As video games have become an important economic and cultural force scholars are increasingly
trying to better understand the ways that engagement with games may drive learning literacy
and social participation in the twenty-first century. In this book the authors consider games
and just as importantly the social interactions around games not in terms of how they should
be managed or incorporated into existing educational structures but for what they tell us
about the forms of learning and literacy that are already instantiated within the use of these
media. To this end this book delves deeply into James Paul Gee's (2004) productive and
influential concept of the affinity space - the physical or virtual locations (or some
combination of the two) where people come together around a shared interest or affinity. By
explicating how and why engaged fans of digital media do what they do in online spaces the
authors cast a light as Gee did on the promise of these media and the problems facing current
educational systems.
