The Rhetoric of Video Games

• Procedural rhetoric affords a new and promising way to make claims about how things work. As I argued earlier, video games do not simply distract or entertain with empty, meaningless content. Rather, video games can make claims about the world. But when they do so, they do it not with oral speech, nor in writing, nor even with images. Rather, video games make argument with processes. Procedural rhetoric is the practice of effective persuasion and expression using processes. Since assembling rules together to describe the function of systems produces procedural representation, assembling particular rules that suggest a particular function of a particular system characterizes procedural rhetoric.

Although it takes a couple of reads to take it all in, this exert from Ian Bogost 'The Rhetoric of videogames' really makes a lot of connections on how videogames portray rhetoric. For example because a computer uses rules to create a model and uses rules to make that model perform a particular function or so that a level performs or plays in a certain way in an effort to ask the audience a rhetorical question or make a statement about the world. If a game is then able to make statements to the audience or questions an audiences opinions and views about the world then on some levels it is then able to persuade those outcomes.


Understanding this has really helped me to develop my ideas and understanding of persuasive gaming and how it works. I am now interested in finding more examples of these games and deconstructing them to broaden my understanding of persuasive gaming and its affect on the world.


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