Procedural Rhetoric

Ian Bogost lays out his theory of procedural rhetoric in Persuasive Games:

"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. This type of persuasion is tied to the core affordances of the computer: computers run processes, they execute calculations and rule-based symbolic manipulations. But I want to suggest that videogames, unlike some forms of computational persuasion, have unique persuasive powers. While “ordinary” software like word processors and photo editing applications are often used to create expressive artifacts, those completed artifacts do not usually rely on the computer in order to bear meaning. Videogames are computational artifacts that have cultural meaning as computational artifacts."

The primary benefit of this theory is that it could easily be worked into a composition class that was already dealing with rhetoric. Bogost provides numerous examples throughout his book of games that utilize procedural rhetoric effectively, including several that are free to play online (some that he built). Among possible examples are:

    • Antiwar Game - This game procedurally connects business interests and American imperialism.

    • Mansion Impossible - This game looks at the procedure of real estate investment, specifically the drive to always keep money earning and to flip houses quickly.

    • McDonalds Game - This game creates a vicious cycle in which the player is forced to make evil choices to keep the fast food chain earning money.

As a rhetorical method that does not apply equally across all media, procedurality also opens a new area of study with video games (though Alex Reid also debates whether other media could be seen as fundamentally procedural).

One possible drawback with using Procedural Rhetoric in class is that it isn't equally applicable to all games. Bogost states as much in his book when he shows how some games do not proceduralize the claims that they make:

"Although unleashing a well-timed uppercut on one’s political opponent of choice might have yielded momentary solace from the political strife of the 2004 election, the game itself, once again, does not proceduralize the political. If anything, Bush vs. Kerry Boxing reinforces the metaphor of politics as personalities rather than as infrastructures for facilitating everyday life." (94)

Still the danger here is no different from that of other rhetorical analyses--that of overgeneralizing. If procedural rhetoric were introduced as an active knowledge whose use was to expand the means of analysis rather than as a catch-all concept, it could certainly lead to a more critical appreciation of video games.

Source

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. The MIT Press, 2010. Print.

A more succinct version of the argument is available in "The Rhetoric of Video Games."

Also worth some attention are: