Game Critics: Exploring the Role of Critique in Game-Design Literacies

Digital games have become a major part of the twenty-first-century learning environment, but little attention has been paid to understanding what young learners already know about games and how this understanding can be used as a bridge to academic literacy. In this study, the authors analyze second-grade students' efforts at critiquing digital games. Students collectively developed and applied their own standards for evaluating three computer-based games, coming up with criteria similar to those used by professional game designers. Students defended their evaluations using logic and reasoning, thus practicing important thinking and argumentation skills that are often overlooked at the elementary school level. In class discussions of their evaluations, they were exposed to the kinds of specialized language required for the development of academic language proficiency, and, in writing about their critiques, they produced longer and more sophisticated texts than those they wrote for other assignments.