Discourse on Games
There should be little question left about a whether or not a robust discourse community surrounds gaming. The World of Warcraft wiki is the second largest English language wiki in the world behind only Wikipedia (Dybwad). Add to that walkthroughs, forums, fansites, guild websites, and you have a huge range of writing and communication all tied to the playing of videogames. So the question isn't whether there is a discourse community, but instead how we might use it in a composition classroom.
Anne Richards and Adrienne Lamberti, in their article "Gaming/Writing: Alernative Discourse Communities in Online or Digitally Enhanced Technical Writing Classrooms," discuss interviews that they conducted with gamers to better understand the use and variety of discourse within the community. To that end, they developed a breakdown of different genres used by gamers:
(Richards 13)
What is notable about their list of genres is that it includes both texts that are created by the game developer and those created by the players. So, in thinking about the discourse community surrounding games and the possible exercises in a composition classroom, we can begin by looking at this range of genres. However, as Richards and Lamberti state, all of these are not necessarily equal choices for an academic setting because some of the documents tend to be short and sometimes childish in tone. Personally, I find this to be less of a concern than they do, as their focus is on a technical communication course, which might preclude certain types of writing. Additionally, their interviewees stated that the texts that seem most credible are those that use effective document design, maintain appropriate writing mechanics, and otherwise build a professional ethos (Richards and Lamberti). This suggests that, even in relation to the more amateurish genres, the students were able to develop the ability to critically analyze the rhetorical strategies--exactly what many first year composition instructors are trying to help students learn.
In considering the place of this kind of assignment in a composition classroom, we can follow Richards and Lamberti's lead. The students can work within the discourse community, but they can also write analytic essays about the norms of the community. In this way, writing about discourse communities might allow teachers to both help students both gain active knowledge of a discourse community and (hopefully) think critically about their own community's communication norms.
Richards and Lamberti's class plan is discussed further in "Tech Comm Video Game Discourse."
Works Cited
Dybwad, Barb. “SXSW08: How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way.” Massively by Joystiq. 8 Mar. 2008. Web. 14 Dec. 2012.
Richards, Anne, and Adrienne Lamberti. “Gaming/Writing: Alternative Discourse Communities in Online or Digitally Enhanced Technical Writing Classrooms.” TCC 2007 Proceedings 10–23. Web.