Month: July 2025

24/7/25 Literary Games Group

Hi everyone,

This week we had a discussion around Bogost’s concept of persuasive games, and his reflection on the term he coined. It’s interesting to see how honest he is about the failings of persuasive games, in that people prefer to talk about the concept rather than play the actual games he developed. We thought that this was because the games were insistent on the moralizing they were engaging in, and were always a bit too up front about what they were trying to persuade. The systems behind the games were both too complex and the message too simple. We played an actual persuasive game that Bogost referenced, Molleindustry’s McDonald’s Game, and observed that phenomenon in action. We thought that the game caricatures McDonald’s and in doing so perhaps trivializes their evil, and makes it all too easy to enact. 

    The idea that video games cannot be persuasive unless they are explicitly made for that purpose is, we agreed, reductionist and hurts the cause of taking video games seriously. A game designer is already on the backfoot if they say that their game is important because it is serious. I suggest expanding the net of persuasive games and procedural rhetoric to include games that are non-serious, as it is in analyzing such games that a lot can be discovered.

We then played some of The Deed: Dynasty, where we must commit a murder and get away with it. While laughing at the strange dialogue was a lot of fun, it’s also worth considering how the game situates violence and murder within the context of other video games. Whereas most games make violence a short, sharp act, The Deed ensures that the player is involved with the planning of the murder at every step, which, even if the game falls short of its aims, at least provokes some reflection.

We also played a bit of an old favourite of mine, NO THING, a corner-turning simulator (or pseudo-rhythm game), set in a dystopic 1990s dreamscape, made up of floating faces and disembodied arms in the midst of a sea of meaningless two dimensional architecture. The way that it delivers its story is bizarre – via imagery and also nigh-incomprehensible lines read by a robot voice – but slowly, the longer you play, the more you piece together. We will likely play some more next week.

I’ve attached the next chapter of the Persuasive Games book, which involves a reflection on the growing gamification of things in general, everyday life. Miguel Sicart questions our need to make things abstract while also gamifying them. How has this affected us, or our perception of games (or life) in general? Do the multifarious reward systems present in gamified day-to-day have a strong impact on us? More than we might be aware of, perhaps? I’d love to hear what people think next Thursday, when we meet again from 2 til 4pm in the Digital Humanities Hub.

Have a great weekend, lovely to see everybody!

17/7/25 Literary Games Group

Hi everyone,

Great to see everyone again after the end of the break. I hope everyone enjoyed the first session back. Thanks to everyone who played a bit of something! Next week we will begin running at a regular time for the rest of the semester from 2 til 4pm-ish on a Thursday afternoon.

This week we played two very, very different games – Paratopic (Arbitrary Metric 2018) and Later Alligator (SmallBü, Pillow Fight 2019). Paratopic is a surreal work of existential horror that creates “a mistrust in reality” using a number of hard cuts between scenes and an uncertain, nonlinear storyline. The game grips from the outset but demands a lot from the player in order to figure out what exactly is happening, and who we are playing as. It is a game that links in to what I dubbed the “techno-haunted” in my Honours dissertation.

On the other hand, Later Alligator is a cute, humor-focused game in a New York city inhabited entirely by eccentric alligators. The player is tasked with interviewing thirty different alligators and playing unique minigames to progress the story. The two games are linked perhaps by their frequent use of different styles of gameplay to deliver the narrative. The repetitive structure of video games is a necessity in programming and designing them, meaning a video game’s arguments surface within that same repetition. These points are things that we had a bit of a discussion about regarding the reading. 

The introduction to Persuasive Gaming in Context already raised some interesting questions around what it means to be persuaded by a work of fiction in general. Some ideas floated around about games and immersion. Do games allow for a different kind of immersion, or one that is more effective? Perhaps neither is true. There was also some discussion around the idea that narrative is the vehicle for persuasion, and gameplay often conflicts with that traditional vehicle. The classic concept of ludonarrative dissonance informs us that games often fail to persuade when the gameplay and the narrative are at odds with one another, and this happens very frequently.

I have attached the reading for next week, which is Ian Bogost’s reflection on the idea of persuasive games that he helped to coin. How has the field done in the intervening years since his book and game development company were launched? What promises did he make, and how did that unfold? How might we consider persuasive games in the modern context, and how might we use it going forwards?

Hope to see you all next week, have a lovely weekend!