I heavily related to James Gee’s piece What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning & Literacy as I was much like the six year old in the story that Gee referred to numerous times. I played Pikmin with my brothers when I had to be around the same age, most likely somewhere from six to eight years old. Many of the same actions that the kid took in Gee’s piece I also took, such as using the internet to see strategies in the game, conversing with others to find results and using trial and error to figure out how each Pikmin worked. This direct correlation was mind boggling when I read this piece as I felt like Gee was talking about me in a strange way. Things just seemed to match up too well between me and the kid in the story. But the main aspect that I would like to highlight from this is that I identified with semiotic principles that he was arguing for in his writing. Nothing is more convincing than having something you’ve done in your past mirror what someone is trying to prove in his or her argument. I believe Gee does a great job of this overall as he covers a wide range of practices that people can relate to, such as talking about different sub-genres of gaming, physics, linguistics, mathematics, certain cultures, movies and much more. I believe Gee was striving to make his piece interrelate with his readers’ lives, and the vast range of examples executed such with precision.
