RTS and RPGs : New literacies and multiplayer computer games

Technopopular culture such as computer games immerses young people in highly complex and engaging worlds, worlds in which literacy and communicative practices are significantly reconfigured and extended by the contexts in which they occur. This paper reports on a study exploring the textual engagement, pleasures and literacies entailed in playing on line computer games amongst a group of young people aged 15-16. It explores the ways in which these young people read and utilised intersections between traditional print-based text, visual images, symbols, sound, interactivity and other elements to play and make sense of a range of Real Time Strategy and Role Playing Computer Games; the place of games and gaming amongst other text-based leisure activities in their lives; and issues of interpretation, representation and response entailed in playing with real or virtual partners in cyberspace.