What about Non-Gamers?

that they don't play games much if at all. I don't see this as a problem. It means that they might be less immediately enthusiastic about the course as they start, but it says very little about their stance by the end of the class. In fact, I had a number of these students voluntarily selecting a gaming topic for their third assignment (the academic argument essay).

I think one of the major moves necessary to make this a classroom that is welcoming to gamers and non-gamers alike is to connect games to a larger cultural context as early as possible. As I mention elsewhere, I like to give readings that tie games to learning, to rehabilitation, to politics, to art, to business, to so many things that a wide range of students might already find interesting. And we never take these things for granted, we use them to open up discussion and debate. One of the things that I find so effective about centering my composition pedagogy around games is that any in-depth analysis of games almost naturally moves towards ecological understandings of the media. To really look at a game means that we also have to consider their relation to other media, to the various agents involved in creating and disseminating them, and to culture at large. And this very same feature ensures that even when we are talking about games, we are also talking about other things as well.

So that is my theoretical evasion of the problem, but it isn't the whole story. Of course I do have some students who are just honestly not interested in studying games--students who, by the midpoint of the semester, have placated me and my interests and are ready to move onto their own. So I let them. No, let me rephrase that: I encourage them to pursue their own passions. I maintain the continuity of the class by having them study their chosen field in the same way that we had been studying games: to look at the objects of interest for the field and to explore the social interactions that drive the field. But this is part of the flexibility inherent in my fairly wide-ranging description of a game-integrated classroom: It isn't all about just bringing games into the class. Rather it's about using the affordances of games as best we can.