The Rhetoric of Video Games

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning Bogost's chapter offers an introduction to rhetoric in games. First he looks at the way games and their rules embody cultural values, following the work of Brian Sutton-Smith and looking in particular at a few examples from international sports. Then he discusses the relationship between games and ideology, showing how game play can unpack and expose deeply engrained social, cultural, and political assumptions. Finally he discusses the ways videogames make arguments. Drawing on the history of rhetoric, Bogost introduces a notion he calls "procedural rhetoric," the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions

Rhetoric and Digital Media

Critics of computational media can often be seen as being allied with one of two genealogies, that of Marshall McLuhan or that of Friedrich Kittler. McLuhan famously declared that the medium is the message (1964: 7) and expanded the range of cultural messages worth celebrating to include media that might seem to resist interpretation, such as lighting and clothing. McLuhan also distinguished between hot media, such as film, which supposedly provide an audience experience of deep immersion through sequential, linear, and logical arrangements, and cool media, such as comics, which require perception of abstract patterning and a simultaneous decoding of all parts. Like Vannevar Bush, who viewed the computer largely as a storage and retrieval device, McLuhan saw the computer as a research and communication instrument 1995: 295) and compared it to print genres like the encyclopedia or print storage systems like the library.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/1005/thumbnail.jp

Frame and Metaphor in Political Games

This paper offers an approach to analyzing political rhetoric in videogames, and on designing videogames intended to carry ideological bias, based cognitive linguist George Lakoff’s notion of metaphor and frame in political discourse. I argue for two important ways games function in relation to ideological frames, reinforcement and exposition, through examples of art games, political games, and commercial games. Finally, I argue that an explicit design of ideological frames in games is crucial to the next generation of political games. The 2004 US Presidential election renewed world citizens’ recognition of a deep divide in US politics (Schifferes 2004a). In the aftermath of their loss, Democrats are now scrambling to develop new strategies. Ideas are plentiful: avoid candidates from the northeast (Wallsten & Anderson 2004); focus more strongly on domestic issues (Schifferes 2004b); seek better management (Marinucci 2004). But some researchers have suggested that political success draws less from reality than from representation. Cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggested metaphor is central to human understanding (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1990). Lakoff and Johnson argue that our conceptual systems are fundamentally shaped by cultural constructions; metaphor is not for them a fanciful language reserved for poets, but an active, conceptual framework that is central to how we understand the world. Lakoff argues that the most important consideration in political discourse is not how politicians respond to the "facts" of the external world, but how they conceptualize, or "frame" that world in their discourse about it. Lakoff argues that political frames in the US reflect metaphors of family management — conservatives frame political issues as "strict fathers" while liberals frame them as "nurturant parents" (Lakoff 1996). In addition to becoming the year of an American political divide, 2004 was also the year of political videogames. While there are precedents for games with political messages (Crawford 1985, Crawford 1990, Barbu 1991, On 2001, Frasca 2003), 2004 was the first year that candidates and party groups created officially endorsed games to bolster their campaigns (Bogost & Frasca 2003, Republican National Committee 2004, Bogost 2004a, Bogost 2004b, Frasca 2004). As the worlds of political message strategy and political videogames gain momentum, an opportunity arises for each to inform the other. Some games simply recreate verbal rhetoric. The GOP’s Tax Invaders is a replica of the classic arcade game Space Invaders (Taito 1978) in which players fire projectiles at John Kerry tax plans. The game itself is crude, but text within it expertly reflects a conservative frame: tax increases are harmful enemies and must be stopped. The game’s opening screen announces, "only you can stop the tax invader" and invites the player to "Save the USA form John Kerry’s Tax Ideas." Lakoff would argue that such language reflects a fundamental logic in conservative politics, that the people know what’s best for themselves and that success shouldn’t be punished. These points are made clear in the language used to frame the game experience. However, Lakoff’s arguments focus on spoken or written political rhetoric. Games are fundamentally procedural systems rather than narratives. To understand the function of frame and metaphor in communicating ideological bias in videogames, we must look at how the interactions of rules create similar frames for political expression. Even a game as simple as Tax Invaders frames the metaphors of its rhetoric; Bush fires projectiles at the tax cuts, representing the metaphor of tax hikes as a violence that one has to defend against. Thus while Tax Invaders does little to represent actual tax policy, it frames tax policy in a metaphor that reinforces a conservative position. I submit that Tax Invaders is an example of a game reinforcing an existing ideological frame. Other political games do use rules as the basis for their bias. For example, in Vigilance 1.0 (Le Chevallier 2000), players seek out deviants on surveillance screen sections of an urban environment. The more that pass by unnoticed, the more depraved the society becomes. Of course, if the player is truly successful, the game challenges him to efface himself, an example of the perversion of total control and surveillance. By forcing the player to see the consequences of the metaphor of vigilance, the game exposes the ideological frame of "panoptical vigilance as perversion." It is this exposition of the frame that forms the game’s political commentary — and makes its rhetoric more powerful. In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games 2004), players enact the life of an early 90’s LA gangbanger. Unlike previous iterations of the GTA series, GTA:SA takes on a cultural moment steeped in racial and economic politics. In the game, rule interactions underscore opportunity biases. For example, your character must eat to maintain his stamina and strength, but the only food available is fast food, which makes you fat. More meaningfully, the game’s renowned open-ended space also frames a discourse about crime and criminals. GTA:SA intricately recreates three huge cities and spaces in-between, but the game’s NPC’s respond identically to your semiautomatic-toting, face-rag wearing black gangsta character in every part of town. While major technology challenges underlie the development of credible large-scale character interactions (see Mateas & Stern 2002), the game makes no effort to alter the interactions of characters based on racial response. Even if the designers did not intend it, this decision creates a frame in which the player’s sociopathic behavior is not mediated by any economic, racial, or social disadvantage. Despite its famous open-endedness and free agency, GTA:SA privileges a classic conservative position: that there is no social foundation for crime, but only a character-based foundation. GTA:SA can be said to expose an ideological frame, perhaps without intention. Designers and critics must consider the ways ideology gets framed in a new generation of games. For those explicitly designed to carry political bias, exposition of ideological frames better advances a game’s arguments. For those that inevitably carry ideological bias, like commercial games, it is crucial to understand a game’s ideological frames for the purposes of criticism and public reception. References Barbu, L. 1991. Crisis in the Kremlin. Spectrum Holobyte. Bogost, I. 2004a. Take Back Illinois. Illinois House Republicans. ———. 2004b. Activism: The Public Policy Game. Persuasive Games. Bogost, I. & G. Frasca. 2003. The Howard Dean for Iowa Game. Dean for America. Booth, W. 2001. "For Norton, a Party Mission." Washington Post, January 8 2001. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29810-2001Jan7?language=printer. Cart, J. 2003. "Bush Opens Way for Counties and States to Claim Wilderness Roads." Los Angeles Times, January 21 2003. Available at http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/bush_opens_way_for_counties_and_.htm. Cook, K. 2003. "It’s ‘exploring’ not ‘drilling’." Environmental Working Group Report. Available at http://www.ewg.org/issues/MTBE/20031117/LuntzMemo_Energy.php. Crawford, C. 1985. Balance of Power. Mindscape. ———. 1990. Balance of the Planet. Self-published. Frasca, G. 2003. September 12. Newsgaming.com. ———. 2004. Cambiemos. Frente Amplio Nueva Mayoria. Lakoff, G. 1990. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1996. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2004. Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate — The Esssential Guide for Progressives. New York: Chelsea Green. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Le Chevallier, M. 2000. Vigilance 1.0. Dial 33 then 1 exhibition, Kiasma Museum, Helsinki. Luntz, F.I. 2003. "The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America." Luntz Research Companies report. ———. 2004. "The Best and Worst Language of 2004: Key Debate Phrases." Luntz Research Companies report. Marinucci, C. 2004. "In postmortem on Kerry bid, Dems seek clues to new life." San Francisco Chronicle, November 7 2004. Available at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/07/MNGQO9NJOC1.DTL. Mateas, M. & A. Stern. 2002. A Behavior Language for Story-Based Believable Agents. In Ken Forbus and Magy El-Nasr Seif (Eds.), Working notes of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press. On, J. 2001. Antiwargame. Futurefarmers. Republican National Committee. 2004. Tax Invaders. Republican National Committee/gop.com. Rockstar Games. 2004. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Take Two Interactive. Schifferes, S. 2004a. "Election reveals divided nation." BBC News, November 3 2004. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3973197.stm. ———. 2004b. "What next for the Democrats?" BBC News, November 3 2004. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3978689.stm. Taito. 1978. Space Invaders. Taito. Wallsten, P. & N. Anderson. 2004. "Democrats Map Out a Different Strategy." Los Angeles Times, November 6,2004. Available at http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-dems6nov06,0,680680.stor...

A fenomenologia do videogame

Jesper Juul argumentou, convincentemente, que o conflito sobre o objeto adequado de estudo deslocou-se das "regras ou história" para o "jogador ou jogo". Mas um componente-chave dos jogos digitais ainda está ausente em qualquer uma dessas oposições: a do próprio computador. Este artigo oferece um modo de se pensar acerca da fenomenologia do videogame a partir da perspectiva do computador, e não do jogo ou do jogador

Book review: How to do things with video games (review by Daniel Allington)

In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center.  In 'How to do things with videogames', Ian Bogost explores the many ways computer games are used today:  documenting important historical and cultural events; educating both children and adults; promoting commercial products; and serving as platforms for art, pornography, exercise, relaxation, pranks and politics.  Bogost concludes that as videogames become ever more enmeshed with contemporary life, the idea of gamers as social identities will become obsolete, giving rise to gaming by the masses.  But until games are understood to have valid applications across the cultural spectrum, their true potential will remain unrealized.Ian Bogost is professor of digital media at Georgia Institute of Technology

Jeux des discours normatifs et enjeux de l’analyse

Les jeux vidéo sont des objets polymorphes, entre média audiovisuel, jeu industriel et programme informatique. Les jeux vidéo se distinguent cependant de ces différentes dimensions en mêlant simultanément dans les logiques de l’interaction avec la machine, la posture de spectateur à celle de joueur acteur. Chaque écran où l’interaction est techniquement possible apparaît potentiellement comme un espace ludique : télévision, ordinateur, téléphone portable, GPS, etc. Les jeux vidéo sont ainsi d..

Jeux des discours normatifs et enjeux de l’analyse

Les jeux vidéo sont des objets polymorphes, entre média audiovisuel, jeu industriel et programme informatique. Les jeux vidéo se distinguent cependant de ces différentes dimensions en mêlant simultanément dans les logiques de l’interaction avec la machine, la posture de spectateur à celle de joueur acteur. Chaque écran où l’interaction est techniquement possible apparaît potentiellement comme un espace ludique : télévision, ordinateur, téléphone portable, GPS, etc. Les jeux vidéo sont ainsi d..

Lest they forget:exploring commemoration and remembrance through games and digital technologies

The centennial of the First World War has encouraged a wide range of projects to commemorate the participants and communities affected by the conflict. This chapter considers how games and interactivity can be used to enhance commemoration and remembrance with new audiences. The digital commemorations undertaken for the Battle of Loos, and as part of the wider “Great War Dundee” project, are discussed. Emphasis is placed on how game design techniques and technology were utilized to plan an empathy game and then further developed into the interactive documentary and visualization, Loos: The Fallen Fourth. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how these narratives engaged with the community and helped shape a wider understanding. The digital components of this project can be accessed via greatwardundee.com and greatwardundee.itch.io

Making Text Annotation Fun with a Clicker Game

In this paper we present WordClicker, a clicker game for text annotation. We believe the mechanics of 'Ville type Free-To-Play (F2P) games in general, and clicker games in particular, is particularly suited for GWAPs (Games-With-A-Purpose). WordClicker was developed as one component of a suite of GWAPs meant to cover all aspects of language interpretation, from tokenization to anaphoric interpretation. As such, WordClicker is intended to have a dual function as part of this suite of GWAPs: both for parts-of-speech annotation and for teaching players about parts of speech so that they can go on and play GWAPs for more complex syntactic annotation. Therefore, game-based language learning platforms also had a strong influence on its design

In and out domains. Playful principles to in-form urban solutions

The implementation of games in architecture and urban planning has a long history since the 1960s and is still a preferential tool to foster public participation and address contemporary spatial – and social - conflicts within the urban fabric. Moreover, in the last decade, we have seen the rise of urban play as a tool for community building, and city-making and Western society is actively focusing on play/playfulness – together with ludic dynamics and mechanics - as an applied methodology to deal with complex challenges, and deeper comprehend emergent situations. In this paper, we aim to initiate a dialogue between game scholars and architects through the use of the PLEX/CIVIC framework. Like many creative professions, we believe that architectural practice may benefit significantly from having more design methodologies at hand, thus improving lateral thinking. We aim at providing new conceptual and operative tools to discuss and reflect on how games facilitate long-term planning processes and help to solve migration issues, allowing citizens themselves to take their responsibility and contribute to durable solutions