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Algorithms Pushed Me to the Dark Side:

Questions for Procedural Rhetoric

Erik Champion, Faculty of Humanities

Algorithms Pushed Me to the Dark Side

• Ian Bogost (2007) defined procedural rhetoric as ‘a practice of using processes persuasively.’

• But, are c. games unique? • Useful for design /critique of

serious games? • Or better employed as a

recalibrated meta-epistemic theory of serious games?

http://bogost.com/books/persuasive_games/

My expertise in Procedural Rhetoric??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-702P

Book

Biased questions for PR1. PR or criticism and dissection of PR?2. Is it successful if people can dissect/deconstruct PR? 3. Too formalist?4. How does PR work with agency?5. Is Rhetoric empty argument? How does PR differ to Gamification? 6. Traditional rhetoric is speech +writing and oratory also spatial? Can

sequentially experienced art be PR? Karnak, Acropolis?7. Rhetoric depends on memory, how does it work in people with different

cognitive load and with different strategies/game-play, learning modalities?8. What if you want characters to drive PR? (Like competing archaeological

theories)9. Can it be work with real-world input and physical computing?10. How does it relate to the 3 ways of designing /playing historical games?

1. Problem With ‘Rhetoric’• Rhetoric has a negative connotation. • In Arguing well, John Shand (2002) declared ‘Logic must be sharply

distinguished from what might generally be called rhetoric… rhetoric is not committed to using good arguments.’

• Rhetoric involves the art of persuading, not necessarily the art of opening up games as vehicles of critical discourse (Chaplin 2011)

• Aristotle (dialectical reasoning=universal truths & then rhetoric) vs. Plato (sophists employ empty rhetoric).

• Components: Inventio (discovery of arguments), dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio develop convincing and compelling arguments

• Anc. Greeks were their own lawyers!

http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

2. PR de=sign or critical method?

• Aim of PR: design or understand the design of PR in computer games?

• Similar as problem to epistemic games-epistemic or epistemological?

• What is success? Defined by whom?

3. Too formalist?• Sicart: ‘The proceduralists take their

starting point in Murray’s statement that digital games are unique, among other things, because of their procedural nature (Murray, 1998), that is, because they are processes that operate in way that is akin to how computers operate.’

• ‘Proceduralists claim that players, by reconstructing the meaning embedded in the rules, are persuaded by virtue of the games’ procedural nature.’

• But ‘Play belongs to players, and the games’ meaning resides in the actions of players.’

• But players often distort or misunderstand the rules!

• Are game designers authors?September 12: Not a game

Games definitions: challenge?• A rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome,

where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable. (Juul 2003, para 15).

• A system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004).

• A challenge that offers up the possibility of temporary or permanent tactical resolution without harmful outcomes to the real world situation of the participant (Champion, 2006).

• NB Virtual environments have constraints and affordances while games have risks and rewards.

Difficult to separate game from play

Rules of the game =the rules of the designer =the rules

of the player?

Essence of the game as rules-based system?

A rule-based system can be random, changing, and open

to change by the player.

Flanagan (2013): critical game play ==willful subversion

of the rules, avant-garde art as exemplars.

Tronstad (2010) review: Critical play “means to create

or occupy play environments and activities that

represent one or more questions about aspects of

human life…characterized by a careful examination of

social, cultural, political, or even personal themes that

function as alternates to popular play spaces. […] games

as “situations with guidelines and procedures” (p. 7) and

as “social technologies” (p. 9).

4. Agency: PR strips it away? • Michael Mateas –procedural literacy• Janet Murray -one feature of digital

games is their procedural nature• Sicart: “The proceduralists take their

starting point in Murray’s statement that digital games are unique, among other things, because of their procedural nature (Murray, 1998), that is, because they are processes that operate in way that is akin to how computers operate.”

• Answer: .’games create complex relations between the player, the work, and the world via unit operations that simultaneously embed material, functional, and discursive modes of representation (Bogost, 2006, p.106).

5. Too Similar to Gamification?• [1]the addition to websites and learning environments of quantifiable actions that can be

ranked and processed (and information stored), with immediate and vastly exaggerated feedback and graphically designed in the idiom of well-known computer game genres.

• [2] The use of game-based rules structures and interfaces by corporations “to manage and control brand-communities and to create value”, this definition reveals both the attraction of gamification to business and the derision it has received (Fuchs 2013).

• USEFULNESS: Task performance can be graphically rewarded and socially shared and proponents have argued that gamification can provide deeper, richer and more engaging learning (Schoech et al. 2013; Betts, Bal and Betts 2013; Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa 2014).

• Task performance can be graphically rewarded and socially shared and proponents have argued that gamification can provide deeper, richer and more engaging learning (Schoech et al. 2013; Betts, Bal and Betts 2013; Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa 2014).

• Many opposed to it (Bogost 2011b; Deterding et al. 2011b; Fuchs 2014). Major features:1. Has some goal in mind, the player works to achieve2. Has systematic or emergent rules and 3. Is considered a form of play or competition

6. Uniqueness? Spatiality?

3D of WWII prompts memories Little Big Planet

http://www.mediamolecule.com/blog/article/kareems_talk_from_learning_without_frontiers_2011/

UPF-SPECS Lab, Barcelona

7. Memory and Learning Style

• What is the role of memory and explicit understanding in gameplay?

• Do different types of players necessitate different forms of rhetoric and is this incorporated into PR theory / design?

8. Character-driven PR?

Renaissance-Wander and Chat NPC-oriented quests/narrative

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=15566&searchtext=legacy

9. Physical Data input?

Bodily Experiences-smell Indirect Biofed Environments

http://www.dead-mens-eyes.org/

10. Historical/Role-playing games

Serious Games-Playing the past PublicVR-The Egyptian Temple

http://publicVR.org OR video at http://vimeo.com/25901467

Conclusion: Responses to PRCounter-Arguments• Strong negative connotations but also specific terms for speaking & writing.• PR: applied to game design OR understanding of game design?• Success is? Shares issue with epistemic games-cannot lead horse to water.• Ironically shares features with Gamification (but can be fruitfully resolved)?Parameters• Unclear how it works with different levels of agency.• Unclear how unique it is in relation to procedurally experienced art forms.• Unclear how it works with different cognitive loads, strategies, learning modalities.• Needs more work in terms of variable biofeedback and other variable input.Possibilities• What if you want characters to drive PR? (E.g. competing archaeological theories).• It could drive the design of historically contested places and environments and

simulations of historical interpretations but the theory needs more work.

Key ReferencesBogost, Ian, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press, 2007).

Bogost, I. (2008). The Rhetoric of Video Games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games:

Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (pp. 117–140). Cambridge, MA:: The MIT Press.

Bogost, I. (2008). Unit operations: An approach to videogame criticism: MIT Press.

King, M. Procedural Rhetoric:Analyzing Video Games. Retrieved 24 March, 2014, from

http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/old/content/procedural-rhetoric-analyzing-video-games

Reid, A. (2010, 11 March). post-procedural rhetoric and serious games. Retrieved from

http://alex-reid.net/2010/03/postprocedural-rhetoric-and-serious-games.html

Thominet, L. (2012). Procedural Rhetoric. Retrieved 24 March, 2014, from

https://sites.google.com/site/composingvideogames/six-levels-of/level-4-critical-game-stu

dies/procedural-rhetoric

Treanor, M., & Mateas, M. (2009). Newsgames: Procedural rhetoric meets political cartoons.

Digital Games Research Association-DIGRA, 2009.

Sicart, M. (2011). Against Procedurality. Game Studies the international journal of computer

game research, 11(3), online. Retrieved from Gamestudies website:

http://gamestudies.org/1103/articles/sicart_ap

Aiken, S. F., & Talisse, R. B. (2014). Why We Argue (And How We Should): A Guide to Political

Disagreement. New York: Routledge.

Betts, B. W., Bal, J., & Betts, A. W. (2013). Gamification as a tool for increasing the depth of

student understanding using a collaborative e-learning environment. International Journal

of Continuing Engineering Education

and Life Long Learning, 23(3), 213-228.

Bogost, I. (2011). Gamification Is Bullshit. The Atlantic. Retrieved from The Atlantic website:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/gamification-is-bullshit/243338/

Bogost, I. (2011). Gamification is bullshit. Ian Bogost blog, 8, 2011.

Deterding, S., Sicart, M., Nacke, L., O'Hara, K., & Dixon, D. (2011). Gamification. using game-

design elements in non-gaming contexts. Paper presented at the CHI'11 Extended Abstracts

on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Flanagan, M. (2010). Creating Critical Play. In R. Catlow, M. Garrett, & C. Morgana (Eds.),

Artists Re: thinking Games (pp. 49-53). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Flanagan, M. (2013). Critical Play Radical Game Design. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Frasca, G. (2003). Simulation versus narrative. The video game theory reader, 221-235.

Fuchs, M. (2014). Gamification as twenty-first-century ideology. Journal of Gaming &

Virtual Worlds, 6(2), 143-157.

Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work?--A Literature Review of

Empirical Studies on Gamification. Paper presented at the System Sciences (HICSS), 2014

47th Hawaii International Conference on.

Shand, J. (2002). Arguing well. London: Routledge.

Shelton, B. E., & Wiley, D. A. (Eds.). (2007). The Design And Use Of Simulation Games In

Education: Sense Publishers.

Stansbury, M. (2013, 19 August). Why you should care about gamification in higher

education. Blog Retrieved from

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/gamification-higher-education-028/