Ian Bogost’s Persuasive games and Procedural Rhetoric

 

“I call this new form procedural rhetoric, the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures.”

— Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games Preface, 2007

In his book Persuasive Games (2007), Ian Bogost examines on the way in which video games convey their themes and arguments. To begin he reflects on the way in which video games have previously been analysed, focusing on the use of film based terminology and methods. He then proposes procedural rhetoric as an alternative which takes into account the unique aspects of video games.

The comparison to film comes not only from the shared visual medium but also from the shared history of being considered too trivial to warrant deeper analysis or any acknowledgement on their cultural impact that is not negative. Bogost comments that “video games are considered inconsequential because they are perceived to serve no cultural or social function besides distraction at best, moral baseness at worst.” Similarly, early in the history of film it was considered simply a means of entertainment rather than an artistic medium for expression, let alone the cultural touchstone it is today. This comparison in part serves the purpose of justifying the study of video games, in the sense that like film, they are expected to progress to a more relevant status. While a justification can be helpful, the implication that those who consider video games to have no cultural value from their beginning is not. It implies that it will not be the medium of video games which is worthy of study but rather the use of that medium by artists to create works which hold meaning under existing parameters.

Bogost puts forward that those existing parameters are insufficient in studying video games, as the creation of games holds elements unique to the medium which can be utilised in their own right to create works with their own value. He proposes the term “procedural rhetoric” which draws on the procedural, rule-based aspect of video game creation and playing. The argument is that under procedural-rhetoric, when a game makes a point or explores a theme it does so not only through a combination of sound, video, and text, but also through rule-based consequences to the actions of the player. The player’s agency and the interactivity of the medium allow for a method of conveying meaning which is only possible through the computer based procedural logic of video games. Bogost argues that this consequence and rule based method of persuasion has the capability to affect social change by disrupting preconceptions and training responses to certain criteria in the player. This has already been taken advantage of in sectors such as education and the military, but has broader possibilities, which Bogost suggests, such as in politics and advertising.

In the preface Bogost also mentions his own game studio which, like the book, is called Persuasive Games. He states that in writing this book he is writing from both the perspective of a creator and a studier of video games, and that he uses a small selection of games created by his studio as examples of the adoption of procedural rhetoric as a device.