To parents seeking to shape their children and to adults seeking professional success, video games signify the demise of productivity. We see video games, more than any form of popular entertainment – including movies and TV – as obstacles to achievement and as good-for-nothing ways to spend time. Yet video games have now been around long enough, and have become complex enough, to put forth challenges that spark thinking and that encourage users to engage in problem-solving and other useful tasks. And as Ian Bogost argues in “The Rhetoric of Video Games,” these games have adopted a rhetorical style of their own. These developments may certainly come as a shock to careful parents, and might cause a surge of excitement in fun-seeking kids and adults.

Video games, much like the computers that have allowed for their creation, stem from a simple input and output system. Writing a line of code will produce a specific response in its host device; pressing a button on a controller will elicit a response from an on-screen character. This cause and effect relationship had simple beginnings in computer programming and video games, but both have evolved tremendously since their inception decades ago. This evolution has brought video games to vastly expand what Bogost calls their “possibility space.” The possibility space of a video game is the parameters in which the player is allowed to play. Often video games focus on certain objectives for the player to complete, and it is the challenge for the player to discern the best and most efficient way to complete those with the objects and locations given. As technological capabilities have become more numerous – visuals have gotten sharper, hardware more advanced – this possibility space has grown. Games in which there is a clear possibility space, in which players have a great deal of freedom,  include “sandbox games” such as the Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed franchises. With this freedom comes a greater challenge for players to figure out the best way to approach a goal. Users are also able to tailor their play style according to personal strengths and even personality. Games in which users decide the fate of a character using a moral code, such as Fable, are some of the most customizable. Technological advancements, including those allowing for larger landscapes and more variation in the Grand Theft Auto series, have allowed for an unexpected development in rhetorical patterns.

The fourth title from the popular Civilization franchise.

Games such as Fable not only provide a fun experience for users, they also necessitate the use of anticipatory thinking. The experience of playing the game depends highly upon the consequences of the player’s choices. Simply, a player could choose to make the character good or evil. Thus the experience of playing Fable depends on the choices a player makes and how those choices affect the remainder of the story. Other games include structures that depend on the choices of the player. The Civilization series allows players complete control of a civilization, from its small beginnings to potential domination of the virtual world. Players make decisions surrounding technological advancements, advancements within the city’s cultural and social systems, and in warfare and battle with other civilizations. Yet in recent release Civilization V, players can choose any of five ways to “win” the game. Victory through diplomacy, technological advancement, and domination are all possible, but require the player to direct actions within the game specifically to those goals. Thus the game teaches, by way of necessity, to anticipate the repercussive effects of actions within the game. The possibility space of these games creates a unique rhetorical effect on players.

Choosing to assist a group of bandits in Fable will point the player’s moral compass away from good. Choosing to use a civilization’s vast military power will ensure victory in Civilization. Yet players of both of these games must understand the consequences of these actions to have success within the game. These unique patterns of play have been made possible by developments in the possibility space of the game. The same developments have allowed for greater freedom in “open world” games Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto. Despite stigmas surrounding their value, video games have undoubtedly evolved into complex forms of entertainment that promote beneficial behavior in many who use them.