Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, English (Arts and Sciences)

Video games are worthy of and have been the subject of extensive scholarly exploration and pedagogical application in English studies (Alexander; Bogost; Colby and Colby; Gee; Vie; Yee). However, insufficient research has explored connecting the usage of video games in the composition classroom with writing transfer. In this dissertation I explore the position of video game scholarship as a vibrant and fully emerged field (Alexander; Colby, Colby, and Johnson), using the scholarship of Gee and Murray to espouse the potential of video games and multimodality in the classroom, and I highlight the reflective and critical benefits that video games offer as procedural rhetoric (Bogost). Building on this understanding, I apply my video game pedagogy to an enhanced Teaching for Transfer (TFT) curriculum (Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak) focusing on the importance of backward-reaching multimodal transfer (Shepherd) while using adaptive transfer (DePalma and Ringer) to use video games to help students facilitate successful high-road transfer. I argue that an important factor in writing transfer theory is the utilization of modern multimodal, interactive, and real tools, such as video games and community writing projects to help bridge the gaps and recontextualize the relationships between student self-sponsored writing, career writing, and academic composition. Video games have the potential to create opportunities for successful transfer in the learner in unique ways through a combination of procedural rhetoric, adaptive transfer, and student engagement. I build upon this argument by presenting a series of five assignments for a first-year composition (FYC) course that takes advantage of video games as a vehicle to help students make connections between their own self-sponsored writing, academic writing, and all future writing environments. I conclude this dissertation with a set of solutions for potential funding and political pitfalls when attempting to institute thi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Committee Chair); Ryan Shepherd (Committee Member); Talinn Phillips (Committee Member); Sarah Wyatt (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; Rhetoric

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, English

This thesis attempts to illustrate how war video games deploy their rules and mechanics to rhetorically reinforce or reconfigure the male-gendered (hyper-)masculine player-subject. Because video games enable player-subjects to interactively take part in simulations of war, video games have rhetorical power that scholars, video game developers, and players must learn to critically harness in order to tell imaginative narratives that value peace over violence. Split into three chapters, this thesis critically examines what I believe constitutes a small representative sample of influential or potentially influential war video games. The first chapter argues that the Gears of War series of video games reinforces the traditional hyper-masculine subject of war with a xenophobic narrative that glorifies violence against a feminized and reified enemy threat. By contrast, the second chapter argues that the Mass Effect series of video games responds to this violence by more imaginatively reconfiguring the masculine subject of war through its encouragement of diplomacy instead of aggression. The third and final chapter argues that the independently-produced September 12 and This War of Mine both further reconfigure and ultimately redefine the masculine subject of war by enabling the player to embody the subject positions of multiple civilians adversely affected by war. The thesis comes to the conclusion that critical video game studies must seek to access larger portions of the video gaming population in order to shift the public's demand toward narratives of peace that nonetheless entertain.

Committee: Kimberly Coates PhD (Advisor); Kristine Blair PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2022, Mass Communication (Communication)

Game developers use verbs, actions that players take to alter the gamestate, to craft games but lack a language to communicate about these verbs. This grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) project generated a detailed modeling system for game verb systems. A total of 12 games were used to develop the model (all Nintendo or PC titles) and engage with four areas of interest: nuance in platformers, verb themes, shifts in franchises over time, and violent verbs. In addition to the modeling system, a system for quantifying the emergent properties of games was developed which demonstrated the extraordinary emergent properties in games from Super Mario Bros. to Portal. The developed theory links Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics (MDA) theory with emergence, ludo narrative dissonance, and procedural rhetoric. The grounded theory portion was embedded in an “exploratory–confirmatory MM-GT design” (Shim et al., 2021). The quantitative validation suggested users can understand the system but may consider it challenging.

Committee: Gregory Newton (Committee Chair); Jacob Hiler (Committee Member); John Bowditch (Committee Member); Drew McDaniel (Committee Member) Subjects: Mass Media