Comments on "Procedural Rhetoric" (#2)

Now let me turn to the substance of Bogost's argument that a new domain of procedural rhetoric is required to adequately analyze procedural expression in general and persuasive games in particular. My potential objections revolve around these questions:

1. Is "procedural rhetoric" really new?

Bogost notes, correctly, that procedures are followed in many human activities. The raison d'etre for a new domain of procedural rhetoric, however, is the capacity for computers to execute rule-based procedures at superhuman speed.

Nevertheless, allow me to look back rather than forward. Is not classical stasis theory a rule-based procedure? (As you recall, the theory holds that rhetors proceed through a series of steps to identify actual points of contention.) And is not Aristotle's theory of pathos, which George Kennedy has called "the earliest systematic discussion of human psychology," a rule-based procedure? (The sage suggested how rhetors could alternately induce anger or mildness, love or hate, fear or confidence, shame or shamelessness, indignation or pity, admiration or envy.)

So I remain skeptical of Bogost's claim that procedural rhetoric is an entirely new domain, rather than a computer-assisted version of earlier theories with long antecedents. But I will reserve judgment until I read the next chapters in which Bogost provides examples of his thesis.

2. Is the domain of visual rhetoric really inadequate for videogames?

Though Bogost makes a case for a new domain, he frames his argument according to the old domain he desires to leave behind. Bogost notes how Hill's "continuum of vividness" omits videogames and software, and then proceeds to place those procedural media within Hill's continuum. But if that is so, then why can we not expand theories of visual rhetoric to encompasse videogames, rather than establish for those games a whole new domain?

By the same token, Bogost takes issue with Blair's contention that visual images do not make "propositions" with which audiences can agree or disagree. Thus, asserts Blair, visual images may have presence (a term he takes from Perelman's new rhetoric) but they do not make arguments in the conventional sense. But of course, Blair's thesis (on which I have favorably blogged in another forum) is not the final word. Again, why not take on Blair first, before creating a whole new domain?

Do not get me wrong: I have read widely on visual rhetoric/communication and I agree with Bogost that the literature seems to privilege static and filmic visuality. Further, my readings about digital rhetoric affirm Bogost's objection that the literature is largely concerned with textuality. But why not correct these shortcomings first?

Finally, I would point out that the literature of visuality contains three strains of thought which are labeled visual rhetoric (how visuals constitute sites for argument), visual semantics (how visuals are structured to convey meaning), and visual pragmatics (how visuals function to create their effects). My question is: Though Bogost has taken the rhetorical route, would it be possible to analyze what he has called "persuasive games" through seminatics or pragmatics?

3. How does a "procedural rhetor" actually make an argument?

Bogost claims, "[P]rocedural rhetorics do mount propositions: each unit operation in a procedural representation is a claim about how part of the system it represents does, should, or could function" (p. 36).

Here my mind pictures a game designer writing code and setting up rule-based procedures that will guide gameplay. Then as gamers play the game, their play enthymematically fills in the missing propositions of the syllogistic arguments intended by the designer. Thus the gamers persuade themselves as they complete the designer's claim.

But as Bogost points out, by way of quoting Murray,

"[The] mere ability top move a joystick or click on a mouse" is not sufficient cause for "agency"--genuine embodied participation in an electronic environment. Rather, such environments must be meaningfully responsive to user input. . . . "Procedural environments are appealing to us not just because they exhibit rule-generated behavior, but because we [the users] can induce the behavior . . . the primary representational property of the computer is the codified rendering of responsive behaviors. This is what is most often meant when we say that computers are interactive. We mean they create an environment that is both procedural and participatory (p. 42).

The more participatory the game, the more the user is embodied, the better. Such participation and embodiment best occur within "the free space of movement within a more rigid structure," like the play in a steering wheel before the gears mesh (p. 42). Bogost calls the space between rule-based representation and player subjectivity the "simulation gap."

But if embodiment is maximized in "free space," and this free space is a gap in the rule-based representations of the game, then is the game's rhetoric attenuated as free space increases and players become more embodied and in control? In other words: the better the game, the less possibilities a designer has to make rhetorical claims? If that is so, then technological advances would diminish rather than enhance the designer's opportunities for making arguments, since those advances would create more free space for players to control the experience.

Though I do not necessarily assert this argument at the moment--and will await further reading of Bogost's examples in succeeding chapters--at least I pose this question at the outset for everyone's consideration.