Class Fifteen: The Rhetoric of Videogames

Chapter 11 - Bogost - "Purposes of Persuasion"

Forensic, Deliberative, and Epideictic Rhetoric (318)

Religious rhetoric and conversion (319)

Logic of accountability - user-generated reviews and sales figures (318-319)

What do politics, advertising, and education all have in common? (320)

Issues about assessment

Issues about deliberation - the critique of The Howard Dean for Iowa Game - politics as a numbers game (328)

"Persuasive games expose the logic of situations in an attempt to draw players' attention to the evental site and encourage them to problematize the situation. Videogames themselves cannot produce events; they are, after all, representations, But they can help members of a situation address the logic that guides it and begin to make movements to improve it." (332)

A "vicious economic cycle" that can be understood through philosophical reflection (338)

When gifts aren't really gifts - Derrida (338)

The effects on individual players are unknown - "like literature, poetry, and art" (339)

"Processes influence us" (340)

What rules influence you? What processes are you conscious of?

Dating, shopping, public behavior in lines, etc.