Understanding Procedural Rhetoric
One of the most challenging assignments I ask my students to do involves performing a procedural analysis of a game of their choosing using Ian Bogost's notion of procedural rhetoric as a framework and springboard for conducting research into the way a game represents an idea or topic using its gameplay mechanics. As the course I teach with games fills the second half of Florida State's FYC requirement, a research-based component is mandatory, and after experimenting with how to best encourage students to do research, play games, and quote from them, I found Bogost's procedural rhetoric to be a fantastic resource. (Also, for more information about my use of procedural rhetoric, please check out the assignments tab, or the contribution I made to the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative). Then the question shifted to "how do I get students to understand procedural rhetoric?" That's what I'll be exploring here.
Procedural Gaming Activity
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. |
|