Bogost part 2

To recap Bogost defines procedural rhetoric as "arguments through authorship of rules of behavior, the construction of dynamic models" or "the rules authored in code through practice of programming". It's more than just verbal, written, and visual rhetoric. This distinction is important because by looking at these "procedures" we can understand video games even better.

I'm still a bit confused as to what Bogost meant by "procedural representation". It seems just like procedural rhetoric to me, but I think they might be different. But I really like the relationship between procedural rhetoric/representation and play/agency. Here play is defined as "free space of movement within a more rigid structure". Bogost also points out that the agency in video games needs to be more than just requiring a user to hit buttons. The "environment requires meaningful response to user input". In other words, "video games require user action to complete their procedural representations". I've never thought about video games quite like this. There's structure and rules/controls set up by programmers in video games, but the actual space that the users/players experience when they play them is created by the processes. How much and how seamlessly a game invites a meaningful "movement" in the "space" of video games really is important for players to engage it and have fun with it. Makes me think of how this class is set up….  :)