The Rhetoric of Video Games
by Ian Bogost
Notes
The reading captured many of the ways video games can be used to represent a certain position and persuade its players toward it effectively. I found the discussion regarding the ways rules directly shape the experience of your players very interesting, and it seemed to connect well to our discussion of mechanics and dynamics near the beginning of the quarter. I plan to use these insights to analyze the ways the choices within my game tell a particular story, regardless of what choice the player makes.
Introduction
- Animal Crossing makes the flow of capitalism transparent even to children
- Creates a model of debt players can experience in a smaller, simpler environment than the real world
- Idea of video games as a “community of practice” with its own culture separate from the rest of the world
- However, video games can also be a media to represent cultural values
Play
- Traditional and historical segregation of fun and eduation
- Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman: “play is the free space of movement within a more rigid structure”
- Possibility space: created by constraints and in which play can occur
- Occurs in all kinds of media, such as poetry or Oulipo
- Rules construct meaning in games
Procedurality
- Procedurality: creating meaning through the introduction of rules/procedures
- Process intensity: “degree to which a program emphasizes processes instead of data”
- More process intensity suggests more potential for meaningful expression
- Games use procedurality to represent anything
Rhetoric
- Games can use procedurality to make rhetoric
- Kenneth Burke; rhetoric fundamentally is the use of language to identify with others
- Procedural rhetoric: practice of using processes persuasively, to change opinion or action
- Different from other types; allows one to make claims on how things work
- Can be used to:
- Interrogate existing ideology; ex. America’s Army game created by U.S. Army
- Making and unpacking an argument; ex. The McDonald’s Videogame or Take Back Illinois or Bully
Conclusion
- Playing video games is a type of literacy; there is rhetoric inherent to the media that’s there to be understood and engaged with
- Technological literacy is more necessary than ever
- Educators should teach through video games and other media beyond the traditional model to prepare students
