Writing the rules: Youth game-making practices as digital writing

This article uses a lens of procedural literacies to theorize youth practices of digital game-playing, modification, and creation as digital writing. The concept of procedurality describes the ways that videogames and other digital media are composed of systems of processes—computational or otherwise, which define these artifacts in form, function, and cultural expression. Drawing on examples of children’s game-making in library-based computer programming clubs, the article outlines implications for the practice of teaching digital writing through a lens of procedural literacies. With regard to issues of assessment, the article underscores the importance of shifting away from paradigms of measurement and standardization, and toward an inquiry-based stance aimed at valuing the expanding communicative repertoires of digital writing.