Research Question RQ1: Does video game play

experience correlate with higher-quality narrative writing ability?

“While a video game controller bears little resemblance to a quill pen, carbon-lead pencil, or laptop keyboard - our study offers preliminary evidence that there are semantic associations between gaming and writing that are not trivial.”

Video Game Self-Efficacy

Weekly Video Gaming Experience

Years Spent Gaming

Diagnostic Essay (n = 54) Tension and Turn .074 (-.001) .213 (.133) .394* (.146)

Resolution and Conclusion

.145 (.114) .195 (.127) .159 (-.019)

Description and Detail .133 (.104) .158 (.182) .158 (-.023)Organization .135 (-.198) .295+ (.219) .350* (.159)

Overall Evaluation .140 (.009) .243 (.204) .297+ (.077)Narrative Essay (n = 68)

Tension and Turn -.195 (-.019) -.021 (-.068) .191 (.031)Resolution and

Conclusion-.039 (-.053) .058 (-.133) .128 (.068)

Description and Detail .096 (-.097) .143 (-.131) .114 (.106)Organization -.313+ (-.213)+ .095 (.022) .297+ (.217)+

Overall Evaluation -.163 (-.122) 079 (-.101) .236 (.135)

The impact of leisurely video game experience on first-year college students’ observed composition writing ability

AbstractThis study explores the potential correlation between an adolescent'sleisurely video game experience and their narrative compositionwriting ability in a first-semester University writing course. Our datareport moderate correlations between students' aggregated videogame experience (years spent playing) and their ability to articulatetension and turn, and use proper organization in compositionassignments, notably an early-semester diagnostic essay (assigned onthe first day of class, prior to formal instruction). Findings suggest thatleisurely gameplay might help develop competency with the samecreative skills related to written narrative ability, potentiallyfacilitating the learning of these skills in the classroom.

“…it is reasonable to expect that students’ experience playing video

game might share some relationship with their ability to compose

narratives in the first-year college classroom. Such a finding would be

relevant insofar as it might suggest that “gamers” might be better-prepared for

narrative learning, having had more experience with narrative broadly.”

“…three attributes of video game play that make it an activity well-suited to foster an appreciation of and ability to craft narrative. 1. Video games are an interactive and

demanding experience that involves the player and several different levels of the experience (Gentile & Anderson, 2003)

2. Video games are inherently unfinished texts that require the player’s active agency in order to be realized as complete narrative experiences (Bowman & Banks, in press; Collins, 2013).

3. Video games are often defined in part by their ability to involve the gamers in the on-screen narrative world (Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2006).

Virtual tensions fuel narrative tensions

Nick BowmanCommunication Studies

John JonesDepartment of English

Sandy BaldwinDepartment of English

For more information, contact: Nicholas.Bowman@mail.wvu.edu@bowmanspartan