The McDonald's Game

• The McDonald’s Videogame mounts a procedural rhetoric about the necessity of corruption in the global fast food business, and the overwhelming temptation of greed, which leads to more corruption. In order to succeed in the long-term, the player must use growth hormones, he must coerce banana republics, and he must mount PR and lobbying campaigns. Furthermore, the temptation to destroy indigenous villages, launch bribery campaigns, recycle animal parts, and cover-up health risks is tremendous, although the financial benefit from doing so is only marginal. As Patrick Dugan explains, the game imposes “constraints simulating necessary evils on one hand, and on the other hand . . . business practices that are self-defeating and, really just stupid.”26 Players learn to “read” this argument in the system of play and can interpret the relevance of the argument in the context of their own lives.

This shows that through the use of a procedural rhetoric the game has created a system in which the player is persuaded to act in a certain way to progress further in the game. This is then stated so obviously to the player through the game that it then makes that player think about this in the context of their own lives and practices.

The McDonald's game is a key example of procedural rhetoric used in a persuasive manner in videogames. It also highlights perfectly what I am researching and am sure will be a major part of my final essay. From here on I am going to continue looking at the mcdonalds game alongside my other research.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/026269364Xchap6.pdf