Although Bogost and Frasca use different terms, their descriptions of this new type of rhetoric should be considered synonymous. Bogost sees procedural rhetoric as an opposition to theories of verbal, written, and visual rhetoric,[17] while Frasca coined the term «simulation rhetoric» to compare it to narrative and drama as a form of figurative storytelling. He explains: «It is common to juxtapose narrative and drama because the former is the form of the past, of what cannot be changed, while the latter unfolds in the present. To further develop the analogy, simulation is the shape of the future. It is not about what has happened or what is happening, but about what can happen. Unlike storytelling and drama, its essence rests on a basic assumption: change is possible. [16] However, the way they discuss their concepts is almost identical. Procedural rhetoric offers a promising new way of making claims about how things work. [17] As Matt King summarizes the procedural and rhetorical aspects of this theory: «By embodying certain processes over others, by structuring a gaming experience around certain rules and logics, video games make claims about the world and how it works – or how it doesn`t, or how it should work. [18] Bogost`s presentation of procedural rhetoric, as well as his emphasis on video games, invites a number of new practices for rhetoricians, ranging from articulating and using new modes of (procedural) rhetorical analysis to exploring the possibilities that procedural rhetoric and video games offer new approaches to argumentation and other forms of expression. [2] Here, I would like to examine and expand Bogost`s connections between rhetoric and video games to ask ourselves to what extent we can view rhetoric itself as procedural.

As the developer of Rhetorical Peaks – a video game of rhetoric and writing courses developed by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin – I wondered to what extent we could view rhetoric as procedural, as something that could be defined by rules and processes. This concern, in turn, calls into question the ability of a video game, that is, a tool that describes phenomena procedurally, to teach rhetoric. For Bogost: «When we develop video games, we put the demands above it. A process that we celebrate, ignore, want to question» and «When we play these games, we question these affirmations, look at them, integrate them into our lives, and pass them on to our future experiences» (339). From this perspective, the entire design and gameplay of the game is inherently rhetorical; The processes and rules of a game embody modes of persuasion and expression, and we can read and analyze them as such. But what happens if we change direction: how procedural is the rhetoric? In other words, could a particular set of processes – and therefore any video game – describe what it means to engage in rhetoric? The quick answer seems to be that rhetoric is many things, a collection of teaching, reading, writing, and theorizing practices, each with its own processes. So we could imagine any number of video games dedicated to exploring these different processes and presenting arguments about how rhetoric works in different situations. But something in the rhetoric defies the rules and defies any sense that we ever «won the game.» After all, what would it mean to win the rhetoric game? [3] Of course, there are many concerns and conversations about rhetorical methods (the processes underlying various reading, writing, teaching, and theorizing practices) and their ultimate goals (persuasion, identification, consensus, perspective shifting, civic engagement, etc.).

My hope here is to highlight assumptions about rhetoric shared by many different camps that complicate our ability to describe rhetoric as a fixed set of processes. «Bogost`s book provides a new lens – procedural rhetoric – that can be used in game analysis, and an excellent overview of the history of games of this genre.» – Steve Jacobs, American Journal of Play [1] In a recent blog post, Alex Reid responds to Bogost`s understanding of procedural rhetoric by emphasizing the possibility of reading all texts as procedural: For example: «[t]he children carry rules of conduct with them. Reading a book is a procedure and a procedure that must be learned. Different books require different procedures. While I agree with Reid that processes shape our encounters with a particular text, and I generally find my work here consistent with his move toward post-procedural rhetoric, Bogost`s distinction between video game procedurality and other types of text ultimately works for me. Video games and books (and all other texts) require certain methods of interpretation to be meaningful, and they also require certain material procedures to be experienced. Books require our eyes to wander around the page and our hands to turn those pages (although here we realize that other procedures are involved when we talk about audiobooks and e-books, programs that read books for the visually impaired, etc.). However, in video games, the hardware procedures necessary for the text experience are performed in relation to and through a computer system that requires certain inputs before allowing the player to experience certain aspects of the game. With that in mind, you`ll need to complete some processes up to level four of your game, but you can skip to chapter four of your book at any time. It is important to recognize how all texts require procedural interactions, but it can also be helpful to recognize the ways in which unique texts require unique practices. I don`t think Reid is hostile to that idea, but he wants to look at the situation from the other side.

In Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2007), Ian Bogost describes the links between rhetoric and procedure, showing how processes, logics and systems of rules represent a form of persuasion and expression. He calls this persuasive and expressive mode «procedural rhetoric, the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than speech, writing, images, or moving images» (ix). For Bogost, «religious rhetoric offers a new and promising way of making claims about how things work» (29), about the processes, rules, and logics that structure individual attitudes and behaviors, as well as social and cultural systems and institutions. Bogost associates this concept of procedurality with long-standing cultural institutions and conventions such as courts and laws, as well as their more recent instantiation in computer programming, but ultimately wants to address the concept in general: «Procedurality refers to a way of creating, explaining, or understanding processes» (2-3). Moreover, «processes define how things work: the methods, techniques, and logics that govern the functioning of systems, from mechanical systems such as engines, to organizational systems such as high schools, to conceptual systems such as religious belief» (3). Thus, procedurality seems to exist all around us, structuring our interactions with material objects, our social interactions and institutions, and even our minds. Procedural rhetoric, in turn, argues about these systems and the processes that structure them. Through the processes and rules of a simulation, game creators have the ability to convince players to look at the world according to the procedures of a particular game.