Single-Player Digital Games: Hegemonical, Dialogical, or Critical Agents in Identity Formation

This paper asks how identity may be constructed, maintained, or developed in the practise of playing, and how this can be indicated in play with single-player digital games. Namely, the goal is to decipher games’ pedagogical inclinations along with the players’ positioning in these towards learning processes which may establish a frame of identity development potential. This is done via the concept of transformative learning situations in gameplay as potentials of identity formation. This, in terms of both the sociocultural and constructivist implications of engagement with a game as culturally situated artifact, and the pedagogical view of these in relation to the practise itself. While this paper is a theoretical discussion around the single-player play-practise with single-player digital games in combination with literature on identity, it is also closely linked to the intricacies of qualitative studies on and of these phenomena. For this reason, the focal points of the discussions are centred on re-evaluating assumptions of research and methodological issues towards the cultural play-practise of identity and play. In this sense, the paper poses issues and questions towards utilizing learning theory to study games, and vice versa, while also providing questions towards assumptions in studying games and identity development through learning.