Ruffin Bailey North Carolina State University Template shamelessly stolen from Christian Casper

1. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames Ruffin Bailey North Carolina State University Template shamelessly stolen from Christian Casper

2. Note: Two note taking applications • Windows: Foxit Reader -- http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/ • Macintosh: Skim -- http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

3. Overview • Bogost’s Background • What are Unit Operations? • Discussion of “Rhetorics” • Discussion Questions

4. Bogost’s Background • B.A. -- Philosophy and Comparative Literature -- USC • M.A. and Ph.D. -- Comparative Literature -- UCLA • Worked with N. Katherine Hayles • Faculty at Georgia Tech • School of Literature, Communication, and Culture • Works with Janet Murray

5. Bogost on the Report

6. Unit Operations: Definition • “modes of meaning-making that privilege discrete, disconnected actions over deterministic, progressive systems.” • “unit operations privilege function over context, instances over longevity.” • “unit operations give us a lever for understanding any form of human production as potentially procedural.”

7. Unit vs. System • “I contend that unit operations represent a shift away from system operations…” • “a movement away from the simple, orderly, static categorization of things.” • “In human biology, DNA nucleotide bonding displays unit operations; the Darwinian idea of acquired characteristics illustrates system operations.” • “The Internet, the brain, human genetics, and social fads are examples of complex, unit-driven networks.”

8. Traditional “Rhetorics” • Socratic • Technical • Vs. Dialectic (“unknown conclusions”) • Sophistic • Demonstrative/performative • Aristotelian • Philosophical

9. Burke Broadens • “While rhetoric still entails persuasion for Burke, he greatly expands its purview, arguing that it facilitates human action in general” (20) • “Wherever there is persuasion,” writes Burke, “there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning,’ there is ‘persuasion’” (21).

10. “New Rhetorics” • Visual • Emotional vs. Philosophical? (21ff) • Manipulated vs. Persuaded? (34) • Digital • Digital non-digital • Procedural • “Success means effective expression, not necessarily effective influence” (20)

11. McDonald’s Video Game,“anti-advergame” (29)

12. Save the Whales; Rhetoric? • “but the actions themselves are designed to generate provocation, not to make arguments for policy changes.” • Provocation isn’t rhetoric? • “Topics like taxation, deforestation, and globalization are not the usual subject matter of videogames… Procedural rhetoric is not limited to such anomalous specimens…”