Rhetoric and L.A. Noire

Lesson Time: 2+ Weeks

Learning Principles: Co-design, Customization, Identity, Distributed Knolwedge, Cycles of Expertise, Sandboxes, Skills as Strategies, System Thinking

Videogame Methods: Content Games ,Critical Game Studies, Developing Games, Possibly Gaming Discourse Community

L.A. Noire is a videogame for Xbox, Playstation 3, and Windows that was released by Rockstar Games (the publisher

famous for the Grand Theft Auto series). In L.A. Noire, players take the role of a police detective in 1947 as he investigates a series of crimes. While the game features an open world map that the players can move around and explore as they like, it also has a strong main plot that directs most of the action and progress. The primary gameplay is connected to the investigations. First a player moves around the crime scene, looking at objects and (hopefully) collecting clues. Then the player can interrogate witnesses, who are often trying to withhold the whole truth. In these interrogations, players are given three options for interaction, they can accept the statement as truth, they can doubt the statement, or they can openly challenge it as a lie. The choice among these three options is determined by the evidence that the player has found. Doubting a statement is useful when that statement can't directly be proven untrue. Often there are multiple witnesses to interrogate for each crime. Successfully completing the mission and solving the crime requires a certain amount of successful interrogation.

While the interrogation system is fairly simplistic in its interaction, it also suggests a way that rhetoric can be built into a game. Each side is, in fact, trying to convince the other of something. The detective is trying to convince the witness to tell the truth, while the witness is trying to convince the detective that he/she is in fact telling the truth.

Lesson Plan

The goal in this lesson plan is to bring the students through multiple steps, bringing them from analysis of rhetoric to use of rhetorical strategies. I am still developing my ideas around how this could be done and would love some feedback.

First Interaction

In their first interaction with L.A. Noire, students should be given time to explore the area some and to conduct some investigations. They should do this in groups and make their decisions on how to interrogate collaboratively. One student will need to be tasked with taking notes on the game.

Making a Game

At this point students could be tasked with actually exploring the structure of the game. This can be done in either or both of the ways described below:

• • Students could explore procedurality through the creation of actual code. Since the game features a tripartite response system, one easy way to think about it is a rock, paper, scissors game. Fortunately, the construction of such a game using javascript is not terribly difficult. Codeacademy has a lesson on this very topic, and I have alternative code for my version of the game available below. An alternative to this, which is also quite simple in javascript is a choose your own adventure game from Codeacademy explained here (my code for this is also below).

  • Or we could take Lewis Pulsipher's criticism of teaching game development and design at the same time to heart. As an alternative exercise to coding, students could create a board or live action version of the interactions in L.A. Noire. First they could be directed to create characters within a scenario such as: "You suspect your roommate has been stealing your food out of the fridge. Your only evidence is a trail of crumbs leading from the fridge to his bed and an empty Tupperware that contained your food on his bed. Create a dialogue based on the Truth, Doubt, Lie interaction in which you interrogate the roommate. The key to this interaction is carefully crafting the roommate's responses to each form of interrogation and determining them before hand on set note cards. Remember, this will quickly lead to branching dialogue paths"

    • An alternative to this design would be to replace Truth, Doubt, and Lie with the rhetorical triangle, so that the interrogator might make different kinds of appeals. Ex. logos: the trail of crumbs from my cookies clearly leads to your bed.