I am the Game Studies Facilitator for the #Metagame Book Club (http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub). This is my Week 4 Lecture on the "Constructs of the Real and the Rhetoric of Games," with study emphasis on Ian Bogost's Procedural Rhetoric theory, and Ryan Lizardi's examination of the counterfactual and alternate histories presented in the Bioshock series. Live Video Lecture - The live recorded youtube video of this lecture is included toward the end of this presentation. Join the Metagame Book Club - We welcome all educators interested in gaming in education, game-based learning, gamification, and game studies to join the #Metagame Book Club. #Metagame Book Club (July 15 - August 16, 2014) http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub Find us on various social media with the hashtag, #Metagame

1. #Metagame Book Club
Track 1: Game Studies
Week 4: “Constructs Of The Real And
The Rhetoric Of Games”
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
@autnes
http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub

2. Guiding Questions 1
1. According to Ian Bogost, how do video games express procedural rhetoric?
What game examples did Bogost offer for analysis?
2. Ian Bogost calls on educators to employ video games in the classroom. How
should educators do so in light of the recognition of procedural rhetoric
expressed by video games?
3. Can you offer a procedural rhetorical analysis of your favorite (or least
favorite) video game? What claims does the video game make? What rules
and game mechanics are enforced by the game to support those claims?

3. Guiding Questions 2
4. According to Ryan Lizardi, what are the purposes for incorporating
counterfactual/alternate histories into literature, such as video games? How
do readers experience alternate histories?
5. Can you offer some examples of video games that offer
counterfactual/alternate histories? How do alternate histories influence your
understanding of actual history referenced by the video game?
6. Mark L. Sample points out various ethical problems with the representation
of torture in video games. What are some of the problems? How does “the
human distance between the interrogator and the interrogated” via video
games influence our experience of torture?

4. Game Studies Texts for Analysis
Constructs of the Real and the Rhetoric of Games
● [ARTICLE] "The Rhetoric of Video Games" by Ian Bogost
● [ARTICLE] "On Technical Agency and Procedural Rhetoric: A Quick
Response to Joshua McVeigh-Schulz" by Ian Bogost
● [ARTICLE] "Comparative Video Game Criticism" by Ian Bogost
● [ARTICLE] "Bioshock: Complex and Alternate Histories" by Ryan
Lizardi
● [ARTICLE] "Virtual Torture: Videogames and the War on Terror" by
Mark L. Sample

5. “The Rhetoric of Video Games”
(2008)
by
Ian Bogost

6. Analysis of Animal Crossing
Ian Bogost explores “the rhetoric of
video games” by offering several video
game examples for analysis. He begins
the article by analyzing the Nintendo
Gamecube and DS game, Animal
Crossing, which re-presents cultural
values, particularly capitalism and
materialism, that influence the player’s
role in production and consumption. We
will explore the article in-depth to
understand how video games, like
Animal Crossing, can be analyzed as
literature with rhetorical functions.

7. Animal Crossing: An Animal Village Simulator
What is Animal Crossing trying to “say” to us?

8. Commerce of Animal Crossing
Bogost explains that Animal Crossing provides a model of commerce that
relies on an obligatory mortgage loan system (i.e. death pledges) to fuel
productivity:
“One of the more challenging projects in the game is paying off the mortgage
on one’s house. Animal Crossing allows players to upgrade their homes, but
doing so requires paying off a large note the player must take out to start the
game in the first place. The player must then pay down renovation mortgages
for even larger sums. While the game omits some of the more punitive
intricacies of long-term debt, such as compounding interest, improving one’s
home does require consistent work in the gameworld.”
(Bogost 117)

9. Materialism and Debt
Player is positioned in the game as a perpetual debt-bearer as the player is
prompted to continually incur debt to renovate the home and obtain goods:
“My son began to realize the dilemma facing him: the more material
possessions he took on, the more space he needed, and the more debt he had
to assume to provide that space. And the additional space just fueled more
material acquisitions, continuing the loop. This link between debt and
acquisition gives form to a routine that many mortgage holders fail to
recognize: buying more living space not only creates more debt, it also
drives the impulse to acquire more goods. More goods demand even more
space, creating a vicious cycle.”
(Bogost 117)

10. The Dealer: Tom Nook (Tanukichi)
Tom Nook (たぬきち, aka Japanese Raccoon Dog), is Animal Crossing’s in-
game Real Estate Tycoon & Shopkeeper. He’s the player’s loan holder and
goods dealer.

11. Corporate Bourgeoisie
The game provides a model of wealth distribution with Tom Nook as the
“Corporate Bourgeoisie” that forever locks the player in Consumer Proletariat
debt hell, with the lure of inexhaustible material goods:
“In contrast [to the game’s non-materialistic NPCs], the player participates in
a full consumer regimen: he pays off debt, buys and sells goods. Tom Nook
buys the player’s goods, which he converts to wealth. As the player pays off
debt and upgrades his home to store more goods, he sees Tom Nook convert
that wealth into increased commercial leverage—one’s own debt makes the
bank rich. Tom Nook then leverages that wealth to draw more capital out of
the player, whose resources remain effectively constant. While the player
spends more, Nook makes more.” (Bogost 118)

12. Reality in Animal Crossing
Simulation Games, like Animal Crossing, re-presents the real world in a
simple form with emphasis on certain moral attitudes and ideologies of the
real world:
“Animal Crossing is also a game about long-term debt. It is a game about the
repetition of mundane work necessary to support contemporary material
property ideals. It is a game about the bittersweet consequences of acquiring
goods and keeping up with the Joneses. Animal Crossing accomplishes this
feat not through moralistic regulation, but by creating a model of commerce
and debt in which the player can experience and discover such consequences.
In its model, the game simplifies the real world in order to draw attention
to relevant aspects of that world.”
(Bogost 118)

13. Possibility Spaces of Video Games
Reminiscent of Huizinga’s definition of the magic circle where play occurs
within the “conditions of play,” Bogost defines video games as possibility
spaces where play occurs within the “constraints of computer rules and
representations.” Meaning is generated by combination of game rules:
“In a video game, the possibility space refers to the myriad configurations the
player might construct to see the ways the processes inscribed in the system
work. This is really what we do when we play video games: we explore the
possibility space its rules afford by manipulating the symbolic systems
the game provides. The rules do not merely create the experience of play—
they also construct the meaning of the game. That is to say, the gestures,
experiences, and interactions a game’s rules allow (and disallow) make up the
game’s significance.” (Bogost 121)

14. On Procedurality of Computers and
Procedural Rhetoric of Video Games

15. Procedurality and Representation
“Procedurality gets its name from the function of the processor—
procedurality is the principal value of the computer, which creates meaning
through the interaction of algorithms.”
(Bogost 122)
“When video games represent things—anything from space demons to long-
term debt—they do so through procedurality, by constructing rule-based
models of their chosen topics. In Doom’s model of the world, emphasis is
placed on the trajectory and power of weaponry. In Animal Crossing’s model
of the world, emphasis is placed on work, trade, and arrangement of the
environment.”
(Bogost 123)

16. Classic Rhetoric
● In Gorgias, Plato
defines rhetoric as the
art of persuasion, or
making persuasive
civic speeches.
● For Aristotle, the art of
persuasion is more
complex; it involves
judging reasons,
context & audience so
to employ a set of
oratory means for
achieving persuasion.

17. Procedural Rhetoric
“I suggest the name procedural rhetoric for the practice of using processes
persuasively, just as verbal rhetoric is the practice of using oratory
persuasively and visual rhetoric is the practice of using images persuasively.
Procedural rhetoric is a general name for the practice of authoring
arguments through processes. Following the classical model, procedural
rhetoric entails persuasion—to change opinion or action. Following the
contemporary model, procedural rhetoric entails expression—to convey
ideas effectively. Procedural rhetoric is a subdomain of procedural
authorship; its arguments are made not through the construction of words or
images, but through the authorship of rules of behavior, the construction of
dynamic models. In computation, those rules are authored in code, through
the practice of programming.” (Bogost 125)

18. Procedural Rhetoric of Video
Games?
“Video games do not simply distract or entertain with empty, meaningless
content. Rather, video games can make claims about the world. But when
they do so, they do it not with oral speech, nor in writing, nor even with
images. Rather, video games make argument with processes. Procedural
rhetoric is the practice of effective persuasion and expression using
processes. Since assembling rules together to describe the function of
systems produces procedural representation, assembling particular rules that
suggest a particular function of a particular system characterizes procedural
rhetoric.”
(Bogost 125)

19. Video Games as Models
“Models of all kinds can be thought of as examples of procedural rhetoric;
they are devices that attempt to persuade their creators or users that a
machine works in a certain way. Video games too can adopt this type of goal;
for example, a flight simulator program attempts to model how the
mechanical and professional rules of aviation work. But since procedurality
is a symbolic medium rather than a material one, procedural rhetorics can
also make arguments about conceptual systems, like the model of
consumer capitalism in Animal Crossing.”
(Bogost 125)

20. Example Analysis of Bully

21. Game Rules/Social Rules in Bully
“In Bully [by Rockstar Games], the player takes the role of Jimmy Hopkins, an
adolescent just dropped off at Bullworth Academy by his disinterested
mother and stepfather, who are on the way to their lavish honeymoon. . . .
The game has been reviled for supposedly glorifying bullying, but the
experience it creates is anything but celebratory. Even if the player struggles
to steer Jimmy away from trouble, it catches up to him thanks to the petty
malevolence of his peers. Students mill in the quad and buildings, either
verbally and physically abusing each other or receding from verbal and
physical attacks. Staying out of the way of the bullies (bullies in the game
conveniently have their own clique, and all wear the same clothes) allows
a player to avoid tussles. If a player stands in front of the wrong locker,
he or she should expect to get shoved out of the way.”
(Bogost 133)

22. Procedural Rhetoric of Bully
The game model in Bully contains certain rules, such as requiring the player
to form alliances and confront bullies (via verbal and fist fights) in order to
survive high school. By imposing such rules on the player, the game is making
the claim that high school is a volatile environment where hierarchy and
power structures exist:
“Bully models the social environment of high school through an
expressive system of rules, and makes a procedural argument for the
necessity of confrontation. Confronting bullies is not a desirable or noble
action in the game, but it is necessary if one wants to restore justice. The
game privileges the underdogs—nerds and girls—and the player spends most
of his time undermining the bullies and the jocks in order to even the social
pecking order.” (Bogost 134)

23. “Bioshock: Complex and Alternate
Histories”
(2014)
by
Ryan Lizardi

24. (h)istories in Bioshock Series (2007-)
Although Clint Hocking, the former creative director of Lucas Arts and
Ubisoft, argues that Bioshock 1 presents ludonarrative dissonance (def.
narrative and gameplay are in conflict when the gameplay goes against the
narrative themes, disrupting the player’s states of flow and immersion),
Lizardi finds that the Bioshock series as a whole is advanced in enforcing
counterfactual historical narratives with ludic elements. For Lizardi, the game
is ideal for game studies in alternate histories.
“Specifically, this article argues that the Bioshock series encourages complex
historical interpretations as opposed to simplistic accepted histories, and that
it does so despite the games' fantastical literal content.”
(Lizardi)

25. Method for Analysis -
Counterfactualism in Bioshock Series
Lizardi argues that we need to examine whether a game’s counterfactual
historical narrative alludes to actual events and ideologies in the time period
referenced, in order to evaluate how well the game promotes critical thinking
about history.
“This analysis of the Bioshock series can look to elements of the
counterfactual historical narrative that retain direct connections to ideologies
and events during the time periods covered. Determining that the alternative
histories present in the Bioshock series live up to this ideal is important if
these games are to be posited as encouraging a contemplative historical
mindset.”
(Lizardi)

26. Art of Bioshock 1
“Inside Rapture”
“Evolve Today!”

27. Narrative of Bioshock 1 (2007)
● Setting - 1960s, in an underwater city named Rapture (populated by
American elites who came from the above ground, mainstream society).
● Themes - Objectivism; Capitalism; Evolution; Transhumanism.
● Characters
○ Andrew Ryan - A businessman and co-founder of Rapture as a safe
haven for American elites to thrive without government control.
○ Frank Fontaine - Co-founder of Rapture who later created his own
faction and warred against Ryan over ADAM.
○ Jack - Survivor of a plane crash (the player’s character).
○ Atlas - Mysterious person who helps Jack travel through Rapture.
● Conflicts - Obtaining ADAM (serum/sea slug that gives users superhuman
powers); Little Sisters; Big Daddies; Control of Rapture; Escape from
Rapture.

28. Art of Bioshock 2
“Tea Garden in Rapture”
“Ocean view from Rapture”

29. Narrative of Bioshock 2 (2010)
● Setting - 8 years after the events that transpired in Bioshock 1, the
setting is still in the underwater city named Rapture.
● Themes - Self vs. the Collective; Altruism vs. Domination; Humanness.
● Characters
○ Sophia Lamb - A collectivist and co-leader of The Rapture Family,
attempting to dominate the world (both above and below ground).
○ Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum - A geneticist who discovered ADAM, the
mother to all Little Sisters, and the co-leader of The Rapture Family;
○ Subject Delta - Earlier version of Big Daddy (the player’s character),
attempting to reunite with Little Sister Eleanor (Lamb’s daughter).
● Conflicts - Obtaining ADAM (serum/sea slug that gives users superhuman
powers); World Domination vs. Saving Little Sisters.

30. Art of Bioshock 3
“Elizabeth”
“The First Lady”

31. Narrative of Bioshock 3 (2013)
● Setting - 1912, in the sky city of Columbia, populated by Americans.
● Themes - “American exceptionalism, religious zealotry, fervent racism,
labor movements/revolutions and a healthy dose of quantum physics.”
● Characters
○ Zachary Comstock - Creator and Leader of Columbia; creates
Columbia as a pseudo-Christian utopia.
○ Elizabeth - Captive of Comstock; possesses super power over space-
time continuum.
○ Booker Dewitt - Former Pinkerton Government Agent who seeks to
rescue Elizabeth from Comstock’s control (the player’s character).
● Conflicts - Nativist vs. Elite founders fighting to maintaining privilege for
White Americans in Columbia.

32. Historical Meaning of
Alternate Histories
Lizardi references Schmeink’s argument that alternate histories, such as ones
presented in the Bioshock series, calls on players to “revisit” history, one that
is heightened by its fantasy setting and logic, so that the player would
critically reflect on the distinctions between fantasy and actual histories.
Helleckson further argues that alternate history “forces those who consume
these texts to ‘rethink their world and how it has become what it is’ (2000, p.
254).”
(Lizardi)

33. Morality of Choice in Bioshock 1
“In Bioshock, similar to series like Mass Effect (2007 - present), players are
given choices but not told immediately whether they were the “right” ones to
make, which limits the amount of reversal at a player’s disposal. Bioshock
presents itself as validating counterfactual, anti-historical determinism with
these ludic choices because when players are exercising their “free will” they
are not privy to the “infinite chain of causation” (Ferguson 1999, p. 37).”
“When players choose to hurt the Little Sisters they are given an ending that
highlights dominance and "brutality" that is often levied against those of
lower stature in society. By saving the Little Sisters players are given an
ending where those who have been dominated now have a "chance to learn,
to find love" and ‘to live.’”
(Lizardi)

34. Plausibility of (h)istory in Bioshock 2
“Connections can be drawn between the politics of Bioshock 2’s alternate
historical timeline and issues of community versus the individual that were so
prevalent in the McCarthy era and the subsequent hippie/youth movements
that followed. This is certainly a generalization of the era in question . . . but
this game deals with questions of collectivism versus the will of the individual
with direct connections to ideologies and events during this time period.”
“Playing as a Big Daddy and searching for your long lost pair-bonded Little
Sister, Eleanor, gamers must grapple with whether or not there is any
humanity left in your controlled protagonist - named Delta Four - manifested,
again, in the choice of whether or not to help or hurt the Little Sisters.”
(Lizardi)

35. Religion & Nationalism in Bioshock 3
“Bioshock series creator Ken Levine discusses how United States history is a
‘much broader story than what’s shown in Columbia’ and, channeling
Rosenstone, feels [it is] not a game’s responsibility to present the universal
accuracy but to present prevalent issues of the day such as ‘charismatic
religious movements’ and ‘growing nationalism’ (Lahti, 2013).”
“Even accepted and beloved icons of US history are called into question
because of their complex backgrounds, such as the game’s transformation of
the images of Washington and Lincoln into violent religious icons. Engaging
with such beloved American figures presents a ‘radical reframing of familiar
events . . . capable of calling into question’ much of what is historically held
dear (Uricchio 2005, p.335).” (Lizardi)

36. Religion & Nationalism in Bioshock 3
(Con’t)
“Our protagonist, Booker, must begin to help the leader of the revolting Vox
Populi, Daisy Fitzroy, to secure his and Elizabeth’s escape transportation from
the city of Columbia. Not only do players begin to contribute to the
symbolic fight between the hyper-capitalist, Comstock, and the
collective-minded revolutionaries, but they also begin to receive hints
about the ludological structure of jumping between alternate
dimensions/realities. Players must begin to pick up items in one reality to
bring them into another, and are introduced to the concept of individuals
who are dead in one reality but alive in another, which creates a
‘superposition’ where characters are rendered incapacitated by recalling
being both dead and alive simultaneously.” (Lizardi)

37. Watch Live Webinar To This Lecture

38. Lecture By:
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
Philosophy, Rhetoric, Game Studies
@autnes
Writings & Webinars
Access Slides: http://bit.ly/gamestudies4