Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
are riddled with words, design, and play that are designed to persuade,
create identifi cation, shape meanings, and circulate ideas. These messages
within games are not limited to the procedures of games, but video games
also cannot be reduced to their text or images, as much of the rhetori-
cal analysis that seeks to engage new media tends to do. Combining the
strengths of both leads to the development of wordplay, a ground upon
which to better understand the ways in which the discourse of games is
constituted and how that discourse functions. Wordplay gives scholars in
games studies a robust set of tools for the analysis of games and the struc-
tures surrounding them. This is particularly useful given the number of
projects that are connected to elements of rhetorical analysis—even when
a rhetorical perspective has not been explicitly claimed. For rhetoricians,
wordplay provides a grounded method of analyzing games and a more
thorough way to approach other new media objects. Wordplay moves rhe-
torical analysis forward by focusing both on the elements of a text that are
a comfortable fi t for rhetoric, like words and images, and on the crucially
important structures and technologies underlying media forms, like design
and play. For game developers, wordplay of ers a deeper understanding of
why certain elements in games work and why others do not. Further, by
recognizing how various factors function to create a discursive environ-
ment, developers can seek to make all the rhetorical texts of their games
work together in a concordant message that creates the desired gaming
environment for players. For those of us who play or are interested in video
games, wordplay grants a complex, sophisticated understanding of how
games do work on us by stimulating critical thinking about video games
and the messages they send. Although video games can be entertaining,
educational, or something else all together, thinking critically about the
messages sent puts game consumers in a position to refl ect on the ways in
which the discourse of video games creates and structures experience.
WHAT'S TO COME
There are two primary parts to this topic that demonstrate dif erent aspects
of wordplay and how specifi c elements of video games are particularly
interesting items to analyze. Each section takes on a dif erent aspect of
gaming to show how both broad social forces and seemingly small elements
of games work to construct a specifi c kind of gaming environment.
Part I:
The Context
The chapters in this section address how the contexts of gaming shape
how games are played. Starting with the larger forces surrounding games
enables a discussion of the rhetorical scene in which games are played,
