Ian Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric is a tantalising theory of the power and potential of computer games, especially serious games. Yet does this concept really distinguish games from other media? Can this concept be usefully applied to the design and critique of serious games? This paper explores the ramifications of games (particularly serious games) as procedural rhetoric and whether this concept is problematic, useful, inclusive, or better employed as a recalibrated meta-epistemic theory of serious games that persuade or suggest to the player that the game mechanics, game genre, or digitally simulated world-view is open to criticism and reflection.

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Algorithms Pushed Me to the Dark Side:
Questions for Procedural Rhetoric
Erik Champion, Faculty of Humanities

2. Algorithms Pushed Me to the Dark Side
• Ian Bogost (2007) defined
procedural rhetoric as ‘a
practice of using processes
persuasively.’
• But, are c. games unique?
• Useful for design /critique of
serious games?
• Or better employed as a
recalibrated meta-epistemic
theory of serious games?
http://bogost.com/books/persuasive_games/

3. My expertise in Procedural Rhetoric??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-702P

4. Book

5. Biased questions for PR
1. PR or criticism and dissection of PR?
2. Is it successful if people can dissect/deconstruct PR?
3. Too formalist?
4. How does PR work with agency?
5. Is Rhetoric empty argument? How does PR differ to Gamification?
6. Traditional rhetoric is speech +writing and oratory also spatial? Can
sequentially experienced art be PR? Karnak, Acropolis?
7. Rhetoric depends on memory, how does it work in people with different
cognitive load and with different strategies/game-play, learning
modalities?
8. What if you want characters to drive PR? (Like competing archaeological
theories)
9. Can it be work with real-world input and physical computing?
10. How does it relate to the 3 ways of designing /playing historical games?

6. 1. Problem With ‘Rhetoric’
• Rhetoric has a negative connotation.
• In Arguing well, John Shand (2002) declared ‘Logic must be sharply
distinguished from what might generally be called rhetoric… rhetoric is not
committed to using good arguments.’
• Rhetoric involves the art of persuading, not necessarily the art of opening
up games as vehicles of critical discourse (Chaplin 2011)
• Aristotle (dialectical reasoning=universal truths & then rhetoric) vs. Plato
(sophists employ empty rhetoric).
• Components: Inventio (discovery of arguments), dispositio, elocutio,
memoria, and pronuntiatio develop convincing and compelling arguments
• Anc. Greeks were their own lawyers!
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

7. 2. PR de=sign or critical method?
• Aim of PR: design or
understand the design
of PR in computer
games?
• Similar as problem to
epistemic games-
epistemic or
epistemological?
• What is success?
Defined by whom?

8. 3. Too formalist?
• Sicart: ‘The proceduralists take their
starting point in Murray’s statement
that digital games are unique, among
other things, because of their
procedural nature (Murray, 1998),
that is, because they are processes
that operate in way that is akin to
how computers operate.’
• ‘Proceduralists claim that players, by
reconstructing the meaning
embedded in the rules, are
persuaded by virtue of the games’
procedural nature.’
• But ‘Play belongs to players, and the
games’ meaning resides in the
actions of players.’
• But players often distort or
misunderstand the rules!
• Are game designers authors?
September 12: Not a game

9. Games definitions: challenge?
• A rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome,
where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts
effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the
outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and
negotiable. (Juul 2003, para 15).
• A system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules,
that results in a quantifiable outcome. (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004).
• A challenge that offers up the possibility of temporary or permanent tactical
resolution without harmful outcomes to the real world situation of the
participant (Champion, 2006).
• NB Virtual environments have constraints and affordances while games have
risks and rewards.

10. Difficult to separate game from play
Rules of the game =the rules of the designer
=the rules of the player?
Essence of the game as rules-based system?
A rule-based system can be random, changing,
and open to change by the player.
Flanagan (2013): critical game play ==willful
subversion of the rules, avant-garde art as
exemplars.
Tronstad (2010) review: Critical play “means
to create or occupy play environments and
activities that represent one or more
questions about aspects of human
life…characterized by a careful examination of
social, cultural, political, or even personal
themes that function as alternates to popular
play spaces. […] games as “situations with
guidelines and procedures” (p. 7) and as
“social technologies” (p. 9).

11. 4. Agency: PR strips it away?
• Michael Mateas –procedural literacy
• Janet Murray -one feature of digital
games is their procedural nature
• Sicart: “The proceduralists take their
starting point in Murray’s statement
that digital games are unique, among
other things, because of their
procedural nature (Murray, 1998),
that is, because they are processes
that operate in way that is akin to
how computers operate.”
• Answer: .’games create complex
relations between the player, the
work, and the world via unit
operations that simultaneously
embed material, functional, and
discursive modes of representation
(Bogost, 2006, p.106).

12. 5. Too Similar to Gamification?
• [1]the addition to websites and learning environments of quantifiable actions that can be
ranked and processed (and information stored), with immediate and vastly exaggerated
feedback and graphically designed in the idiom of well-known computer game genres.
• [2] The use of game-based rules structures and interfaces by corporations “to manage and
control brand-communities and to create value”, this definition reveals both the attraction of
gamification to business and the derision it has received (Fuchs 2013).
• USEFULNESS: Task performance can be graphically rewarded and socially shared and
proponents have argued that gamification can provide deeper, richer and more engaging
learning (Schoech et al. 2013; Betts, Bal and Betts 2013; Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa 2014).
• Task performance can be graphically rewarded and socially shared and proponents have
argued that gamification can provide deeper, richer and more engaging learning (Schoech et
al. 2013; Betts, Bal and Betts 2013; Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa 2014).
• Many opposed to it (Bogost 2011b; Deterding et al. 2011b; Fuchs 2014).
Major features:
1. Has some goal in mind, the player works to achieve
2. Has systematic or emergent rules and
3. Is considered a form of play or competition

13. 6. Uniqueness? Spatiality?
3D of WWII prompts memories Little Big Planet
http://www.mediamolecule.com/blog/article/kareems_tal
k_from_learning_without_frontiers_2011/
UPF-SPECS Lab, Barcelona

14. 7. Memory and Learning Style
• What is the role of
memory and explicit
understanding in
gameplay?
• Do different types of
players necessitate
different forms of
rhetoric and is this
incorporated into PR
theory / design?

15. 8. Character-driven PR?
Renaissance-Wander and Chat NPC-oriented quests/narrative
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/file
details/?id=15566&searchtext=legacy

16. 9. Physical Data input?
Bodily Experiences-smell Indirect Biofed Environments
http://www.dead-mens-eyes.org/

17. 10. Historical/Role-playing games
Serious Games-Playing the past PublicVR-The Egyptian Temple
http://publicVR.org OR video at
http://vimeo.com/25901467

18. Conclusion: Responses to PR
Counter-Arguments
• Strong negative connotations but also specific terms for speaking & writing.
• PR: applied to game design OR understanding of game design?
• Success is? Shares issue with epistemic games-cannot lead horse to water.
• Ironically shares features with Gamification (but can be fruitfully resolved)?
Parameters
• Unclear how it works with different levels of agency.
• Unclear how unique it is in relation to procedurally experienced art forms.
• Unclear how it works with different cognitive loads, strategies, learning modalities.
• Needs more work in terms of variable biofeedback and other variable input.
Possibilities
• What if you want characters to drive PR? (E.g. competing archaeological theories).
• It could drive the design of historically contested places and environments and
simulations of historical interpretations but the theory needs more work.

19. Key References
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Bogost, I. (2008). Unit operations: An approach to videogame criticism: MIT
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video-games
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serious-games.html
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