Ian Bogost, a Video Game Connoisseur

Ian Bogost, a videogame designer and academic on the subject, is an eminent presence in the study of video games. As an infant medium, video games are yet to be heavily pondered or critiqued. While many jump to the conclusion that video games are reserved for the lazy and young, Bogost argues differently. In a 2007 interview, Bogost clarifies some skepticism I had after reading his paper The Rhetoric of Video Games. Bogost is not claiming that all video games are in some way trying to persuade their audience into thinking a certain way. Instead, Bogost wishes to only focus on a niche genre of games, those that are informative and instructive in some way of the world around us. While Halo or Gears of War may have been created purely for entertainment value, games do exist which hope to instruct their players into thinking a certain way.

My original thought while reading The Rhetoric of Video Games was along the lines of why should I care about The McDonalds Videogame or Take Back Illinois? To be perfectly honest, not many know or care about such games and they could be seen as almost not worth mentioning. Yet Bogost’s argument deserves a good deal of respect, and indeed such games deserve an equal amount. The simple truth is that video games can perhaps be broken down into two categories: those that entertain and those that carry social meaning. Just like any other medium, like film, not all artifacts exist for one purpose, but instead can exist for many. Both An Inconvenient Truth and Jackass exist under the genre of film, yet their intents are completely different. Similar is the case with video games.

…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 an argument with processes.

Video Games can be boiled down a series of decisions and actions made by a player. These actions can range from a deadly headshot of an enemy to whether or not to genetically modify your virtual cows. Either way, these actions are reflections of both who we are and what exactly the developers intended. An example given by Bogost in his aforementioned interview of the merger between informative gaming and entertainment-driven gaming is Grand Theft Auto by Rockstar. Playing a character in an impoverished part of town, the only choice for food is fast food, which can lead to your character’s decline into obesity. This inclusion of lack of culinary choices in Grand Theft Auto is, in Bogost’s eyes, a statement about the obesity and food crisis in America today. Whether or not this aspect of the game was deliberately included by Rockstar’s developers is debatable, as it could be seen as merely a realistic touch coded into the experience. Should it be taken as a social commentary, Rockstar’s developers would be perceived as attempting to persuade their players into thinking a certain way about fast food and its various associated dangers.

Bogost asks us to look at video games not as a lazy child’s hobby, but instead as a medium like any other. Such mediums have the power to change people’s minds, and so do video games. Will games like Take Back Illinois ever be seen flying off of GameStop shelves worldwide? Probably not. But this is not necessarily Bogost’s end goal. Bogost simply wishes to transcend the stigma attached to video games and have them viewed by future generations as an experience even more powerful than film or the written word, one that is interactive. While an orator can elaborate on an issue for hours trying to persuade your mind, no choices are being made by the recipient of the words that will affect future outcomes. In a video game, however, your choices echo and influence one another down the road. Video games allow for us to see a realistic view of what could happen or go wrong in any given situation. In Animal Crossing, for example, your character could plummet into debt and no one is at fault but you. Such experiences allow us to feel the consequences of such actions more so than other mediums.

To further distill Bogost’s ideology, actions speak louder than words. Video games allow for us to experience action, a concept far more potent than letters on a page. A player that genuinely feels his virtual character climb into debt, for example, is far more persuasive than a paper outlining why debt sucks. It is for this reason that video games are a valid form of rhetoric.