Decolonizing Game Literacy

Abstract

In the last decades, digital games moved from niche to mainstream: more and more people play, talk about and engage with these artefacts, becoming an important part of contemporary cultures, giving rise to the idea of game literacy, the set of skills needed to meaningfully engage with videogames. While the potentials of game literacy have, to some extent, been already discussed in the literature, we have not discussed enough the need for a game literacy that problematises the sociocultural dimensions of gaming, including the hegemonic, exclusionary rationales implicitly disseminated through mainstream gaming. In this chapter, I outline a decolonial model for game literacy, remarking how the reflection about the gaming circuits of production and dissemination should be part of any initiative that aims at dealing with critical and creative competences towards gaming, and how these are crucial for any citizen in contemporary societies.