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Abstract
Virtual worlds are widely regarded as a successful approach for professional team training, due to promoting collaboration through user avatars. Current theoretical models of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) do not account for the specificity of virtual worlds’ affordances for collaboration, particularly regarding non-verbal communication affordances, which led Cruz et al. to propose in iLRN in 2015 a specific protocol to collect data to support the empirical-grounded refinement of the theoretical treatment of virtual worlds in CSCW. Here, we present the results of applying this protocol to a case study in the training of aircraft maintenance practices. A training simulator platform was built with the Open Simulator platform for this purpose. Through activity observation, collected data provided a set of chains of evidence as proof elements, increasing the amount of empirical data available for future theory development.

Abstract
This paper showcases how the Contract Agency Model can be used to uncover literacy practices in videogame’s own terms as a complement to existing, more ‘indirect’ games literacies, using as an example the videogame Total War: Shogun 2. The paper first situates the Contract Agency Model within approaches to videogames and within approaches to media literacy. The paper then identifies three interesting literacy practices in the videogame, which also exemplify the eight levels of abstraction of the Contract Agency Model. The paper concludes by discussing the model’s implications to media literacy and videogames, namely that videogames effect a second-order mutual signaling with their players – agency as a conversation of commitment to meaning – that is humanizing of those players, and that the model can uncover this as an im-plicit contract of bio-costs, as a ‘direct’ literacy of videogames, i.e. a literacy in videogames’ own terms. © 2020 BY-NC-ND.