“There’s no fixed course”: Rhizomatic learning communities in adolescent videogaming

Abstract

The following paper examines how adolescent gamers’ experiences reveal the complex learning systems in which they contribute, create, and participate, troubling the idea of what “gamer” means altogether. We begin by situating ourselves in a complexity science framework, then move to the ways in which Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizome metaphor supplements our thinking about complex systems, providing a more comprehensive stance from which to understand gaming and learning communities. Drawing from the first four years of our qualitative research, we then provide examples that there is “no fixed course” in gaming, and that our participants actively blur the boundaries of the following traditional identity categories: producer/consumer, teacher/learner, and individual/collective.