A few weeks ago in class, I touched on “The Walking Dead” video games and how interactive mediums can push storytelling beyond what is ordinarily possible in most traditional media forms. Now we have Bogost’s definition of “procedural rhetoric” and how video games can make arguments or teach lessons through their rules and mechanics, rather than just telling you something directly. As such, I’d like to take another brief look at this game to discuss how it approaches a “coming of age” story that directly uses its interactive format to allow the user to experience this growth alongside the protagonist rather than simply observing it as an outsider.

In Season 1, the player controls Lee, an adult who is a father figure to a young child named Clementine who has lost her parents. During this section, players make decisions in the narrative with clear knowledge of what consequences will arise from them. It’s obvious which dialogue options appeal to which philosophies and which characters. Choosing to save one character over another or accusing a person of betrayal or anything else will have straightforward and logical ramifications. The game’s mechanics reflect an adult’s understanding of the world – choices have clear consequences, and the player can generally predict the outcome of their decisions, mirroring an adult’s ability to understand cause and effect.

However, in Season 2, when the player takes control of Clementine as a slightly older child, the game’s mechanics transform to reflect her perspective. Up until this point, Clementine had all her decisions made for her by Lee, so with him gone, she makes the mistake of leaving her gun unattended and getting her friend killed. The player has absolutely no agency in this, Clementine isn’t used to considering the ramifications of her actions, so the player isn’t allowed to either. As the game progresses from this starting point of her character, decisions made have a murky aura in what their consequences will be. A simple act of kindness to a friend can unexpectedly cause a man’s death. A seemingly neutral statement may unexpectedly cause hatred and resentment from other characters. Minor choices sometimes have massive unforeseen consequences, while apparently major decisions might prove meaningless. This mechanical shift isn’t just a part of the story; it’s procedural rhetoric in action, using the game’s systems to show the nature of growing up and how children’s uncertainty and inexperience have them perceive the world.

The game culminates in its final decision, where the two adult figures get into a climactic argument that ends in a violent brawl. Clementine then chooses, does she let one character get killed, or shoot the other to save them? After a season of uncertain decisions and ambiguity, this is interestingly the only time in the game where Clementine as a character, and we as a player, have a clear understanding of the consequences of our decision. In this sense, the game is clearly about this growth, this development from having no-agency to complete-agency, and the murky path needed to reach this point. It’s about becoming Lee, and by using clarity in the game’s systems themselves, players don’t just observe Clementine’s coming-of-age story – they feel it directly through their interaction with the game’s mechanics.

In this way, The Walking Dead demonstrates one of the unique strengths of procedural rhetoric in video games – the ability to make arguments not just through what the player sees or is told, but through how they interact with the game itself. The game doesn’t just tell us about growing up; it creates a system that lets us experience that transition from childhood uncertainty to adult understanding through its very mechanics. This approach to storytelling would be impossible (or very difficult) in traditional media forms like books or film, which can only show us these transitions from the outside. By leveraging the interactive nature of video games and carefully designing its systems to reflect its themes, The Walking Dead creates a uniquely powerful coming-of-age story that exemplifies Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric.

Backfilling a response to the Group Project Reflections due to missed class weeks (re: https://ahutnick.github.io/alice02/):

As Tasha, Wandi, Melissa, and Wiktor have already described, our approach to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland text was to gamify the reader experience as something between the popular “choose-your-own-adventure” format of the 1970s/1980s and something using the more “paidia” aspects of Caillois’ classification of games axes – particularly under the headings of alea (chance) and ilinx (vertigo). The division of chapters into smaller blocks and simple text animations gave the reader a more playful presentation, suggesting a wandering path that may or may not match Carroll’s original while accompanied by exaggerated decision-choice buttons overseen by John Tenniel’s original Cheshire Cat illustration from the 1865 publication.

In future iterations, we would have liked to add genuine randomization to some decision points to expound Murray’s kaleidoscopic narrative away from the linear and into dynamic, multi-layered threads woven together into broad, interconnected storylines and events. (This approach follows how audience members experience the immersive format of Sleep No More in New York City, a theater production spreading out a reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth across a five-story maze of film noir, 1930s-inspired rooms and surreal staged spaces.) In this regard, some of Carroll’s dialogue served as inspiration:

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Early in the brainstorming process, the idea of “What if the reader was playing Alice?” turned to “What if the reader was playing Wonderland’s reaction to Alice?” – particularly echoed by Tasha’s previous comment about Carroll’s work, “despite its playfulness, it is incredibly rigid.” Melissa took a first pass at creating a game-flow outline for the reader/user, and each group member interpreted a different chapter to do with however they wanted.

The lack of a consistent approach became a huge strength, creating a broader diversity of potential experiences. As Melissa and Tasha took to more Alice-focused decision points, I saw Chapter V’s conversation between the caterpillar and Alice as a template that could lead into divergent story beats with similar themes (age, quality, or time). Including 20th-century progressive rock song lyrics provided a nice modern echo: Artists inspired by Carroll were put back into contrast against the original’s period-appropriate rhymes.

The design decision to mimic the look-and-feel of early Hypercard multimedia was deliberate, and it evolved toward the end with Wiktor’s interactive sub-game and Wandi’s selection of illustrations and videos. As others have said, big kudos to Tasha for crafting the underlying JavaScript code!

Simulation games like Microsoft Flight Simulator and Truck Simulator are well-loved for their immersive, lifelike recreations of real-world experiences. Beyond entertainment, these games serve as windows into the complex policies and systems of aviation and logistics, reflecting Ian Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric. Through rules and mechanics, they simulate the regulated environments of flight and transport, giving players first-hand exposure to the systems that underpin these industries. Let’s take a closer look at how both games illustrate Bogost’s theory and offer a unique understanding of the everyday policies and protocols that govern these sectors.

Microsoft Flight Simulator: The Rules of the Skies

Microsoft Flight Simulator is famous for its dedication to realism, offering players a near-authentic experience of flying everything from small private planes to commercial airliners. In this game, players encounter a range of protocols, from flight paths and real-time weather changes to communication with air traffic control, which all mirror the detailed structure of actual aviation policies.

Air Travel Policies in Action

To fly effectively, players must navigate a series of in-game regulations that simulate real-world aviation procedures. For example, every flight must follow established flight paths and maintain certain altitude levels, reflecting the protocols that ensure safety and efficiency in actual air travel. Moreover, pilots-in-training within the game must communicate with simulated air traffic controllers, mimicking the strict oversight provided by agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulatory bodies.

This system-oriented design showcases the intricate rules that structure air travel, demonstrating the need for policies that govern everything from air traffic coordination to pilot and crew conduct. By following these in-game procedures, players gain an appreciation for the structured nature of aviation and the countless safeguards that allow for safe and smooth air travel.

Learning Through Procedural Rhetoric

In Bogost’s terms, Microsoft Flight Simulator uses procedural rhetoric to communicate the complexity of aviation rules and guidelines. Rather than simply reading about these policies, players must actively engage with them by completing checklists, adhering to route restrictions, and managing fuel levels. Through interaction, players learn how these rules create a controlled environment that balances individual pilot actions with broader safety concerns, allowing them to experience the demands of the aviation industry from the cockpit.

Truck Simulator: The Logistics of Transportation

In Euro Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulator, players take on the role of truck drivers hauling freight across highways, delivering goods across regions, and handling day-to-day logistics. Much like Microsoft Flight Simulator, these games don’t merely offer a point-A-to-point-B experience; they replicate the policies and protocols that make real-world logistics possible.

Policy-Driven Gameplay

As truckers in the game, players encounter a range of regulations mirroring those in the actual trucking industry. For instance, players must adhere to speed limits, pay tolls, take mandatory rest breaks, and manage fuel, all of which are grounded in real-world policies designed to ensure safety and efficiency. By including these requirements, the game reflects the regulated environment of commercial trucking, where policies around driver hours, cargo weight, and safety standards play a critical role.

One significant mechanic in Truck Simulator is the rest requirement, which mandates that drivers stop and rest to avoid penalties. This mechanic mirrors laws that enforce mandatory break times for truck drivers, designed to reduce fatigue-related accidents and promote safe driving practices. Players learn through these mechanics that logistics is about more than just transportation—it’s about balancing efficiency with health and safety, as regulated by strict policies.

Experiencing Systems and Procedures

Through its mechanics, Truck Simulator creates a procedural rhetoric that helps players appreciate the real-world constraints of trucking. These rules aren’t just obstacles; they communicate the structured systems that keep transportation networks running smoothly. By taking scheduled breaks, paying tolls, and managing cargo within certain limits, players gain insight into the intricate processes that underpin logistics and the importance of policies that protect drivers, manage road conditions, and keep supply chains moving.

Real-World Systems in Simulation Games

Both Microsoft Flight Simulator and Truck Simulator demonstrate Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric by embedding real-world policies within their gameplay. These games don’t simply tell players about aviation and trucking rules—they simulate them, allowing players to directly engage with the systems and policies that shape these industries.

The appeal of these games lies in their ability to simulate the regulated environments of aviation and logistics, where strict procedures govern each step. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, players learn to appreciate the structured nature of air travel and the protocols that ensure safety. In Truck Simulator, players experience the balancing act of efficiency, safety, and policy compliance that makes modern trucking possible. Together, these simulations allow players to engage with the rules and procedures that define two critical industries, offering a new perspective on the systems that enable modern travel and commerce.

Conclusion: Simulations as Tools for Understanding

In Persuasive Games, Ian Bogost argued that games could make arguments and communicate ideas by simulating real-world systems. Microsoft Flight Simulator and Truck Simulator exemplify this concept through their structured mechanics, which invite players to navigate the procedural realities of aviation and trucking. By embedding policies and protocols within gameplay, these simulations provide a unique, interactive look into industries that are as structured as they are essential.

These games let players experience the routines, challenges, and responsibilities involved in these fields, demonstrating how policies and systems influence individual actions. They remind us that even in a virtual world, rules matter, and understanding them helps us gain a deeper appreciation for the industries that keep us moving forward.

Learning a language has always been a challenging yet rewarding pursuit. Duolingo, a widely popular app, has turned this endeavor into an engaging, game-like experience. Through colorful badges, streaks, and leaderboards, users dive into what feels like a playful competition, though beneath this lies a structured, disciplined system. Drawing from Foucault’s views on disciplinary frameworks, Sicart’s ideas of meaningful play, and Zuboff’s insights on exploitation, let’s examine how Duolingo guides users toward language fluency, the pleasures it offers, and the ethical concerns it raises.

Self Discipline in learning languages

Duolingo’s setup isn’t just a platform for vocabulary drills; it’s a structured environment that nudges users to commit to daily practice, establishing routines that soon feel automatic. Through streaks, XP rewards, and a constantly visible leaderboard, Duolingo structures user behavior to create daily engagement and a sense of achievement for consistent practice. This setup resonates with Foucault’s ideas on discipline – a system that encourages repeated actions until they become habitual. Over time, missing a day feels significant, and breaking a streak can feel like a failure, subtly reinforcing the discipline that keeps users on track.

The competitive elements heighten this sense of discipline. By ranking users based on their performance, the leaderboard makes language practice more than just a personal goal. With every point that gets them closer to the top, users are motivated by a social incentive to keep up. Through these incentives, Duolingo encourages not just simple studying but a competitive urgency that can become a powerful habit.

Progress and Meaningful Achievement

By combining playful elements with language study, Duolingo taps into what Sicart calls “the good life” in games: pursuing meaningful goals in ways that feel pleasurable leaning more towards desirable even. Every aspect of the app’s design is aimed at making users feel like they’re progressing, whether through completing daily goals, maintaining streaks, or receiving badges for achievements. With each success, users get that quick dopamine hit – a rush from knowing they’ve made progress.

This aspect of Duolingo creates a loop of immediate satisfaction that brings users back day after day. Completing a lesson or reaching a milestone satisfies our need for instant gratification, as it offers a quick feeling of accomplishment. The leaderboard, in particular, combines both the personal thrill of progressing in language and a social reward: seeing oneself climb the ranks among peers. Yet, while these rewards add motivation and enjoyment, they sometimes shift the focus away from actual language mastery toward simply “winning” the app’s rewards in my case I found my competitiveness to be the best triumph over processing and retaining information that was meant to teach me.

Underneath the Games Skin, Behavioral Surplus in Action

Duolingo also aligns with Shoshana Zuboff’s ideas on “behavioral surplus,” gathering and using extensive data on user behavior as a form of valuable insight. The platform captures information with each interaction, logging every choice, habit, and daily return, all of which help shape how the app functions and adapts. This type of method ensures that the app is working as intended and users are getting the proper analytical data that they don’t even know is constantly adapting the more they engage with the app This data collection, while vital for app improvements, raises questions about the motives behind these gamified elements.

Beyond simply helping users learn languages, Duolingo is an ecosystem built to optimize engagement, with features like streaks, notifications, and leaderboards that increase retention. This means the app might prioritize short-term engagement strategies rather than designing for lasting language competency. While I do think that short-term engagement is feeding the brain information one can’t retain, this is the kind of short-term engagement that users give to most apps they use on a daily basis. The use of these gamified elements, while reinforcing discipline and routine, can blur the line between learning and data collection, shifting focus toward the collection of user habits and patterns. It’s why I think that data collection made for the intent of short-term engagement gives a bad taste when improperly used mainly on pattern recognition.

The Balance of Enjoyment and Risks in Gamified Learning

The joys of using Duolingo are addicting ill say the least, it transforms language learning into a daily ritual, offering quick wins and visible progress that encourage continued engagement. However, gamified elements that encourage daily participation can sometimes create unwanted stress or competition, especially if users begin to focus on numbers over actual learning. Streaks, badges, and rankings risk turning language learning into a points game, where keeping up with the app’s pace feels like more of a chore than a passion.

These gamified features can also dilute the deeper purposes of language learning, as the intrinsic rewards of understanding and connecting through a new language take a backseat to a chase for streaks and scores. By focusing too heavily on gamification, platforms like Duolingo may inadvertently encourage a “play to win” mentality rather than a genuine “learn to connect” approach, leading users to lose sight of why they started learning in the first place. it helps to see it as a pet you always wanted but then the pet gets older and maturity sets in and now they’re not small but huge and demanding.

Conclusion

Duolingo is a compelling example of how gamified design can drive engagement, turning language learning into an accessible, dopamine-fueled activity. The game-like rewards, streaks, and leaderboards all make the process of learning feel enjoyable, motivating users to return consistently and adopt language learning as part of their daily routine. However, as we engage with these systems, it’s important to recognize the underlying data-driven model and consider how it shapes our experience.

While Duolingo’s design offers pleasure and progress, authentic language acquisition still relies on intrinsic motivation and connection – elements that go beyond the scope of any app. In the end, this balance between structured rewards and meaningful learning is what makes gamified education both an innovation and a challenge, leaving us to consider the role of “gameful” environments in shaping our habits and our understanding of how we learn and how we play.

Before we started this unit, I had never read Alice In Wonderland. In fact, I had never even watched the film (and still haven’t) so I approached the text with a very fresh mind. Given how much I adore illogical, abstract, and ludic artworks, I definitely found much to enjoy in the writing. One of the main things that stood out to me, which we discussed in class, was the distinct modularity of the chapters, in that each one felt self-contained from all the others. You can swap around the chapters in any order, and it would not matter as long as you cleaned up their transitions a little.

As my group brainstormed the different options we could approach with the project, we had many ideas. Ranging from intersecting different video-game genres to reflect the chaotic nature of the narrative to a straightforward branching-retelling in Twine to ambitious 2D Unity projects. After a week or two of brainstorming, we leaned into the modularity of the chapters in the novel. We let each of us have our take on how a particular chapter may look in an interactive narrative format. With how random and odd the story could be, there was no reason to stick to a consistent style for the entire project. Since I’ve only really touched C# and game-related-code, Matthew and Tasha took the lead on making the project function.

My initial goal was to try to flex my game-design muscles within my chapter and come up with something really interesting that incorporated Alice’s narrative into the gameplay in some cool way. Unfortunately, my Disney trip and other obligations greatly limited how much time I had to work on the project, so I aimed for something simple and intuitive to get the project finished in time.

The game’s initial concept was to be a grid-based mini-game based on the end of chapter 6, where you control the Cheshire Cat and lead Alice to the house of the March Hare. You do this by clicking on a tile to spawn the cat. The player can only choose a tile that is in a straight line vertically or horizontally to Alice. Alice would then walk to where the cat is one tile at a time; if she runs into an obstacle while walking, the player loses and must restart. After choosing a tile, the Cheshire’s grin permanently stays on that tile, and the player can not place a future cat there again. So the overall goal is to lead Alice from point A to point B while having her avoid obstacles along the way

I usually would first prototype this design itself on grid paper to try and see if this would even work as a game, but due to time constraints, I neglected this and went straight to the code, spending a long while getting the grid system, turn system, and core mechanics to work. Unfortunately, I had many bugs and errors getting this to work as I wanted to, and by the time I approached something functional, I realized just how little time I spent properly thinking about how I even *wanted* so many parts of the game to work. I tried to take many steps back and experiment with paper-prototyping the concept to figure out what needed to be done to make the game fun. But at that point, it was already 5AM during my last night in NYC; I was exhausted from the code and had my train to Florida that afternoon. I decided to drop everything until I came back from my trip. I informed my group of my failed mini-game attempt and that I’d work as much as I had to when I came back from Florida.

When I returned, I had two days to either try to salvage the mess I left behind or figure out another option. One of my group members suggested that, as an alternative, I could reskin my existing game, “Pick Yourself Up!” as the Flamingo Croquet game from the novel. I was hesitant to pursue this as I’m pretty uncomfortable with art and felt that giving up on my initial plan would hurt my identity as a game designer, but after realizing how unfun and unfinished my current work was, I decided it’d be best to focus my efforts on making new art assets for an existing game that I already knew worked. I went through many iterations on how the new pixel assets looked, with the hedgehog being a particular challenge, and after a day’s work ended up with what is shown in the final project.

Overall, I’m really happy with what we ended up with. Everyone in my group was super talented, and we ended up with a project that truly came together. Of course, I feel a good amount of regret on the chapter I personally produced, as I definitely wish I could have ended with something more exciting than what I made. But, in the end, I suppose experiences like these are important for artists to go through. Not every idea will work out, and attempting to skip essential parts of the process to get things out quicker will only lead to more confusion, delays, and uninteresting results. And while the sunk-cost fallacy can make it tempting to keep at it and try to make a bad idea become a good one, it’s often in the artist’s best interests to give up on what isn’t working and figure out something else that can work.

A couple weeks ago, I purchased Stardew Valley, an “open-ended country-life RPG” that first came out in 2016. The farming simulation game’s premise is that you, the player, have become disillusioned with the trappings of modern life — the game starts with a cut scene of your character working in a gray cubicle, feeling increasingly forlorn — and have decided to move to Stardew Valley, where you’ve inherited an overgrown but otherwise appealing plot of land from your deceased grandfather.

I have only spent a combined 45 minutes or so playing the game, so I can hardly speak to the full extent of how the game works or the avenues of exploration it offers. But already, it’s clear to me it is making some sort of statement, and encouraging me to consider this statement through the gameplay.

Given its potential as an object of meaning-making and discourse, I thought it’d be perfect to run it through some of Ian Bogost’s ideas on procedural rhetoric from his book Persuasive Games. 

Persuasion through process

One of the most interesting mechanics I’ve encountered in Stardew Valley is its borders and boundaries. My character has a plot of land that he owns, but he lives near others in the Valley who also own plots of land. These are typically bordered by fences, but they are more gestural than useful, as there will be gaps in the fences where you can easily enter their property. You can then go right up to their door and walk inside. Once inside, you can explore the items in their house, inspecting their kitchen, bookshelves, etc. But if you try to enter their bedroom, the game will prevent you from doing so — until you’ve befriended the homeowner. For now, you don’t know them well enough yet to enter their bedroom. 

Like the fences with their porous gaps, houses occupy a kind of hybrid private/public space in Stardew Valley. The implication is that the world is full of such boundaries. And my character (and therefore, I) comes into contact with this innate procedurality, like an IF ELSE statement in programming — IF my character isn’t friends with this person, don’t let him into the bedroom; ELSE let him in. 

Simply by nature of interacting with this condition, I’m brought deeper into the situation — it’s clear to me I should go befriend this person so I can unlock this door; OR if I don’t really care about what’s inside, maybe I won’t waste time trying to get to know them. The mechanic opens up a choice. This is a hallmark of modern discursive rhetoric, which features, Bogost writes, “the effective arrangement of a work so as to create a desirable possibility space for interpretation” (19). My character becomes an agent in exploring, altering, and interpreting that possibility space. 

Along these lines, I would have been interested to see more process built into the portion of Stardew Valley’s opening scene, where my character is a cog in the machine of corporate operations. This is built in as a cut scene — a video that I can either watch or skip. But I’m not actually made to interact with this situation, and this is a missed opportunity to help me better understand why my character is so disillusioned. This is where procedural representations can actually do more heavy lifting (in terms of persuasion) than a simple video.

Vividness and Stardew Valley’s graphical choices

Charles Hill’s “comprehensive continuum of vividness,” reproduced by Bogost, places “actual experience” as the most vivid form, followed by “moving images with sound,” “static photograph,” and more, all the way to “abstract, impersonal analysis” and finally “statistics” (34-35). Bogost revises this list to include procedural representations, specifically those with “with high process intensity and with meaningful symbolic representations” (35), in the second spot, i.e., the most vivid form after actual experience. 

Bogost later posits video games as one of the more robust forms of procedural representations, typically featuring “more process intensity than other computational media” (44), greater expressiveness, and a high degree of interactivity (45). Bogost frames the best video games as being very vivid, not because they’re so immersive but because they effectively create meaning by abstracting away from the real world. 

Stardew Valley is a prime example of this concept at play. Its graphics are markedly unrealistic — their colorful, 8-bit aesthetic makes it feel more like an early Pokémon game than any of the ultra-realistic (and ultra-commercial) games of the 21st century (GTA, Call of Duty, etc.). 

But this supports the game’s rhetorical underpinning of ditching modern society. It does away with hyper-optimized, uncannily striking visuals to place you more deeply in a life away from all that. It inverts the idea that “visual fidelity implies authority” (Bogost 49), as if to say that top-down authority is what ruined modern life in the first place (at least in the sense that the industrial drive toward production / commoditization alienates the modern worker from their labor).

Discourse in and around the game

In Bogost’s definition of procedural rhetoric, a key aspect of the rhetorical angle is the ability to spur discourse — not only to advance the game’s position or argument, but also invite subsequent responses, objections, modifications, etc. from players. Bogost’s example of “The Grocery Game,” for instance, features “a flourishing community of conversation” (39) built on message boards, where players discuss strategies to win, as well as share stories about their experiences. Per Bogost, “…the availability of this forum facilitates active reconfiguration of the game’s rules and goals” (39-40), which supports the vibrancy of the discourse surrounding the game and its players.

In Stardew Valley’s case, look no further than Reddit to find many fun and insightful conversations surrounding how people experience the game. It expands beyond gameplay and into fan art devoted to the game’s characters, reinterpretations of the game’s music, and even accounts of real-life interactions with strangers that were sparked by the game.

All of this makes Stardew Valley into a thoroughly expressive, discursive artifact of digital culture — one that, in my eyes, persuades its players through its built-in processes and mechanics, while also giving them the space to push back, both via in-game decisions and off-platform conversation.

Upon finishing Miguel Sicart’s, “Playing the Good Life: Gamification and Ethics,” I took a moment to consider the ways that I have personally connected my life to technology to make it “good”. As someone that is admittedly fairly self-invested and relatively obsessed with productivity, so much of my daily life is connected to the ways that technology helps me improve. This includes a productivity tracker to track all of my action items, a workout spreadsheet populated by my health stats for keeping track of how physically active I’ve been, and meticulous calendar updates to make sure that my whole life is scheduled ahead of me. With that said, I’ve been reflecting on what exactly is a “good life” and how one might, as Sicart calls it, “flourish”, and how I think that can intersect with the ideas of transhumanism and the rise of artificial intelligence.

Sicart describes the good life as “the life experienced as a process in which we perform the best of our virtues with the goal of flourishing, of exploring our potential as human beings”. His case study is with Nike+ and how it connected to running. For my example, I’ll take a look at Todoist. Todoist is a productivity application that allows a user to create projects and set goals with distinct deadlines, levels of priority, and subtasks to complete the larger goal. It’s basically a fancy, digital checklist that keeps all of the things I need to do in a single place. I can’t overstate how essential this application has become in my life. It sets my agenda for my work life, my theatre life, and even my personal to-do’s. When I indicate that I’ve completed a certain number of tasks, I get rewarded with a little “productivity medal” and another day in my accomplishment streak. Overall, if something doesn’t make it to this app, I simply do not do it. In many ways, I think that this has allowed me to set and achieve many of my personal goals since I never would’ve been able to remember this much without it. By organizing all of my tasks like this, I’m always motivated to stay active until the entire day’s list is completed (much like a video game character attempting to finish a quest).

With that said, it also sometimes feels like this falls into the philosophy of transhumanism, or the belief that humans can evolve primarily through the use of technology and artificial intelligence. In an article written by Emile P. Torres, Torres mentions how the concept behind Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is fundamentally transhumanist as it seeks to implant computers into our brains to achieve previously unexperienced skills and potentials. This theory implies that human beings can never just exist – we need to constantly integrate ourselves further and further with technology until we essentially “ascend” to another state of being. However, it’s intriguing to me how the ideas of ascension tend to be deeply conflated with becoming a more useful member of a capitalist infrastructure. Looking at most applications that track and aid with our lives, so many of them are geared to making us more productive, more active, and more ready to keep on running (both figuratively and literally). I would even argue that the idea that we are constantly reaching for the good life implies that we are never truly there, so we can never be satisfied with the way that we are. This isn’t to say that being productive or trying to be better is necessarily a negative quality, but considering that the continued existence of many of these gamified technologies relies on making money and constant activity, I question the framework that we look at this issue.

One of the best parts of reading N. Katherine Hayle’s introduction to Electronic Literature was the broad survey the book gave of innovations, authors, and works in the world of electronic literature. While I recognized some of the writers, theorists, and platforms mentioned, I found myself engaging with the rest of the unfamiliar names in a nearly ergodic way, navigating from PDF to an internet browser tab where I broke up my reading with visits to online texts and author websites referenced by Hayle. I appreciated the span of genre and medium in the electronic literature mentioned by Hayle, especially as she made a case — like Upton, vis a vis games — for a critical engagement with electronic literature. Through Hayle’s framework, we see an urgent need for a critical theory of electronic literature that is distinct from literary theory more generally. As Hayle implores, “to see electronic literature only through the lens of print is, in a significant sense, not to see it at all” (Hayle 3). By advocating for a rigorous way of reading electronic literature, we might even understand literature, broadly speaking, more clearly. In naming electronic texts “literature”, Hayle and her colleagues hope to “stimulate questions about the nature of literature in the digital age” (Hayle 4). I think that these are very important questions to ask ourselves, as both readers and critical thinkers: what does the experience of reading actually entail? How does the nature of reading change us? Does reading Hayle’s book on my computer, as a PDF document, offer me a different interpretive experience than if I were to read a physical, paper copy? This line of questioning opens up into a philosophy of the mind, and dovetails with research that neuroscientists have conducted to analyze the behavior of “your brain on fiction”. 

An area in which Hayle and I might differ — at least, if I were to measure my perspective in 2024 against Hayle’s in 2008 — is on the role of generative literature. As Hayle states in 2008, “generative art, whereby an algorithm is used either to generate texts according to a randomized scheme or to scramble and rearrange preexisting texts, is currently one of the most innovative and robust categories of electronic literature” (Hayle 18). I was troubled by this assertion, especially as it is nested in a chapter which enumerates many non generative (yet sophisticated, thought-provoking) examples of electronic literature. I also can’t help but compare Hayle’s conception of generative literature — which, to be clear, involved something of an equality within the writer-reader-text relationship — to contemporary generative art, which relies largely on artificial intelligence at the expense (and even the evasion) of human input. Although there is a long history of generative literature — I think of William Burroughs’ “Cut Up Method”, or the dadaist poems described in Mel Gooding’s A Book of Surrealist Games — there is a clear distinction between what might have been the direction of generative art in 2008 and the reality of generative art in the age fo AI. In Gooding’s book, Tristan Tzara’s instructions for creating a “cut up” poem end with the assurance that “the poem will be like you” (Gooding 36). When we use AI to create art or text, what about the final product is “like” us? Interactive and electronic literature have so much potential to tell us more about who we are and what we are like, both as readers and writers. At a time when it is convenient and tempting to substitute AI for homegrown coding and writing methods, I hope that Hayle’s critical theory of electronic literature reminds us that, even beyond entertainment, the joy of reading and writing digitally accompanies a process of self discovery.

I’m eager to spend my blog post reflecting on the Bogost reading from Persuasive Games, which I found to be incredibly interesting given my background in advertising, design and media. In fact, I had originally planned on writing this entire blog post on graphic design — and the ways in which constraints or rules drive both the design process and design outcome. I will write a short bit about this, but will promptly pivot to an unrelated topic: Role Playing Game!

Speaking directly to the tension between rules and creation, Bogost writes, “While we think that rules always limit behavior, the imposition of constraints also creates expression” (Bogost 7). In the world of design, I find myself thinking immediately of the design grids that (often) invisibly guide the placement of visual assets and typography on anything from printed material to a website, especially in Eurocentric or western cultures. It’s a tool that frequently drives aesthetic, accessible and commercial outcomes. That being said, as Bogost’s piece explores the ways that there are cultural, historical and social layers embedded within processes or procedures that can often be obscured. Far too often in graphic design, the ideologies behind designer “logics” and choices are hidden, similar to the ways “enthymemes” are utilized in persuasion. Graphic design has a history within capitalism and around currency, which values credibility as a kind of metric of success. As such, it’s in attaching historical context to process that new meaning is formed or new recognition of the system that design occupies might be generated for designers, like myself.

But, but, but… I actually want to utilize this blog post to contextualize and reflect on this reading in a completely different way, one which doesn’t use advertising (which is very on the nose with rhetoric) as a key context because the industry, myself included, is often wound up and caught in a feedback loop of incentivization reaffirming dominant ideologies and processes. In short, it’s always about the tried-and-true processes without a critical lens — this is something that I specifically think about often, and this blog post could very quickly become a rant. So, I want to explore how procedural rhetoric might come to life when placed in an RPG game setting like Dungeons and Dragons, and more specifically, character creation.

“Because people are inherently separate from one another, we seek ways to join our interests. Burke identifies this need as the ancestor of the practice of rhetoric. He extends rhetoric beyond persuasion, instead suggesting “identification” as a key term for the practice. We use symbolic systems, such as language, as a way to achieve this identification” (Bogost 20).

I am a fan of Burke’s move of rhetoric from persuasion towards identification. In this sense, of the word, I am compelled to explore the ways that process drives this outcome — of discovering identity. On the surface, something like creating a character offers an example of process that I think speaks well to Bogost’s arguments — choosing attributes like your age or hair color, or assigning physical/mental aptitude statistics (i.e. strength or intelligence) are a constrained system of choices. In the video game world, we often see this as quite the spectrum of simple to complex character builder interfaces/processes — there’s also so much to be said about these constraints as they pertain to things like choosing your character’s gender (and often lack of options beyond strictly man or woman).

But to dive one step deeper — I am even more fascinated with the procedural rhetoric of embodying these characters, whether that is in a video game or in role-playing around the table. Moving through a fictional world and story, acting as character, players are asked to make choices and are then met with consequences. Players naturally begin identifying with their characters not only because they are embodying them, but because inherent to exploration or adventuring (commonplace narratives in RPG) is the work of understanding the processes and systems of the world that these characters occupy. My characters’ values do not equate to my own, but the procedural task of role playing allows me to explore new ways of moving through the world — a kind of experimentation that I found to be fundamental to every game/interactive media example that Bogost highlights.

To conclude, though I reckon I’ve mostly introduced big ideas without paying many of them off, I find that I am most curious about the ways in which ethics exist in the “how” or process. The examples that are showcased throughout Bogost’s reading speak directly to this reality. As such, I think there’s incredible potential for inquiry into the ideas of procedural rhetoric through the lens of role playing. As a product of the destabilization of self that comes with embodying a character in a fictional world, RPG propels an inquiry and investigation of systems and processes that may not happen otherwise in life. I worry that I’ve deduced procedural rhetoric to placing oneself in another person’s shoes, but my point is that there may be great strength in coupling the rhetoric of process with the character performance of RPG in investigating systems without the barriers of our own preconceived notions of the way the world works.