| Summary: | The video game is a deeply misunderstood medium, one that is often blamed as a root cause of violence, anti-social behaviour and the laziness of youth. In addition to those who judge video games as corrupting, there are those who note the complexity and instructive power of video games and hope to harness the technology for educational use. This thesis occupies a middle ground between these two poles. I argue that as a distinct textual form, video games are prime sites for encountering power and difference, as well as productive sites through which gamers come to know themselves. Video games are semiotic playing fields that, when theorized as such, call for pedagogical interventions focused on how we teach about the worlds we inhabit both virtual and actual. I end with an explanation of how video games can constructively be theorized as “ethical spaces” for learning about issues of social justice.
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