Ian Bogost response

This was dense reading for me. Not only because it was academic but also because it tended to ramble. Sometimes I lost the point that was trying to be made and had to go back and reread. However I am glad for this reading because what I thought was the main point is video games are persuasive, and I am very interested in talking about that.

I found his idea of procedural rhetoric interesting though incredibly tedious. It left me feeling like I had missed something. What I go was that our interactions are made up of procedures, and these procedures effect our lives. So procedural rhetoric is using this series or rules to respond to discourse. His example of the return policy and how a human effects it verses a computer was actually very interesting, along with the point he made about creating new procedures. However, I became lot when I tried to truly understand what he meant when he said 'processes with other processes'.

I really enjoyed the part where he made the point that a sonnet is just a simple tool for poetry just as the physics engine is a tool for games. But both are very important to different expressions. In fact I wished he had continued with this idea. I'm curious when items to create games stop being tools and instead become part of this procedural rhetoric. I would argue that the mechanics of the game, especially the mechanics that the player can directly interact with, are definitely rhetorical. But other then that I'm not sure.

I think this piece wants to expand the idea of persuasion, and that in turn this expanded definition should be applied to games. I just can't seem to figure out how.