Comments on Bogost's "Advertising"

Having now read the "Politics" and "Advertising" sections of Persuasive Games, let me sum up my general thoughts of the book:

What I like . . .

> Bogost sees a problem in the current literature and is willing to publicly propose a novel solution, namely procedural rhetoric. Further, he is willing to do the hard work of writing and publishing a book to support his thesis. Putting your ideas out in public is admirable!

> His book is a "keeper" as far as a good reference on the history of videogames. As someone who has an interest in (and has published on) media history, but mostly on "old media," Bogost's book offers a good resource as I ponder the continuities and differences of new media.

What I would like to see . . .

> In my view Bogost has moved too soon to criticism, without first developing his theoretical grounding.

> As such, Persuasive Games is mostly a book that features lots of game reviews (the "what") but gives less space to how "procedural rhetoric" actually works (the "how").

I'm willing to concede that descriptive work is important in developing a theory. But I would like to see in Bogost's subsequent writings more work on the actual theory development.

To see others' takes on Persuasive Games, I looked up reviews of the book. There weren't too many since the book is relatively new. But here are two:

http://www.jorisdormans.nl/article.php?ref=persuasivegames

http://game-research.com/index.php/book-reviews/book-review-persuasive-games-the-expressive-power-of-videogames/

In the first review, Dormans writes:

. . . The book touches upon a large variety of subjects beyond gaming: politics, education and advertising. In lengthy expositions Bogost shows how the logics of these fields have been incorporated in games, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. The high number of subjects and games discussed is probably one of the book greatest strengths, but I would have preferred Bogost to discuss procedural rhetoric itself more rigorously.

Despite the broad perspective and the wide variety of games discussed, Persuasive Games has a tendency to become a little bit repetitive. Games are either applauded for incorporating its primary message in its procedural structure, or dismissed for failing to do so. Although the analyses are solid and some of the verdicts are surprising you get the point after a couple of hundred pages. Looking at politics, advertising and education through the lens of videogames is interesting but I got the feeling that it could have been done just as effectively in about half of number the pages. . . .

Bogost discusses his procedural rhetoric in relation to classic and contemporary rhetoric, but the only rhetoric structure that is actually (and repeatedly) discussed in any detail is the procedural equivalent of the enthymeme. . . .

[Bogost's] humanist perspective on games makes Persuasive Games a very sympathetic book. But perhaps at certain points also a little bit descriptive and naive: Bogost believes games can restore contemporary culture broken by modern politics, advertising and ‘schooling’ (p. 64).

In the second review, Smith writes:

First of all, the plethora of competing labels and perfunctorily defined buzz-words floating about calls out for a careful survey of the field and a framework for analyzing the variety of specimen in the fast-growing serious games biotope. Second, we need a sense of the relative abilities of videogames to persuade; that is we need a theory of how, why and when they do persuade and preferably some documentation that they do in fact persuade. Bogost convincingly supplies the former but does not fully tackle the latter. No convenient model of game-based persuasion appears fully-formed in Bogost’s text. Instead we get a meticulously researched and clearly composed treasure-trove of examples alongside various hints of a larger theory. . . .

Bogost does not claim that all players necessarily reach the same conclusions [as his game criticisms] but this type of analysis does arguably make very strong assumptions about actual player interpretations without empirical basis. This approach in turn highlights the rather modest attention in the book to describing the exact working of procedural rhetorics and to documenting its efficiency. We hear little of why engaging with processes are a useful way of understanding the real-world phenomena that they represent. We are given very few leads to theoretical literature that might lend credence to the idea that personal engagement is important in persuasion. And we are not informed of one single instance in which anybody changed his mind or behavior after playing a game.

Bogost does well to tie his discussion to classical and visual rhetorics as well as captology. But practically passing the entire field of “persuasion research” which provides both theoretical models (e.g. O’Keefe, 1990) and empirical studies of the effects of various aspects of computerized persuasion (e.g. Sundar & Kim, 2005) is a curious choice. These omissions may leave the reader on shaky ground as to evaluating the very importance of games as tools for persuasion or critical thought.

Of course, few (sub)fields come nicely gift-wrapped and fully articulated in a single volume. Persuasive Games creates order from chaos and puts recent game developments into a much-needed historical perspective. This is an invaluable service to the field and the thoughtful treatment of a wide range of little-known games is inspiring as a case of game analysis in action. These achievements make me recommend the book warmly, while looking forward to Bogost’s future fleshing out of the theory and empirical merits of persuasive games.

Okay, so I'm not alone in (a) admiring Bogost for what he is attempting with Persuasive Games while also (b) finding the book more descriptive than explanatory.