Read & Play: The Rhetoric of Video Games – Angela Mao

Part 1: The Rhetoric of Video Games Notes

The author gives an example of Animal Crossing, and how it represents debt/the materialistic drive for more items
- Takes note that the NPC villagers don’t have the same desire for wealth / items the way the player does
- Tom Nook = capitalist overload who benefits from your labor
- Shows players the consequences of “keeping up with the Joneses”
We think that video games have an unique ethos – players have their own culture + values
- Example: Animal Crossing community of players who help each other out
We should look at games as deliberate expressions of particular perspectives
However, we often don’t regard games as avenues for learning because they are “play” – a children’s activity
- Video games also fall under this category of leisure
- We should work towards a different understanding of play – “the free space of movement within a more rigid structure”
Draws comparisons between game rules and literary conventions (e.g. palindromes, lipogram)
- This is something in video games as well, specifically the possibility space, which players explore the space within rule constraints using symbolic systems the game provides
Procedurality – craft representations through rules
4 essential properties of digital artifacts – procedurality, participation, spatiality, and encyclopedic scope
- Specifically, procedurality is the ability of a computer to execute a series of rules
  - This specific ability separates computers from other media
  - Video games tend to emphasize this the most
  - Video games use procedurality to represent things
Video games can serve as an avenue for rhetoric – which is the field of communication that deals with persuasive speech
- Visual rhetoric – using photographs, illustrations, etc to affect their viewers
- Digital rhetoric – focusing on the text / image content a machine might host and the communities in which that content is created / used (emails, message boards, blogs, wikis, etc)
Procedural rhetoric – practice of using process persuasively
- The arguments are made through the authorship of rules of behavior, the construction of dynamic models
- Verbal, written, and visual rhetoric cannot account for the unique properties of procedural expression
- Video games make claims about the world / make arguments through processes
We can also consider procedural representation through models (e.g. a flight simulator program attempts to model how aviation works)
Artifacts that deploy procedural rhetoric can also make arguments about how things don’t work (e.g. The McDonald’s Videogame, which shows how messed up McDonald’s business practices are)
- Players have to make difficult moral choices and it is a procedural rhetoric “about the necessity of corruption in the global fast food business”
Ways of Using Procedural Rhetoric
- Expose and explain the hidden ways of thinking that drive social, political, or cultural behavior
  - Example: the U.S. army released a government-funded first-person shooter game to recruit / PR
  - However, the political simulation is interesting because it enforces strict Army Rules of Engagement (ROE)
  - The game insists on the mission orientation of the US army – soldiers must be team players and follow army values and rules
- Making and Unpacking an Argument
  - Example: Take Back Illinois, a game about different policies / positions that the candidates took (e.g. policy game for managing education, players can change policies)
  - Example: Bully – part social commentary part satire about the reality of the high school social environment
  - Example: Spore was the author really trying to give his perspective on astrobiology (he thinks that intelligent life does not occur and grow naturally, but rather it is cultured and transported from plant to planet by other, more advanced civilizations.

Part 2: Game Analysis

The game that I played for this assignment was Papers, Please. This game was created by Lucas Pope, under his production company. I purchased the game off Steam for $10, and you can find the webpage of the game here. I believe the target audience of the game is adults who have an interest in puzzle-solving/dystopian games, especially those who want to explore moral and ethical dilemmas. I played this game for around 1.5-2 hours. I played the Story mode, and the first run took me an hour because I died/lost the game in 6 days. Afterwards, I went back and played a few days again to see what different outcomes I could’ve had if I survived longer. In this game, you play a character who is a immigration agent / officer who stamps people’s visas. You work for the fictional country of Artstozka, which seems like some sort of communist dictatorship. You need to stamp visas yes or no and check to make sure everybody’s documents look good. There are people who have expired / fake documents. If you don’t let someone in who is technically allowed to, you get warnings. At the end of the day, you get a salary and must go home and support your family.

As the game progresses, more rules get introduced (e.g. you must search people of a certain country and check work visas) and dilemmas start popping up (do you let a husband and wife through if they are fleeing a worn-torn neighboring country, even though the wife doesn’t have the right documents?)

Example of game play: you must verify all the information is correct

Example of a fake passport: The issuing city for this foreign country is wrong – you need to deny this person.

Example: There was originally 1 rule, but now there are 5

I would say the genre of this game is puzzle-solving dystopia, or a dystopia sim. However, you play a character who is a border agent / officer who stamps people’s visas. I think that the game does a really good job of simulating the role – there’s a literal stamp that you need to press down to approve visas. You also have a desk where you drag documents and an inspection tool to verify it. I felt super immersed and it really felt like I was making critical decisions.

Image: The stamp that you press on visas

I found that this game had many connections to the reading we had to do for this assignment. First, I think this game had a really great use of procedural rhetoric to expose and explain the hidden ways of thinking that drive social, political, or cultural behavior. Procedural rhetoric makes arguments through rules of behavior – in Papers, Please, there are strict sets of rules you are told to follow, yet the “morally correct” choice sometimes requires you to break those rules. This game really hits home the message of the dilemma of being a “cog in the machine” – when you go home every night, you see that you’re running out of money and your family is cold/hungry/sick and could die. This makes it harder for you to make the right choice in that context. Everyone wants to stand up to an unjust, corrupt system, but it is clearly not that easy.

There’s a ton of really creative aspects in this game that I want to take into consideration while making my own games. I felt like one of the most creative things was the dilemmas you encountered. One day, I let in a woman who had her work visa and all her documents in order. As she leaves however, she asks me to help her and not let a man in later who might human traffick her. Later, when the man comes, you find out he is a valid citizen of your country. In my first run, I denied him and received a warning, though because I hadn’t messed up earlier, I received no consequences. The second time I played, I did let him through to see if it would change anything. The day after, the newspaper said that women had been killed in a nearby brothel, so the bad consequence was real.

Image: The note that was left by the woman

I also think there were great mechanics in the game that contributed to the simulator vibe. For instance, the inspector tool allowed you to highlight things that were inconsistent and interrogate the person. I’m not going to show a photo but eventually I got to a situation where I could search people, and you would receive a photograph of them naked to see if they were hiding contraband.

Image: You can integrate people and search them

Overall, this game was really effective at affecting me emotionally. I played this at like 1AM alone in my room and the music and art really creeped me out. I also genuinely didn’t know if I was doing the right thing at any moment – is my country really evil? I also encountered all sorts of figures that made me think that something deeper was wrong, such as someone saying opening this border was a mistake or the sheer amount of prostitution cards I received. The first time I played, I tried to follow all the rules to see what would happen, but I was dead by day 6 because my entire family died. Because my entire family died, I was fired and the game ended. Clearly, this shows that this country isn’t the best. I was still thinking about my choices even after I stopped playing.

I think the core message of this game is to see whether or not you will be complicit because of policy and if you’ll make the right choices despite the rules. Overall, I really enjoyed it and I only got 2/20 endings, so maybe I’ll play more in the future!