theory By Design"

(In The Video Game Theory Reader.)

- Pursuing the function of theory in the (relatively) early stages of digital games as a medium, and as the medium develops
- Analogy to early film theory, articulated by participants/practitioner-creators, not academics
- Abstraction and distance of theory in academic film studies comes later
- Digital game theory at a threshold, what is the relationship between academic theory and design practice?
- Theory emerges from practice at times of change or uncertainty
- "Vernacular theory" of game designer/theorists (Zimmerman, Wright, etc.)
- MIT Comparative Media Studies mandate for "applied humanism," using humanities principles to tackle real-world problems
- Games-To-Teach projects
- Games must be placed in context of learning more generally (no magic bullet)
- Games, as "microworlds" act as a context for learning
- Goal is to enagle the learning that already occurs in games to work with formal education
- The chapter aligns MIT with early experiments in film theory/practice
- Close collaboration with the industry, policymakers, educators, etc. (similarly close relationship is found elsewhere in Jenkins' work on transmedia storytelling, can be problematic)
- Extensive discussion of specific games by MIT students - how useful or interesting are these insights beyond practical educational application and game design? Do we understand what games are, how they work, their socio-cultural function any better?
- Emphasis on forward-looking, somewhat utopian humanistic change, rather than on understanding how things are currently
- Strange/unnecessary use of the word "remediation" - not just a synonym for adaptation
- Suggestion of an affinity between digital gameplay and scientific method (experimentation, testing hypotheses, etc.)
- Claim that these projects are of use not only to practitioners but also to academics, but I don't really see how
- Academics (of the abstracted, distanced variety) serve a fundamentally different cultural function than the theory/design/practice described by Jenkins et all, but this distinction is glossed over