Computer Games and Technical Communication: Critical Methods and Applications at the Intersection

Description

Taking as its point of departure the fundamental observation that games are both technical and symbolic, this collection investigates the multiple intersections between the study of computer games and the discipline of technical and professional writing. Divided into five parts, Computer Games and Technical Communication engages with questions related to workplace communities and gamic simulations; industry documentation; manuals, gameplay, and ethics; training, testing, and number crunching; and the work of games and gamifying work. In that computer games rely on a complex combination of written, verbal, visual, algorithmic, audio, and kinesthetic means to convey information, technical and professional writing scholars are uniquely poised to investigate the intersection between the technical and symbolic aspects of the computer game complex. The contributors to this volume bring to bear the analytic tools of the field to interpret the roles of communication, production, and consumption in this increasingly ubiquitous technical and symbolic medium. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Figures and Tables......Page 10 Notes on Contributors......Page 12 Foreword......Page 18 Acknowledgments......Page 20 Introduction ......Page 22 Part I Connecting Professional and Technical Communication and Game Studies......Page 36 1 It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Pulls Out a Manual ......Page 38 2 Come Out Playing ......Page 56 Part II Industry Documentation and Procedural Guides......Page 74 3 Rendering Novelty Mundane ......Page 76 4 Just Playing Around ......Page 90 5 “It Wasn’t Intended to be an Instruction Manual” ......Page 108 Part III Getting the Player Involved......Page 128 6 Game Design Documents ......Page 130 7 Developing a Testing Method for Dynamic Narrative......Page 146 8 Psyche and Eros ......Page 162 9 Patching as Design Rhetoric ......Page 178 10 “You Are How You Play” ......Page 192 11 Working at Play ......Page 210 Part IV Games in the Professional and Technical Communication Classroom......Page 230 12 Inhabiting Professional Writing ......Page 232 13 How World of Warcraft Could Save Your Classroom ......Page 254 14 The Three D’s of Procedural Literacy ......Page 268 15 Questing through Class ......Page 286 16 From Realism to Reality ......Page 304 Index......Page 328 Games Index......Page 334