ABSTRACT

Thisarticle discusses first steps towards a specific rhetoric of digital games wheregeneral rhetoric makes up the scientific discipline of strategic communicationand symbolic action by means of identification and psychagogy. Therefore, thiswork contributes to the fundamental and general question why and how players becomeconsubstantialised and persuaded with game designs, and stick to gameplay thesegames. Accordingly, a first conceptual model is introduced and discussed. Itfeatures three interrelating dimensions which engage a symbolic, a structural,and a systemic coupling between player and game design during gameplay withinan experiential eigenworld of reciprocal control, mastery, and empowerment.

Keywords

Rhetoricof digital games, persuasive games, general rhetoric, psychagogy, digitalgames, theory of games, game analysis, game design, game design patterns.

INTRODUCTION

Why,and how do digital games make us play with them – what, for example, aretheir argumentative strategies of make-believe like, shaped by possibilitiesand necessities? How, on the other hand, do games induce constant cooperationand persuade us to play, and keep playing[1]? And thus: What signifies therelationship between game design(er), gameplay, and player?

Letus sidestep typical answers according to which the fundamental reason for playinghuman-computer based games is either learning [9] [10], or motivational captivation through aspects of intrinsicmotivation such as confidence, control, challenge, fantasy, or curiosity [24][25]. Rather, let us combine these introductory questions by asking moreprecisely: What is the – empirically approximated and social-, media-,and neuro-psychologically rooted – rhetoric of digital games?

Granted:Comprehensively responding to this last matter would likely take much longerthan one paper. But the attempt is worthwhile, and overdue to commence with:When designing digital games requires thinking about digital games, andthinking about these games requires designing - or at least: prototyping - themin the first place, a rhetoric of digital games can ultimately serve thepurpose of bridging the worlds of creating games (that is, applying such a rhetoric) and thinkingabout games(that is, analyzing games along such a rhetoric). This paper shall provide afirst attempt to offer such an anastomosis.

Generalrhetoric - as the mother of all media theory - has provided specific rhetoricae with this same goal for otherforms of symbolic action, strategic communication, and effective expression, aswell: think of speech and public performance [1] [8] [30]; painting [37];interior architecture and ornamental design [14]; design aesthetics and generalaesthetics [27]; general design [4]; interface design [3]; and entertainmentmass media such as radio, TV, and film, see e.g. [33][2].As a performative approach towards means such as participant entertainmentand/or enjoyment, general rhetoric may best be explicated with the Greek term“psychagogy”, that is, literally, guidance [in the sense of: tossing, spw] of thesoul.

Hence,in this paper, I define gameplay as a rhetorical performance between player(s)and game design, a symbolic action that takes place amongst agents involved inplayful human-computer eigenworld cooperation on the basis ofidentification-making, and persuasive operations. I will use my German-Englishneologism eigenworldbecause (1) it elegantly describes an autarkic, idiosyncratic, but stillself-constrained social situation; and because (2) there is no equivalenttranslation to the original term “Eigenwelt” I would use in German, rather.

Triadic Relationship between Game Designer, Game, andPlayer

Abovementioned rhetoricae encompassa triadic relation between the (1) designer and communicator of a certain content (inclassical rhetoric, usually referred to as the orator); (2) the communicans itself including itsperformance; and eventually, (3) its receiving audience, which can be a groupof agents, or an individual agent. The whole of the process I understand assymbolic action in the sense of rhetorician Kenneth Burke, see [6].

Hence,one could define rhetoric as the science and art of persuading a receiver tocouple with a message, and through the message, to couple with thecommunicator. Although mostly unidirectional in its original communicativeprocess setting - a message is conveyed from the most important communicativefactor, the orator, to the audience, see [8] - and without any agent participation of technological massmedia, modern mass media force modern rhetorical theory to re-read thispristine triad which had been best expressed by Aristotle’s original definitionof písteön tría eídë[1].

Overview

Inthe following, I present first steps towards a digital game rhetoric by furtherinvestigating a triadic activity relationship between game design, game, andplayer. I will first refer to related research; then move on to a descriptionof general rhetoric and its core operation, persuasion; following which I willintroduce and discuss a draft model that shows how identification-making andpersuasion between gameplay participants takes place through systemic,symbolic, and structural couplings. I end with future research issues andconclusions.

RELATED RESEARCH

ResearcherDrew Davidson has presented his own “gameplay rhetoric”. As opposed to myholistic (both analytical and praxeological) attempt here, which renders rhetoric’s corefeature and duty, persuasion (and identification) multi-dimensionally withregard to gameplay, Davidson adopts rhetorician Wayne Booth’s idea that thereis a rhetoric of fiction at work in literature, and re-reads this ideaconcerning games, where rhetorical elements serve as “‘friends of the [player]’that exist within” the gameplay of games. These mechanics have rhetoricalelements that serve the purpose of conveying the game’s techniques and rulesenabling play.” [11].

Otherwritings that have influenced this article include attempts to standardize, orsystematically bring to terms, and/or examine scientifically (mostly digital)game design issues, for example the ontologically operating Game Design PatternsProject [18], Noah Falstein’s fabulous “400 Project – Rules of GameDesign” and his monthly column in the Game Developers Magazine, see e.g. [13];Rollings/Adams [31]; and Crawford [10].

WHAT SIGNIFIES GENERAL RHETORIC?

Inthis section, I define and discuss rhetoric as a scientific disciplineconcerned with symbolic action, identification, persuasive operations,strategic communication, and proper (cross-medial) expression and present itstechnical core, persuasion, as well as the latter’s relevance for digitalgames.

Analytical, applied, and performative psychagogy

Rhetoricis the science of strategically communicated symbolic action and choreo-graphedexpression through theory, analysis (lat. rhetorica docens), design/creation, andperformance (lat. rhetorica utens) [36] [21] [22].

At the heart of rhetoric: Persuasion

WhenAristotle writes that “The speaker’s character may almost be called the mosteffective means of persuasion he possesses.” [1: bk. I, chapter 2], then Iwould like to reformulate this citation with “The medium’s character –its gestalt, composition, in short: its design – may almost be called themost effective means of persuasion it possesses”. Thus, the design of any givenartefact is effective should it be able to persuade an individual, or a mass ofindividuals, to do what its message, such as entertainment, wants theindividual to do; for example, play a game of Tetris. The process of persuasioninfluences the choice-making of others in that it, naturally, persuades them tochange their status of “unplaying” to playing in the instance of playing games:

Persuasion involves influencing the audience’smental state, commonly as a precursor to action. Although a number of mentalstates may be the focus of a persuader’s attention, social-scientificpersuasion research has given pride of place to attitude, understood as thegeneral evaluation of an object, such as a policy, proposal, product, orperson. Hence, much of the relevant social-scientific work concerns attitudechange, because such change represents an exemplary case of rhetorical success.[29]

Anattitude can be defined as a “psychological tendency that is expressed byevaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” [12]. Anentity – an object of evaluation– can be concrete (for example, a“digital game”), or abstract (for example, “entertainment”) circumstances. Atthe same time, a single entity (somebody else’s newly bought, or rented digitalgame) or a class of entities (digital games per se) can exist as an object ofevaluation. Classifiable behaviors (to play a digital game), or a class ofbehaviors (a sequence of interactions with(in) a game constituting gameplay)may function as an object of evaluation. A persuasive message can neverthelesslead to a change in attitude - a change from inactivity to enactment - providedonly if six information processes phases have been successfully absolved [26].

Playerswould, accordingly, (1) need to be confronted with a presentation of a certainsituation to be evaluated; (2) the player would need to spare attention to thatsituation given; (3) the player would then need to comprehend the situation;(4) the player would need to accept or agree with (be positive about wanting toplay) the situation. In order for this act of acceptance and the change ofattitude to become behaviorally manifest (6), the player would need to stick tothis change of attitude in at least temporarily stable fashion [32].

Fromthe last paragraphs, we can come to the understanding that the change ofactivity from “unplay” to “play” can be interpreted as a persuasive operationwhere the change of attitude from favoring “play” over “unplay” becomesbehaviorally manifest in the form of starting to play, and keep playing.

TOWARDS A RHETORIC OF DIGITAL GAMES: A MODEL

Onthe road towards a specific rhetoric of digital games, we need to rethinkgeneral rhetoric: Thus, we now dare to find a rhetorical key to digital gamesthemselves.

Identification as a key to a rhetoric of digital games

Onecore feature of digital games is interactivity [10]. As a social psychologist,anthropologist, and rhetorical theorist and practitioner, I am convinced thatwe should, complimentary, look at digital games from a human-computer activityperspective involving symbolic actions.

Thisperspective, however, almost immediately calls for (willful, involuntary,voluntary, conscious, or unconscious) acts of cooperation between human andcomputer, because there would be no human-computer activity if there was nocooperation between these two agents. So we are in need of the putty thatexplains why humans cooperate with computers in the first place.

KennethBurke has rethought rhetoric in this context, although without thinking of, oraddressing specifically computer games, or human-computer activities. The term“consubstantiality” – or, co-equally used by Burke [5] [6] the term“identification” – signifies the textual metaphor of a socialpsychological mechanism which Burke understands as (1) raison d’être of allcooperation, first, in face-to-face situations, and second and macroscopicallyspeaking, in society and other communicative settings; and (2) as cause of allsocial cohesion. This definition correlates with the social psychologicalevidence that identification serves a major role in keeping an individual’s,and a group’s, psychic balance [16]. Whereas Aristotle put forward an audiencecentered rhetoric where the aim of the rhetor is on gaining audience assent, KennethBurke suggests that rhetoric is identification, meaning “The generation andfulfillment of expectations through the use of symbols (forms)” [5], and thatthere cannot be any form of persuasion without a prior form of identificationbetween two interacting agents.

Sofrom here on, I define digital game design “as a symbolic means of inducingcooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.” [5]. To Burke, theseidentification symbols can consist of “speech, gesture, tonality, order, image,attitude, idea” [6]. I find it exciting to imagine and analyse digital games,and specifically their gameplay – def. experientialhuman-computer-cooperation-in-symbolic-action – neither as astory/narrative, nor a plaything, nor an idea, but rather as a multi-medial(sic!), experiential, possibly delightful, moving, or educational operation ofconstant argumentation between player and game design, containingconsubstantialisations and, consequentially, persuasions where the use of oneagent’s symbolic actions induces actions in another participating agent so thatplayer and game design couple through gameplay – in short: in(flowing) gameplay, we are observing a rhetorical performance (loop).

Thismakes even more sense when we conceive that in digital games, a player enactstwo roles at a time, that of a witness, and that of a player/participant. Mediapsychology calls this personal union an act of para-social play between playerand play figure/character. As opposed to entertaining movies, whereprotagonists as media figures (a) trigger an affective disposition in theindividual observer and (b) rest upon that individual’s moral beliefs, socalled socio-emotions, in the case of digital games, the witnessingplayer/participant addresses herself emotionally in the form of so“ego-emotions” [20]

Withthe found key of identification puttying player and game, one central questionarises once we start thinking about an analytical and applied rhetoric ofdigital games in the following section: By the way of which dimensions doesthis coupling take place, and how?

I amof the opinion that we can think of three dimensions which will be discussed indetail in the upcoming sections:

· Asystemic couplingtakes place through gameplay, so that gameplay represents an eigenworld ofreciprocal power, control, and mastery. The “player model” and the “game designmodel” coincide conceptually (and rhetorically) in(to) the “system image”, thatis, the gameplay eigenworld. This view is analogous to the Aristotelian 'orator– meaning/message - audience (gr. písteön tría eídë) model when we replaceAristotle’s “orator” with the function of “game design”, and his “audience”with “player”. This view is also analogous to Human-Computer Interactionresearch’s definition of [game, spw] designer virtually meeting the user[=player, spw] in the [game] system image by the way of coinciding mentalconceptions [28].

· Asymbolic couplingbetween these two agents of human-computer activity takes place, too,theoretically based on the works of Burke. In this second case, gameplay itselfcan be described as a performance loop of symbolic game action based on theplayer's identifiednesswith the game design, and her persuadedness with the third coupling dimension.

· Agame design’s motivational call character in the form of offers and demands[20] structurally couples the player’s expectations, motives, and needs throughsocial psychologically verified “functional circles” [15] in the gameeigenworld. These link joints connect player and game design (a)sensumotorically[3], (b) semantically; (c)syntactically and eventually (d) through self-appealing offers and demands suchas order; closure; displacement of self; audit & probation etc., see [15].Structural and symbolic coupling interrelate strongly, as they root on tagging,and thus persuasive and motivational processes between player and game.

Figure 1 provides avisualization of aforementioned dimensions, as well as of processes detailed inthe sections below.

Figure 1: Structural, symbolic, andsystemic coupling have game design and player cooperate and perform throughgameplay.

Symbolic and structural dimensions of a rhetoric ofdigital games

Inthis subsection, I outline dimensions of my model that describe gameplay as aperformance loop of symbolic game action based on the player's identifiedness with the game design’sconsubstantiality offers and demands, and her persuadedness with the game's argumentationsurfacing in the form of functional circles, its (a) sensumotorics, (b)semantics; (c) syntax; (d) self-appealing offers and demands such as order; closure;displacement of self; audit & probation, et al., that appeal to theplayer’s motivation and participation. Motivation and participation themselvesrest upon the player’s strategy of expectations, motives, and needs.

Link joints between player and game design

Inhis milestone article and book - unfortunately so far only available in Germanlanguage – Jürgen Fritz [15] analyses and describes these functionalcircles on basis of a number of empirical player and game design studiesconducted at the University for Applied Sciences in Cologne.

Insituations of gameplay, these link joints (as Fritz calls them) engage a socialpsychologically based structural coupling between player expectations, motives,and needs, and the possibilities offered of the game to motivate the player.Thus, I argue that a given game's persuasiveness comes into playargumentatively by the way of rhetorical game design offers and demands aimingto first make the player identify – “consubstantialise” à la Burke - withthe game, and second, persuade her to play, and keep playing; this operation isan operation of symbolic action between a human and a computer agent, a playerand a game application and its inherent design.

So inthe eigenworld of gameplay between these agents, something is at stake; andwherever and whenever anything is at stake, power and control, as well assubordination and resistance - which could also be “channel deflection,” [22],rhetorically speaking - are being negotiated between agents involved into thegame. This negotiation takes place within a given set of rules, or by breakingthese rules willfully, voluntarily, or accidentally. Especially in the realm ofplayful human-computer symbolic action, where gameplay structurally couples thegame designer and the player in the computer generated game world, we canunderstand this game world as a system of power, control, and masterynegotiation between player and game designer by the way of actual gameplay.

Empowering the player in a control environment

Fromhere, it seems plausible to think of game design as the craft of, literally,empowering the player whilst at the same time, it is the trade of effectivelycontrolling and steering the player’s activities. It is here, too, that bothpractice and scientific discipline of rhetoric re-appear on the scene.Psychagogy is the goal of rhetoric, whereas its means – strategiccommunication in the possible form of entertainment – follows therhetorical end, persuasion. In rhetorical situations – universallyspeaking, situations when something is at stake, and parties try to gain medialcontrol whilst granting rational, emotive, or delightful empowerment -persuasion most likely appears in the form of argumentation. A speech canformally and content-wise argue for or against something, as well as a text canbe argumentative, as can be a physical building, a piece of pop music, or asoftware application. The whole purpose of any given game design is first, tohave a player identify with a game, and second, to persuade a player to playthe game, and to keep playing: we can call these form of identifiedness and persuadedness a successful structuralcoupling between player and game design.

Game design strategy and argumentation

Thus,a game design’s strategy and argumentation (its motivational potential) willconsist of relational structural elements – aforementioned link joints– that, ideally, will connect with the player’s personality traits andher life context [15] at full. Said motivational potential equals the game’s“offer”, opposed by the player’s “expectation” [15], and makes up a gamedesign’s fascination. I will introduce the aspect of “game demand” equal to thegame offer in the subsection following this paragraph. Let me fist name saidfunctional circles:

· Sensumotoricalsynchronisation.This pragmatic function circle has a player latch (mostly) corporeally into theevents on display; the player starts to automatize body movements according tothe game design’s requirements until, only ideally, in perfect sync [15.]. Thischoreography includes mouse movements to accomplish in-game interface tasks, aswell as mimetic reactions from untrained players who co-curve with theirelectronic cars in races, or co-jump with their locum tenens during jump & run games,for example. I would suggest that with the player, sensumotoricalsynchronization can cause the whole spectrum from pleasure and internalexuberance to feelings of regimentation and, see also [7].

· Transferralof meaning. Thissemantic function circle encompasses the semiotic events on display which theplayer construes. Usually, a player re-constructs the game in accordance to the(genre-typical) directions the game design implies through its implicit andexplicit meaning structures. An ego-shooter, for example, requires a player towitness herself shooting other participants, whilst simulating to shoot themfrom a first person point of view. Game designs can bear (not-so-)complexthemes, role offers, typical patterns of action, and dramaturgies on manyexperiential levels. Graphical, aural, and other sensual semantics transfermeaning to the player [15].

· Rulecompetence. Thissyntactical function circle controls the player whilst the player aims atgaining power of the rules of the game design, and thus the game-in-play. Thecircle contains game rules, and gameplay mechanics such as game world border,which the player learns to acknowledge, and apply. The player also realizesrelationships between game objects and/or mechanics, and applies the rules (orbreaks them) to approximate a personal in-game-strategy of behaviors to keep upmotivation, and succeed with game events, and challenges. Combined strategiespoint at certain game genres, and a player’s competences help her to developcognitive skills needed to master the game, eventually. In this case, we canspeak of optimal player rule competence; note that in my opinion, game pattern[18] competencies, too, are specifically symbolic gameplay action orientated inthat they offer sequences of rules, and mechanics.

· Selfreference. Thisdynamic function circle resembles psychodynamic and psychodramatic gamearrangements [15] with the goal to appeal to, and help express the internalplayer world by offering a stimulus configuration it can relate to within aworld without physical sanctions. A player’s wishes, interests, emotions,skills, and/or fantasies may be allured by (basic) patterns of lifeaccomplishment re-appearing in digital games uch as order; fight; closure;course of goals; enrichment; audit and probation; extension and expansion.These patterns make up for the dynamics of games. Apart from the possibility tosubstructure Fritz’s overview, for example “closure” into (a) predictive and(b) dramatic closure – see [17], I would complement Fritz’s list withother patterns that may fulfill neuro-psychological functions, for exampledisplacement of self.

Game design offers and demands

Amajority of players regards computer games in general as a synthesis betweenmedium and toy [20]. We can describe the motivational potential/”callcharacter” of digital games (and, implicitly, of their design) not only interms of offers as outlined in the preceding subsection, but also in terms ofdemands. So simultaneously, digital games do not only offer symbolic identification possibilities to the player, but alsodemand symbolic identification necessities from the player once the game iscooperatively performed through gameplay.

Wecan deduct that thus, game design is deeply rhetorical in the sense of a rhetoricautens, thatis: an applied psychagogy. Notonly the orator (the game designer) is actively pursuing to guide, but theaudience (the player) takes over this role and becomes, temporary, the designerof the game played herself. Any player, we could say, playing a game, designsher own game experience in the very moment the game is played; this holds trueespecially when we take digital games as forms of experiential human-computeractivity rather than say, functional activities.

Gameplay as system of reciprocal power, control, andmastery

Ithink it possible to argue that in toto, the major (rhetorical) goal of anygiven game design is to convince people to convince themselves to build theirown (eigenworld) game experience. Gameplaying a digital game can thus bedefined as the reciprocal shifting of control and power by the way of Fritz’sfunctional link joints that couple game and player, and in parallel, gamedesign and game design “user”. From less a rhetorical, and more a socialpsychological view, games are successful when they have the power over a playerto keep playing, whilst to the player, a game experience is being successfullymastered when it is under control.

Systemic Dimension of a Rhetoric of Digital Games

Systemically,and from a digital game design standpoint, game applications represent a formof rhetoric that is rooted in conventional interactive system design, mostly interms of how the game has been designed conceptually to be both understandable,usable, andexperiential. This way of looking at the rhetoric of digital games interrelateswith the structural and symbolic couplings presented in the above. How exactlywill need to be shown in future research.

Wecan define that a given game design operates as a formal rhetoricalargumentation along the Aristotelian triangular model of (a) orator, (b)speech, and (c) audience; only that in the case of digital game design, theorator element is represented by the (to a) game designer; (to b) the gamereplaces the speech element; and (to c) a single player substitutes aterminologically rather blurry “audience”. The structure – and. mind, notits rhetorical origin – of this threefold model is analogous to theconventional relations of user, product designer, and design product [28].

Conceptual models in interactive system design

Inorder to better understand digital game design in general - and arguespecifically towards the rhetoric of digital games - it seems therefore worthyto look at fundamental aspects in both interactive system, product, and devicedesign, namely, (1) conceptual models, and (2) the visibility of designstructure and functionalities.

Conceptualmodels, cognitive scientist and Human-Computer Interaction Design researcherDonald A. Norman states, “are part of an important concept in design: mentalmodels[italics orig.], the models people have of themselves, others, the environment,and the things with which they interact. People form mental models throughexperience, training, and instruction. The mental model of a device is formedlargely by interpreting its perceived actions and its visible structure. I callthe visible part of the device the system image.” [28] The system image derivesfrom the physical structure that has been built and makes up the visible partof a device. In that, all communication between the system designer and thesystem user takes place through the system image.

Ideally,the “user’s model” (the mental model developed through interaction with thesystem) is identical with the designer’s conceptual model which Norman calls “designer’smodel” [28] In this optimal case of equivalence , “everything about the productis consistent with and exemplifies the operation of the proper conceptualmodel” [28] including its physical appearance, its operation, its responses,and its accompanying manuals, documentations, and instructions. When followingNorman’s argument, it becomes clear that the user of conventional softwareproducts acquires all knowledge about the system from its system image.

WhatNorman calls the mental model signifies (in the sense of ‘means’) the modelitself, as if a model is something that is unquestionably valid to each andeveryone when properly crafted. Often, experience and empirical research in thequalitative social sciences show that this is not the case. The problem,however, does not lie with the model itself, but with individual meaningmaking. People tend to take models not for what they are, but what they mean tothem in certain contexts, or, what they want these models to mean to them inthe very moment the models move from periphery to center of attention, or whenthey identify a certain model or an element of this model that suits theirconcurrent desire best. So the interpretation of models – in Norman’srather mechanistic, functional view: their gulfs of execution and evaluation– often does not fail due totheir deficit of visible self-explanation, but because people have different,individualised, one could say: custom, highly situative, con- and co-textualunderstandings of these models, see [2]. This holds true specifically whenanalyzing and designing a playful user’s experience rather than, say, a (albeituser-centered) usable piece of software for that user.

So weas game designers have to assume that user experiences differ from subject tosubject not only gradually, but substantially – it is only in real lifeprojects that we usually cannot weave in this understanding into our productsand apparatuses; one could also say that because players want to engage in aworld-in-action visually, aurally, and interactively, their compellingencounter of that world represented by a symbol processing machine should havethe human-computer activity designer (in the sense of Brenda Laurel: theplaywright, see [23]) provide (1) actions - and subsidiary to this central goal– (2) characters/thoughts, (3) language/communication, and (4) enactmentwithin this world according to the following notion: “Think of the computer,not as a tool, but as a medium.” [23].

Incomparison to game designer Chris Crawford’s sequential conversationalityprinciples of well-listening – thinking – speaking [10], Laurel’sdesign and analysis principles are much more performance orientated, that is tosay: Laurel applies Aristotle’s qualitative elements of drama, including theircausal relations as found in De Poetica, to the construction and debugging ofhuman-computer (play) activities [23]. Now, both drama based andconversationalist perspectives help us to comprehend human-computer activityfrom a systemic standpoint, but they do not thoroughly explain why and howpeople are persuaded to play, why they keep, and how they can be kept playing.Why? Naturally, neither Laurel nor Crawford, nor Rollings/Adams [31], think ofhuman-computer play activities in terms of symbolic gameplay action,consubstantiality offers (coherent and proper identification possibilities),and consubstantiality demands (proper and coherent identification necessities)as outlined with the functional circles that serve as link joints betweenplayer expectations.

Conceptual models as systemic argumentation in interactivegame system design^

However,game designers “try to imagine what players will experience as they work theirway through the game, trying to deliver the most exciting and compellingexperience possible (…)” [35]. Theymust still heed functional aspects when designing digital games that encompassuser interfaces. Whereas in conventional design, user tasks play a vital rolefor designing these systems, the

two key aspects of the player’s experience are thegoals they pursue and the environment in which they pursue them. Game designersoften seek to keep players engaged by creating three levels of goals:short-term (collect the magic keys), lasting, perhaps, seconds; medium-term(open the enchanted safe), lasting minutes; and finally, long-term (save theworld), lasting the length of the game. [35]

The“interplay” of these levels of goals, together with the tension betweenstoryline and freedom of interaction gives the player the perception that “theyhave free will, even though at any time their options are actually limited.”[35] This notion, eventually, exemplifies that next to a symbolic, and astructural coupling, a systemic coupling between game design and player takesplace in the form of performative gameplay indicating a rhetoric of digitalgames.

CONCLUSION: TOWARDS AN ANALYTICAL AND APPLIED RHETORÌC OFDIGITAL GAMES: FUTURE RESEARCH

Inthis article, I have introduced a first and rough rhetorical model of how wecan approach digital games symbolically, structurally, and systemically, forboth their analysis, and their design. In how far this model of gameplay ascooperative - consubstantial and persuasive - symbolic eigenworld action andstructural and systemic coupling between player and game design will proveusable, I will try and examine empirically in the future. Contrary to theexemplary notion that game design is about “environmental storytelling” [19], Ipropose to view delightful game design as the science and art of psychagogicalexperience induction, and the conceptual craft of creating strategies of properand coherent consubstantiality-making, and successful player persuasion withinthe game’s space-time eigenworld.

Therefore,to me, game design represents the applied and practical aspect of a rhetoric ofdigital games. I also believe that this view should be testified through a lotof game design experimentation. As part of my ongoing doctoral research, and inorder to meet my postulation of a rhetoric of digital games, I am currentlyworking on building an applicable and analysis library of rhetorical gamedesign figures (such as a sensumotorical metaphor, or a syntactical metonymy, for example) based on socialpsychologically validated functional circles as described in the precedingsections.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Iwould like to thank both Jussi Holopainen (Nokia Research Center) and HeatherKelley (Ion Storm Game Studio) for discussing this article. In addition I wouldlike to credit Bernd Jürgen Warneken, Joachim Knape, Rainer Schöbel (all:University of Tübingen), and Heiner Mühlmann (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)for their counseling, as well as thank Gerhard Blechinger and Gerhard M.Buurman (both: University for Art Media and Design Zurich) for their generousfinancial support. Eventually, therewould be no research without you, Katrin.

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[1] Note that my discussiondoes not reflect how researchers use persuasive techniques to define play inthe sense of Sutton-Smith [34].

[2] It should be mentioned that this is an exemplary media effects /marketing studies publication. Although the term “rhetoric” is mentionedtherein, it is merely understood and empirically analysed as a promotionalquality rather than a scientific discipline of strategic and effectiveexpression as it is here.

[3] “Sensu-“, or“sensomotorical” signifies not only corporeal (in/output, navigational, directmanipulative etc.) movements, but also body motion, and player perception.