Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames

Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; theyrepresent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interactwith those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, IanBogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing onthe 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive ex

Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; theyrepresent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interactwith those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, IanBogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing onthe 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogostanalyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames inparticular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art ofusing imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-basedrepresentations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize anew form of rhetoric.Bogost calls this new form "procedural rhetoric," a type ofrhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executingrule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a uniquepersuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not onlycan videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can alsodisrupt and change these positions themselves, leading to potentially significantlong-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasionhas already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, andlearning. Bogost is both an academic researcher and videogame designer, andPersuasive Games reflects both theoretical and a game design goals.