Procedural Rhetoric in Videogames

Procedural rhetoric in videogames explores how games, through their underlying rules and processes, persuade players and express ideas. This concept, championed by Ian Bogost in "Persuasive Games," posits that videogames are not just entertainment but powerful cultural artifacts capable of influencing attitudes and beliefs by demonstrating how systems work.

Videogames, unlike traditional media like books or films, offer a unique form of expression rooted in their procedurality. This refers to their fundamental ability to execute a series of rules, creating dynamic models that represent real or imagined systems. Understanding this core mechanism is key to appreciating how games subtly yet profoundly shape our perspectives.

What is Procedural Rhetoric in Videogames?

Procedural rhetoric is defined as the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions. It's distinct from verbal rhetoric (persuasion through spoken words), written rhetoric (through text), or visual rhetoric (through images). In essence, it's about making arguments by designing the mechanics and systems of a game.

Bogost argues that computers, with their capacity to run processes, are particularly adept at this. While ordinary software creates expressive artifacts, videogames have cultural meaning as computational artifacts. This makes them a relevant and popular medium for computational persuasion and expression, capable of disrupting and changing fundamental attitudes and beliefs.

Understanding Procedurality

At its heart, procedurality is the way things work—the methods, techniques, and logics that drive the operation of systems. We often encounter procedures in daily life, from bureaucratic policies to how a product return is handled. Consider a retail store return policy: a simple rule (return within two weeks) structures behavior. Computers formalize these procedures.

In computing, procedurality means authoring code that enforces rules to generate representations, rather than authoring the representation itself. This creates systems capable of producing many outcomes, all conforming to a set of guidelines.

Examples of Procedurality:

• Tenure (1975): This simulation game for the PLATO system modeled the first year of high school teaching. Players make decisions about grading, classroom rules, and student issues, revealing how educational practice is intertwined with personal and professional politics. The game argues that politics indelibly mark the learning experience by simulating complex interactions and consequences.
• Retail Returns: A human clerk might bend rules, but an online system follows strict programmed procedures. This highlights how computational procedures, while seemingly inflexible, are simply executing simplistic processes. More complex programming could account for customer loyalty or predictive buying habits.

Bogost introduces the term unit operations to describe these general processes, whether cultural, material, or representational. These operations allow for a compressed representation of complex systems.

Rhetoric Beyond Oratory

The concept of rhetoric has evolved significantly since its origins in classical Greece, where it primarily referred to persuasive public speaking. Originally, figures like Plato viewed rhetoric as mere flattery, but Aristotle systematized it, connecting it to logic and reason. He identified three types: forensic (justice), deliberative (public benefit), and epideictic (honor/shame).

Key Aristotelian concepts include:

• Induction (using examples to support a claim).
• Deduction (using syllogisms, like the enthymeme, where a premise is omitted but implied).

In modern times, rhetoric expanded beyond speech to include writing and visual arts. Kenneth Burke broadened rhetoric to encompass any symbolic system used to induce action or form attitudes, emphasizing "identification."

Visual Rhetoric and its Limitations

Visual rhetoric emerged to understand how images persuade. While photographs, films, and illustrations are undeniably persuasive, they operate differently than verbal or written forms. They can be vivid and evoke strong emotional responses, but they often struggle to make explicit propositional arguments or facilitate true dialectical interaction. An iconic example is the 1964 "Daisy Ad" for Lyndon Johnson, which visually implied a syllogism but didn't allow for direct rebuttal.

Crucially, visual rhetoric, despite its value, cannot fully explain videogames because images in games are often constructed, selected, or sequenced in code. In procedural media, the image is subordinate to the process itself.

The Distinctiveness of Digital Rhetoric

Digital rhetoric typically focuses on how traditional rhetorical strategies function in digital spaces (e.g., email, websites, blogs). However, many approaches to digital rhetoric overlook the unique computational underpinnings—the procedurality—of the medium. They treat the computer as a black-box network appliance, rather than an executor of processes.

Procedural rhetoric fills this gap by focusing on the machine's ability to facilitate the manipulation of processes, recognizing that the very rules and algorithms of a digital system can make arguments and persuade.

Key Domains of Procedural Persuasion

Bogost identifies three major domains where videogame persuasion has taken form and holds great promise:

1. Politics and Ideology

Videogames can illuminate and critique political processes and ideological frames. By simulating complex systems, games can expose the logics that structure behavior in politics and public policy. They can highlight the necessity of certain actions or the consequences of specific decisions, sometimes challenging deeply ingrained beliefs.

Example: The McDonald's Videogame

This game argues that corruption is inherent and necessary for success in the global fast-food business. Players must navigate choices involving growth hormones, coercing banana republics, and mounting PR campaigns. The game procedurally demonstrates that destroying indigenous villages, bribery, and covering up health risks become tempting, often marginally beneficial, elements of long-term success. It makes a strong procedural argument about the systemic issues within the industry.

2. Advertising and Consumerism

Procedural rhetoric in advertising moves beyond "associative" marketing (linking aspirations to brands) towards "demonstrative" advertising (showing the actual features and functions of products). Games can articulate a product's function through interactive play.

Examples:

• Advergames: Games explicitly designed to advertise a product or service. If designed with procedural rhetoric in mind, these games can show how a product works, not just what it is.
• G!rlpower Retouch: A public service campaign demonstrating photo retouching. While using visual sequences and text, a truly procedural version would allow users to interactively manipulate images under a system of rules that reveal the persuasive techniques, leading to a deeper understanding of image manipulation.
• Freaky Flakes: A PBS Kids game where users design a cereal box. It's a simple procedural argument about children's advertising but could be more effective. A more sophisticated version would enforce rules reflecting advertiser tactics, allowing players to succeed or fail in manipulating simulated children, thereby exposing the logic of advertising through direct interaction.

3. Learning and Values

Games offer a powerful medium for learning, not just by transferring skills or knowledge, but by allowing players to critique business, social, and moral principles. This is called procedural literacy—understanding how systems operate through interaction.

Examples:

• Values and Aspirations: Games can model complex social or moral dilemmas, inviting players to form judgments about systemic operations rather than just isolated facts.
• Exergames: Videogames that encourage physical activity. The most advanced exergames translate the rhetoric of a personal trainer (e.g., "work harder," "stay consistent") into procedural rules, making the persuasive elements of fitness intrinsic to the gameplay.

Procedural Rhetoric: Vividness and Dialectic

Procedural rhetoric offers a unique position on the spectrum of vividness and its relationship to dialectic (the process of reasoned discussion and objection):

• Vividness: Bogost argues that procedural representations, especially interactive simulations with high "process intensity" (emphasizing processes over data), can be more vivid than even moving images with sound, ranking just below actual experience. They allow users to actively engage with the simulated system, fostering a deep, experiential understanding.
• Dialectic: While games don't always allow players to change core rules directly (leading to critiques like Sherry Turkle's of Sim City for lacking alternative economic models), procedural rhetoric does mount propositions. Each unit operation is a claim about how a system functions. Players can raise procedural objections by trying different configurations within the system's rules or by creating alternative systems. This dialectic occurs within the broader media ecology, where games invite subsequent discourse and critique.

Procedural rhetoric, therefore, is not just about making arguments with computers, but recognizing how computers, through their very nature of executing processes, are inherently persuasive.

Frequently Asked Questions about Procedural Rhetoric in Videogames

What is procedural rhetoric in simple terms?

Procedural rhetoric means that videogames persuade us or make arguments not just through their stories or graphics, but through the actual rules and systems they make us interact with. When you play a game, the way its mechanics work can teach you or convince you of ideas about how the world functions.

How does procedural rhetoric relate to Bogost's "Persuasive Games"?

Ian Bogost coined the term "procedural rhetoric" and developed the concept extensively in his book "Persuasive Games." He argues that videogames' unique power lies in their ability to model processes and allow players to interact with them, thereby making persuasive claims about real or imagined systems. The book explores this power across politics, advertising, and learning.

Can you give an example of procedural rhetoric in a popular game?

While Bogost often uses specific examples, imagine a game like Civilization. When you play, the rules that link resource management, technological advancement, and diplomatic relations procedurally argue for certain historical and economic principles. For instance, the game's mechanics might subtly suggest that expansion leads to conflict or that technological superiority is key to dominance, without explicitly stating it in text.

What is the difference between visual rhetoric and procedural rhetoric?

Visual rhetoric persuades through images (like ads or photos). Procedural rhetoric persuades through processes—the underlying rules and interactions of a system, like a videogame. While games use visuals, their core persuasive power, according to Bogost, comes from how their systems work, not just how they look.

Why is procedural rhetoric important for students?

Understanding procedural rhetoric helps students critically analyze videogames and other interactive systems. It teaches them to look beyond surface-level content and recognize how the rules and mechanics of a system—be it a game, an app, or even a bureaucratic process—are designed to shape behavior, transmit ideas, and make arguments. This is a crucial skill in a world increasingly shaped by interactive digital media.