Wednesday 21 February 2007

Rhetoric In Games

Rhetoric is persuasive language used to convince people into a certain view point and to capture a person’s attention. Rhetoric is cleverly used in the media; all forms of media use rhetoric because of its simple yet gripping nature. It is ‘clear cut’ and therefore appeals to the public in the sense that they do not have to make an opinion up-it is already given. Therefore, “…the media are credited with an enormous power over society to influence behaviour and thought.” (Newman, James and Oram, Barney (2006) Rhetoric is always applied when a game is marketed. It can be subtle, for example the simple expression of the game’s values via the clothes that a character wears, to obvious statements of fact, such as “the most violent game ever made.” I have played a series of games this week to which rhetoric and values are applied. I will consider “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA)” and “Mario Kart: Double Dash (MK).”
The marketing of GTA is not subtle and immediately shows the nature of the game. In the trailer, the main character is seen running away from a fleet of policemen, and shooting passers by. The hard music in the background and the worn clothes of the character add to this aura and sense of violence. GTA is a thrilling, third person action game in which you have to fight to survive. The concept of the game is violent and killing has to occur to succeed; a person receives points for the death of a person, sometimes even by chainsaw! It does seem fairly obvious that this is not a game for children. “In the most common scenario found in such games an anonymous character performs an act of aggression… (Provenzo,F Engene(1991)
How relevant!
On the other hand, MK is a ‘happy’ game. The trailer has upbeat electronic music and the characters wears bright clothing, which in a way represent fun. The game was named “the ultimate party game” in Total Gamer. The game is fun, vibrant end energetic, completely different to GTA.
So as we can see, rhetoric is always in games and the marketing of them. A person could be easily persuaded or dissuaded into a certain viewpoint on the game by the rhetoric used, hence the constant debates over the values and morals of games like GTA.
Bib
(Newman, James and Oram, Barney (2006) Series teaching film and media studies teaching videogames, London, The British Film Institute).

Provenzo,F Engene (1991) Video Kids, Making Sense of Nintendo. Camberige, Massachusetts London,England,Harvard

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