Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing on the 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogost analyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric.Bogost calls this new form "procedural rhetoric," a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a unique persuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not only can videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can also disrupt and change these positions themselves, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasion has already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, and learning. Bogost is both an academic researcher and videogame designer, and Persuasive Games reflects both theoretical and a game design goals.
Hi, I'm Ian Bogost. I am a designer, philosopher, critic, and researcher who focuses on computational media--videogames in particular. I'm also an author and an entrepreneur. I am a professor at Georgia Tech (a university), a Founding Partner at Persuasive Games (a videogame studio), and a cofounder at Open Texture (a small media publisher).
Research and Teaching
In my academic life, I am Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
My research focuses on videogames as cultural artifacts. In particular, I'm interested in contextualizng games in the long history of human expression (game criticism), in how games make arguments (game rhetoric), and in the relationship between computer hardware and expression. These three subjects are the respective topics of my recent books: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press 2006), Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press 2007), Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (MIT Press 2009, co-authored with Nick Montfort), Newsgames: Journalism at Play (MIT Press 2010, co-authored with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer), and How To Do Things with Videogames (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
Much of my work concerns the uses of videogames outside entertainment, including politics, advertising, learning, and art. But I'm also very interested in mainstream commercial videogames and historical approaches to videogames, as well as experimental, independent, and artistic games. I write frequently in the videogame trade press.
More recently, I've been looking at on the way hardware and software platforms influence creative practice. Nick Montfort and I co-edit a book series on this topic called Platform Studies, and we've written the first book in that series, on the Atari, mentioned above. I'm fascinated to the point of obsession with the Atari, and I often use it in teaching, research, and in my own artistic practice.
Through my work with platforms, I've also developed an interest in new trends in philosophy, particularly speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. My philosophical study of the phenomenology of objects, Alien Phenomenology, will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2012.
Game Design and Development
I am the co-founder of Persuasive Games, an award-winning independent videogame studio that makes games about social and political issues. Our work covers a wide variety of topics not usually found in videogames, including airport security, disaffected copy store workers, global petroleum market, Christmas shopping, tort reform, suburban errands, and pandemic flu. Our games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally at venues including Laboral Centro de Arte (Madrid), Fournos Centre for Digital Culture (Athens), Eyebeam Center (New York), Slamdance Guerilla Game Festival (Park City), the Israeli Center for Digital Art (Holon) and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne).
We also create games for advertising, learning, corporate training, and politics. Our clients have included Dominos Pizza, Cisco, Chrysler/Jeep, and Cold Stone Creamery. We've also focused on "newsgames," a genre that blends videogames with editorial cartoons. In mid 2007 we published games with The New York Times, who ran our games in the op-ed section of their online paper.
Publishing
I'm also a co-founder of a small media publishing company called Open Texture. We are a small, independent publisher of books and media, focusing on new approaches to classic forms. From helping children learn Ancient Greek to bringing poetry to videogames, we're reinventing familiar ideas for the twenty-first century.
We've published an ancient Greek curriculum suitable for anyone, from kids as young as 2nd or 3rd grade up through adults. I leant my voice to the Elementary Greek series, reading the audio companions for all three years of the course.
More recently, we've started publishing independent videogames, starting with my own title A Slow Year. We're particularly interested in bringing work to market that offers an alternative to current trends in digital distribution, focusing instead on the creation of thoughtful, deliberate physical products.
Background
In the past I've worked in financial services, graphic design, advertising, technology, business consulting, and entertainment. I was CTO of an interactive studio in Los Angeles during "Bubble 1.0." Before I settled down to do my dissertation on videogame criticism, I was a scholar of poetry, mostly European modern, contemporary American, and Greek Lyric. I have a Bachelors degree in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA.
