Ruffin BaileyNorth Carolina State University

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Persuasive Games:The Expressive Power of Videogames

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Overview

• Bogost’s Background

• What are Unit Operations?

• Discussion of “Rhetorics”

• Discussion Questions

Bogost’s Background

• B.A. -- Philosophy and Comparative Literature -- USC

• M.A. and Ph.D. -- Comparative Literature -- UCLA– Worked with N. Katherine Hayles

• Faculty at Georgia Tech– School of Literature, Communication, and Culture

– Works with Janet Murray

Bogost on the Report

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Unit Operations: Definition

• “modes of meaning-making that privilege discrete, disconnected actions over deterministic, progressive systems.”

• “unit operations privilege function over context, instances over longevity.”

• “unit operations give us a lever for understanding any form of human production as potentially procedural.”

Unit vs. System

• “I contend that unit operations represent a shift away from system operations…”

• “a movement away from the simple, orderly, static categorization of things.”

• “In human biology, DNA nucleotide bonding displays unit operations; the Darwinian idea of acquired characteristics illustrates system operations.”

• “The Internet, the brain, human genetics, and social fads are examples of complex, unit-driven networks.”

Traditional “Rhetorics”

• Socratic– Technical– Vs. Dialectic (“unknown conclusions”)

• Sophistic– Demonstrative/performative

• Aristotelian– Philosophical

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Burke Broadens

• “While rhetoric still entails persuasion for Burke, he greatly expands its purview, arguing that it facilitates human action in general” (20)

• “Wherever there is persuasion,” writes Burke, “there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning,’ there is ‘persuasion’” (21).

“New Rhetorics”

• Visual– Emotional vs. Philosophical? (21ff)– Manipulated vs. Persuaded? (34)

• Digital– Digital non-digital

• Procedural

• “Success means effective expression, not necessarily effective influence” (20)

McDonald’s Video Game,“anti-advergame” (29)

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Save the Whales; Rhetoric?

• “but the actions themselves are designed to generate provocation, not to make arguments for policy changes.”– Provocation isn’t rhetoric?

• “Topics like taxation, deforestation, and globalization are not the usual subject matter of videogames… Procedural rhetoric is not limited to such anomalous specimens…”