Seit Menschen miteinander kommunizieren gibt es Persuasion, also das Bestreben, den Kommunikationspartner zu beeinflussen. Bereits in der Antike wurde dieses Handwerk in Form der klassischen Rhetorik systematisiert und gezielt eingesetzt. In den vergangenen Jahren gab es Versuche, diese etablierten Konzepte auf interaktive Medien zu übertragen, was aber nur ansatzweise gelang. Um den Besonderheiten interaktiver Medien gerecht zu werden, sollten ihre prozesshafte Natur und ihre Wechselwirkungen mit den Aktionen des Nutzers im Mittelpunkt stehen. Genau das ist beim Konzept der prozeduralen Rhetorik von Ian Bogost der Fall, weshalb dieser Ansatz als Grundlage der hier vorgenommenen Untersuchungen zu persuasiven Computerspielen dient. Im Rahmen der Arbeit werden zudem die unterschiedlichen Formen der Rhetorik vorgestellt und die Notwendigkeit der Berücksichtigung prozeduraler Rhetorik dargelegt. Anhand der Beispiele The McDonald's Videogame und America's Army verdeutlichen die Autoren den Einsatz verschiedener persuasiver Techniken aus klassischer und prozeduraler Rhetorik.

Video games have become the highest grossing entertainment industry in the world, earning more than double that of the music and film industry combined. Many of these games contain political messages, intentional or not. Some game developers explicitly claim that the games they make are apolitical, and this thesis examines whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is as apolitical as its developers claim. The research is conducted with the aid of Barthes’ work on mythologies and semiology to analyse the various signs present in the game in relation to construction of myths and ideological messaging. This is aided by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to enable the analysis of gameplay choices as a semiological sign. The main theories are supported by Murray’s writing on immersion and the first-person perspective. The analysis shows that Modern Warfare consistently uses signs and myths that construct an ideological message that coalesce into a mythical image of the special forces soldier as a sort of human but superhuman character that must be given free rein to perform their mission, while also displaying western politicians as incompetent, the threat of terrorism as omnipresent, and Russia as a dangerous threat. Regardless of intent, such a message is undeniably political.

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This dissertation investigates the question, "How can the procedural rhetoric of three whole-body educational games improve the understanding of self-regulated learning with digital technology?" It explores three whole-body educational games (WBEGs) using a quantitative study, a case study, and analyses of their procedural rhetoric to better understand the roles these types of games can have in teaching digital literacy and self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. The three WBEGs, Waves, Color Mixer, and Light and Mirrors, are each intended to teach science concepts to players. These games are similarly structured in that they all invite players to immerse themselves in the game by standing on the "screen" (the games project images on the floor). The WBEGs differ from traditional console video games because they receive input from players via motion-sensing technology, requiring players to make large movements with their bodies to influence elements within the game. This study explains SRL as a complex combination of internal (mental) behavior, external (observable) behavior, and interpersonal (social) behavior, identifying within three WBEGs the presence of elements supporting the SRL behaviors of goal setting, strategy planning, collaboration, progress monitoring, feedback, and reflection. These findings inform the understanding of SRL by revealing that each game includes a different combination of SRL-supporting elements that encourage the use of SRL skills in different ways. SRL scaffolding features are those elements within a WBEG that guide players to use certain SRL strategies, helping and supporting their efforts much like construction scaffolding supports a building as it is being erected. This dissertation also utilizes analyses of procedural rhetoric to investigate the techniques reinforced by the underlying structure of these three WBEGs in an effort to further the understanding of digital literacy in education and sociocultural contexts. All three WBEGs appear to emphasize player agency and collaboration. Waves and Light and Mirrors encourage player strategy, while Color Mixer rewards speed and rote knowledge. These reinforced techniques perpetuate the underlying cultural values of accuracy, collaboration, problem-solving, autonomy, and scaffolding. This study discusses these values in the contexts of education and society.

Video games' capacity for player choice makes them an excellent medium for expressing ethical dilemmas and developing the ethical thinking of players. However, translating complex ethical dilemmas to procedural games is challenging, particularly when the game creator intends to convey specific arguments in their work. This paper contains a close reading of ethical dilemmas in Fallout: New Vegas, Disco Elysium, and Frostpunk and applies Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of stratification as a means of understanding the process of collapsing the semantics of an ethical dilemma into the procedures of a digital game. It introduces the concept of consonance to refer to the consistency between procedural and semantic logic, and argues that the development of mechanics which maintain or enhance consonance is an important factor in creating persuasive procedural rhetoric about ethical topics.

Uppsatsen tar sig – med utgångspunkt i en analys av spelet Tomb Raider (2013) – an frågan om hur karakterisering genomförs inom interaktiva dataspel. Wahlsten väljer att använda sig dels av Sonja K Foss metod för narrativ analys, dels av Ian Bogosts procedurala retorik för att visa hur karaktären Lara Croft konstrueras under loppet av spelet. Dessa två metoder används för att kartlägga verktygen med vilka spelets narrativ presenteras, såväl de interaktiva som de icke-interaktiva. Uppsatsen visar tydligt och med många exempel att det finns en spänning mellan narrativets krav och spelarens intressen som ifrågasätter idén om att interaktiva spel i första hand påverkar genom immersion - tvärt om är spelen uppbyggda på så sätt att spelaren förutsätts dels identifiera sig med huvudkaraktären, dels ta avstånd från och använda denna som ’en virtuell leksak’ under loppet av spelet. Därmed pekar också Wahlsten ut ett tämligen okänt men mycket intressant forskningsområde för retorikvetenskapen. Wahlsten är medveten om att hans val av studieobjekt inte är självklart inom retoriken, men argumenterar väl för behovet av att studier av spel/Virtual Reality är och i synnerhet i framtiden bör vara, ett centralt område inom retorikforskningen / The essay asks the question how characterization in video games is accomplished, with the subject of analysis being the video game Tomb Raider (2013). Wahlsten chooses to use the methodology of Sonja K Foss for the narrative analysis, in addition to Procedural Rhetoric coined by Ian Bogost. These two methodologies are used to map out the tools used to construct the narrative of the game, which includes interactive one as well as non-interactive ones.   The essay clearly shows that there is a definite tension between the demands of the narrative on the player that puts into question the idea of interactive games mainly influencing through immersion. On the contrary, the game is constructed in such a way that the player is expected to identify with the playable character, while also motivating the player to distance itself from the character and use it as a sort of “virtual plaything”. Wahlsten thus highlights a fairly obscure but also highly interesting field of study within the Rhetorical sciences. Wahlsten is aware the object of study is not an obvious one within the field Rhetoric, but argues for the need of studies of games and Virtual Reality, and the importance of them for Rhetorical sciences in the future.

This essay is about the principles and rules that control persuasive computer games. The term persuasive games mean computer games, video games and other similar artifacts that are produced to shape opinion. The rhetorical scholar Ian Bogost at Georgia Tech claims that this kind of games mainly get their persuasive power by using procedural rhetoric and that games as a medium gives special conditions for procedurality.  By procedural rhetoric Bogost means an argumentation that is based on rules and choices, as opposed to texts, movies and images. (Bogost 2007). Bogost describes these procedures as quite specific for games and claims that they differ qualitatively from “ordinary” rhetorical arguments even if they just as other arguments work by establishing enthymems. However when I in my preliminary study tried this hypothesis, I seemed to distinguish several similarities with argumentation strategies used in political or juridical debate, such as Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca´s associative argumentation techniques. In this essay I examine if and how Perelman and Olbrechs-Tytecas associative argumentation techniques can be used to describe (and understand?) rulebased rhetorical procedures in persuasive games. This analysis is carried out on two recent Swedish persuasive games and proves the hypothesis fruitful. This result also points to the possibility to view rules as something that control all forms of argumentation. Despite this result, the investigation doesn´t contradict the presumption that computer games in many ways, have specific possibilities, beyond procedural rhetoric, such as the opportunity for interaction, receiver adaptation, and the capacity to process big amounts of data.

Seit Menschen miteinander kommunizieren gibt es Persuasion, also das Bestreben, den Kommunikationspartner zu beeinflussen. Bereits in der Antike wurde dieses Handwerk in Form der klassischen Rhetorik systematisiert und gezielt eingesetzt. In den vergangenen Jahren gab es Versuche, diese etablierten Konzepte auf interaktive Medien zu übertragen, was aber nur ansatzweise gelang. Um den Besonderheiten interaktiver Medien gerecht zu werden, sollten ihre prozesshafte Natur und ihre Wechselwirkungen mit den Aktionen des Nutzers im Mittelpunkt stehen. Genau das ist beim Konzept der prozeduralen Rhetorik von Ian Bogost der Fall, weshalb dieser Ansatz als Grundlage der hier vorgenommenen Untersuchungen zu persuasiven Computerspielen dient. Im Rahmen der Arbeit werden zudem die unterschiedlichen Formen der Rhetorik vorgestellt und die Notwendigkeit der Berücksichtigung prozeduraler Rhetorik dargelegt. Anhand der Beispiele The McDonald's Videogame und America's Army verdeutlichen die Autoren den Einsatz verschiedener persuasiver Techniken aus klassischer und prozeduraler Rhetorik.