Procedural rhetoric

Procedural rhetoric or simulation rhetoric is a rhetorical concept that explains how people learn through the authorship of rules and processes. The theory argues that games can make strong claims about how the world works—not simply through words or visuals but through the processes they embody and models they construct.

The term “procedural rhetoric” was developed by Ian Bogost in his book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Bogost defines procedural rhetoric as “the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions, rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures” and “the art of using processes persuasively.” Though Gonzalo Frasca’s preferred term of “simulation rhetoric” uses different language, the concept is the same: he envisions the authors of games as crafting laws and that these authors convey ideology “by adding or leaving out manipulation rules.” Frasca defines simulations as “to model a (source) system through a different system which maintains (for somebody) some of the behaviors of the original system,” a definition that shows the importance of systemic procedures.

In coining this term, Bogost borrows Janet Murray’s definition of procedural from her book Hamlet on the Holodeck—“a defining ability to execute a series of rules”—to theorize that a different system of learning and persuasion could be found in computerized media. As Bogost suggests, “This ability to execute computationally a series of rules fundamentally separates computers from other media.” Frasca likewise sees the need for new rhetorical theory because “simulations can express messages in ways that narrative simply cannot.” In procedural rhetoric, these rules of behavior then create “possibility spaces, which can be explored through play.”

Procedural rhetoric also views games as strongly rhetorical—we “read games as deliberate expressions of particular perspectives.” The exploration of possibility spaces becomes rhetorical and instructive as soon as games make claims about aspects of human experience, whether they do so intentionally or inadvertently. Frasca concurs that “video games are capable of conveying the ideas and feelings of an author” and “offer distinct rhetorical possibilities.” Game laws represent “the designer's agenda.” As Bogost traces the history of rhetoric back to classical Greece, he argues that, as theories of rhetoric have expanded from examining only verbal to including written and visual media, an expansion of rhetoric is now necessary to include the properties of procedural expression: “A theory of procedural rhetoric is needed to make commensurate judgments about the software systems we encounter everyday and to allow a more sophisticated procedural authorship with both persuasion and expression as its goal […] Procedural rhetoric affords a new and promising way to make claims about how things work.” As Matt King summarizes the procedural and rhetorical sides of this theory, “By embodying certain processes and not others, by structuring a playing experience around particular rules and logics, videogames make claims about the world and how it works–or how it does not work, or how it should work.”

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