Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
in hand, it is appropriate to look at where they come together to form a base
for this project and how this topic pushes beyond them to advocate for word-
play as a key means with which to understand video games.
RHETORIC AND GAMES
Unifying rhetorical analysis and games is a natural pairing, but the execu-
tion of the match has been problematic on both sides. Game studies is
largely lacking in terms of the connection and use of rhetorical tools, as
there are only a few projects where game studies explicitly invokes the tools
of rhetoric, even though the subject area and research questions in many
projects overlap with core skills and strengths of rhetorical analysis. Fur-
ther, much of the existing work is limited, with holdings pertinent to a
specifi c game or instance surrounding a game, rather than developing a
system or framework by which to apply the tools of rhetoric across many
dif erent kinds of games. This is part of what wordplay can do. One project
that seeks to do both is found in the work of Ian Bogost, who does an excel-
lent job of analyzing a specifi c element of gaming and how it connects to
rhetorical analysis in the form of procedures, but limits the role of rhetoric,
relying on a limited interpretation of its tools and only focusing on one
way in which persuasion, identifi cation, and meaning are made in games.
Procedural rhetoric is a key part of the discourse of games, but it is only
one part, and games studies can benefi t from wordplay's broader context
for rhetorical analysis.
On the other hand, rhetoric has a checkered history of integrating anal-
yses of contemporary media into a mode of analysis that was originally
designed to analyze speeches. The turn toward big rhetoric of ers room
for rhetoricians to examine an expanded notion of texts, but much of the
rhetorical analysis of contemporary media features substantive problems,
ranging from an inadequate adaptation to a new channel for communica-
tion to a lack of understanding of the actual workings and production of
the forms of communication. Unlike speech, which most people have a
background in producing before engaging in criticism, elements of media
like games and computer code can be foreign to critics, often resulting in
an incomplete analysis. This can lead to an increased emphasis on ana-
lyzing elements of written or spoken text, which more closely resembles
traditional surfaces for rhetorical analysis, than the technologies or struc-
tends to focus on the presentation of traditional materials—especially text
and images—without accounting for the computational underpinnings of
that presentation.”
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Extant positions of both game studies and rhetoric limited and partial
when it comes to analyzing video games. Game studies can benefi t from a
more thorough and complete integration of rhetorical analysis, as games
