Comments on Bogost's "Politics"

As you know, I completed Bogost's previous chapter on "Procedural Rhetorics" with a question about how a game designer uses procedurality to actually construct an argument. In my mind is the picture of a designer who encodes rule-based procedures into a game which then compel players to enthymematically fill in the missing premises.

I was hoping that the ensuing chapter on "Politics" might shed more light on my question. Instead the chapter focused on the content of the rhetorical arguments in the games under study, rather than explaining how those arguments were constructed through rule-based procedures.

In other words, Bogost's goal for the chapter seemed to be establishing the fact that persuasive games can make rhetorical arguments. But I already concede that point. What I'm looking for is not just the basic assertion that games can make arguments, but rather how those arguments are uniquely made through procedurality. For example:

> What specific coding decisions did the designer make (and not make) to construct specific arguments? How do these functions as enthymemes within the space of the game? Perhaps by interviewing designers Bogost could have gotten insights on how arguments were constructed, rather than only telling readers what arguments were made.

> How does procedurality uniquely argue for the values of, say, the US military in America's Game? It seems to me that the rhetoric of honor, duty, country has long been made in many other ways. Why should America's Game be viewed as a new rhetorical device rather than an intensification of existing devices? That returns us to a question I asked last week: Humans have followed rule-based procedures for making arguments since classical times. So, should videogames be seen as an entirely new rhetorical domain or as "computer-assisted rhetoric"?

> How can I, as an analyst, unpack something new from America's Game that I couldn't unpack from analyzing any number of US Army artifacts? The military ethos of objectifying the enemy, which Bogost mentions, has long been an object of scholarly study. (A classic work is Dower's War Without Mercy about the race war that developed between US and Japaneses forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II.) What can I learn by studying the game specifically as an artifact of "procedural rhetoric" that I couldn't learn by studying US Army artifacts in general?

Please know I have an open mind on all these issues. My questions are not rhetorical. I really do want to explore these questions.