Digital Literacy and Learning

This chapter addresses the question of how we learn to read videogames. If, as we have suggested, ludonarratives operate on a distinct mode of reading, how do we acquire the ability to engage texts in this way? How do we become “literate”? This chapter offers an answer by examining how we acquire proficiency in the vocabulary of videogames, including the use of controllers, deciphering complex new iconography, and the awareness of videogame actions. This discussion continues by contrasting traditional literacy models, like autodidacticism and heterodidacticism, with a new idea, automathanism to show the fourth characteristic of ludonarrativity.