Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
technological systems and software (including the imagined player
embedded in them), the material world (including our bodies at the
keyboard), the online space of the game (if any), game genre, and its
histories, the social worlds that infuse the game and situate us outside
of it, the emergent practices of communities, our interior lives, personal
histories, and aesthetic experience, institutional structures that shape
the game and our activities as players, legal structures, and indeed the
broader culture around us with its conceptual frames and tropes. 46
These dynamics of er surfaces on which rhetorical analysis helps explain
why or how key forces interact and the ways in which they remake or infl u-
ence video games. In doing this sort of analysis, wordplay can help expli-
cate the persuasive forces that dictate how knowledge is created and how
the terms are set for 'what counts' in video games and virtual worlds.
Several more targeted projects in game studies address specifi c instances
of discourse in which wordplay would be useful. Mark Silverman and Bart
Simon argue that DKP systems have a tangible impact on the way players
interact in online games, arguing, “Players do not work together because
the prospect of a reward gives them an incentive to do so. Rather, by play-
ing a certain way (i.e., as a power gamer), they begin to perform a rational
subjectivity that views the game in terms of incentives and rewards.” 47 One
could argue that DKP functions symbolically as a player-generated rhetori-
cal message that reshapes the way those participating in DKP systems see
the game world, redefi ning the relative 'truths' in the game. Certain games
put players into situations in which they must allocate scarce resources and
the systems players derive function rhetorically to encourage them to alter
the ways in which they play. In the case of DKP, players develop their own
systems for addressing a design element of the game they play. The rules
they choose can be read rhetorically to better understand what drives dif-
ferent groups of players and how game design intersects with player action.
Lisa Nakamura argues, “Player-produced machinima accessed from War-
craftmovies.com make arguments about race, labor, and the racialization
of space.” 48 In this case Nakamura argues that machinima, which is dis-
course from outside the game, shapes the ways in which players conceive of
representation and behavior within the game. Nakamura's work expands
the kinds of texts that may be of interest to scholars analyzing video games,
demonstrating how a paratext can function to infl uence interaction. These
two projects look at dif erent aspects of gaming, yet the thread between
them is that the texts they study constitute elements of the discourse of
gaming and could be complemented by the rhetorical perspective embed-
ded within wordplay.
There are a variety of ways for rhetorical analysis to aid in the analysis of
video games. With all the surfaces, interactions, and topics contained within
and surrounding games, there is plenty of room for analysis of persuasion
and knowledge claims. With a background of both rhetoric and game studies
 
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