CAN GAMES CHANGE THE WORLD?
Nowadays, the possibilities with technology are so advanced that almost everything is possible. When looking at video games, they now can make extremely big worlds with mathematical constructions. To change those big worlds, you 'only' need the noise technique to make the game very time a different experience. Those extremely big and changing worlds that are now existing for video games are made possible by procedurality, see here how it works. Those codes for making those games possible are a rhetoric on his own, according to Bogost, and they should be called procedural rhetoric. Procedural rhetoric can be found in a lot of video games and Bogost gives a few examples in this video.
After reading the piece from the book 'Persuasive Games', I found it hard to understand where Bogost was talking about and it was extremely helpful for me to watch those two video's I linked in the paragraph above. Bogost (2007) described it as 'the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures', which sounds inspiring, but not very clear. After a more research about the topic and reflecting on this sentence again, I feel like he was trying to say how those mathematical codes to create a video game creates a new mode that can pass on a message.
When I was younger, I didn't play a lot of video games, I was more a girl that liked to play outside with friends. There are a few games where I didn't forget about and those are Nitendogs, Mario Kart and The Sims. I think I spend the most hours playing The Sims and I loved buying new expanding packages to create an even more diverse world. If I relate The Sims to the concept of procedural rhetoric, then I see that the way how you play The Sims determines and what choices you make during the game result in your unique outcome of the game. The game involves so many different factors where you have to deal with, for example money, love and social life. This game can then be a perfect example where the current 'normal' person has to deal with through life and it can be seen as a critique of how structure our lives has become. Bogost (2007) argues that 'videogames’ usefulness comes not from a capacity to transfer social or workplace skills, but rather from their capacity to give consumers and workers a means to critique business, social, and moral principles'. He mentioned a few example games (in the second video link) that are meant to be critiques to business, social, and moral principles. I can image that Bogost sees the game The Sims also as a critique about the way how we live, but in a less obvious way then some other games he mentioned.
Overal, I found it very interesting to learn more about the concept of procedural rhetoric. The techniques nowadays make it possible to create unique games that are based on the choices of the players of the game. Some of those games even try to critique the way how a certain thing is, like an immigration problem in politics. This all together raises one question: Can games change the world?
