Ian Bogost

Persuasive Processes

Procedural Rhetoric and Deus Ex

Steve Wilcox

Deus Ex, an FPS-RPG hybrid, draws on many cyberpunk tropes while enabling players to implant ‘biomodifications’ at a whim, radically altering the physiology of the player as well as the gameplay itself. And for these reasons Deus Ex might not seem very well attuned to procedural arguments, except for two major exceptions: 1) Deus Ex constructs a persuasive procedural argument through its combat structure (or lack thereof); and 2) Deus Ex deconstructs the conventions of the genre by placing the player at odds with the requests made by the system… Continue Reading →

The Binding of Procedure

Procedural Rhetoric and The Binding of Isaac

Michael Hancock

The Binding of Isaac has generated a lot of discussion in blogs and podcasts. It is the discourse surrounding the game, however, that demonstrates the limitations of that view, and, consequently, the limitations of procedural rhetoric. John Teti, at gamelogical.com, follows a similar argument to the one I’ve posited, that the game’s random unfairness is, ultimately, what it makes it seem fair (though he characterizes this appearance not as the game being more fair, but more real than one with predetermined events, a definition of videogame realism that perhaps is worth discussing on another day)… Continue Reading →

Newsgames

Journalism at Play by Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari, & Bobby Schweizer

Michael Hancock

In his 2007 book Persuasive Games, Ian Bogost expounds at length his problem with the term “serious games.” The term was coined in order to define games whose topics were serious things such as economics, or ecology, whose purpose was first and foremost to emphasize their educational and institutional orientation. The problem with “serious games” is that the title implies that whoever used it was defining themselves in opposition to games that lacked the adjective, a distinction that made “regular” games appear light and frivolous, whereas serious games came off as ponderous and pretentious. If the term must be used, he decided, let it be used for games that draw attention to underlying structures, or call for a greater attention to detail. But he’d prefer to use different terms entirely. Continue Reading →