Thursday 8 March 2007

2. Ban These Evil Games

In order to understand what rhetoric gaming is all about, we should try to look at games from a different point of veiw that projects the iconic or symbolic actions and images in the game as messages urging and promoting us to listen to them and identify them (Walz, 2003). Rhetoric is another word used to convey the meaning of 'persuasive'. Persuasive or rhetoric gaming is the messgaes encoded in each game or level trying to get to the user and be understood by him/her.
In some cases, this message proves to be quite damaging and might cause offence and violence to its recievers. Many have blamed the violent games that children have been in contact with such as Manhunt and Doom. The game Manhunt has been accused of being behind the murder of a teenager by a friend. The media pointed fingers at the game and it has been banned from many countries around the world iincluding the UK (Daily Mail, 2004 ). This story has caused a moral panic at the time, making video games the bad guy in the whole story and having the community in general reveiwing their willingness to welcome computer and digital games into their homes.
Another example is the digital computer game 'Doom II'. Its been represented as voilence-filled game, containing weapons blood and monsters as a few basic elements within the game. The purpose of the game is killing all gun-bearing humans and slaying monsters using weapons that the player has. The sole aim is survival and in order to survive, one must kill and pure blood. Which i think is the main rhetoric message, along with entertainment as the main one.







Bibliography:

- Daily Mail, Published and Last Updated on Sep. 3rd 2004. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 9th 2007 from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=316491&in_page_id=1770

- Persuasive Games, (2006), Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 9th 2007 from: http://www.persuasivegames.com/about/

- Thorsen, T. (2004), Manhunt Blamed for Uk Murder, Game Spot UK, Retrieved from the Word Wide Web on March 9th 2007 from: http://uk.gamespot.com/ps2/action/manhunt/news_6103718.html

- Walz, S. (2003), Delightful Identification & Persuasion: Towards an Analytical and Applied Rhetoric of Digital Games." In: Copier, Marinka and Jost Raessens (eds.): Level Up. Proceedings of the 1st International Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht: University of Utrecht Press. pp. 194-207. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 9th 2007 from: http://www.playbe.com/stuff/games_rhetoric.htm

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