Welcome. We already introduced you to persuasive games as a subset of serious games. The example of My Cotton Picking Life, illustrated that these games have a specific goal, that is changing the player's attitude. Now we'll continue our exploration of persuasive gaming with three focused lectures. In the present one, we will define persuasion in the context of rhetoric, the classical art of persuasion. The second lecture is psychological in-focus. It will cover the process of persuasion. The third lecture presents three examples of current persuasive games, Poverty Is Not a Game, Auti-sim, and The Best Amendment. These cases will illustrate the fruitfulness of analyzing their properties in detail. But it all starts with an understanding of persuasion. My colleague Rue Jacobs, will lead you the way. Persuasion theorist, Daniel O'Keefe, developed his ideas a long before serious games became popular. But his theory turns out to be very much applicable to persuasive gaming. This is how he defines persuasion. A successful intentional effort at influencing another's mental state through communication, in a circumstance in which the persuadee, has some measure of freedom. The first element of the definition immediately stands out. It holds that persuasion implies success of the attempt. This may sound surprising, but ordinary language helps to understand what O'Keefe means, as it simply does not make sense to say, ''I persuaded him but failed.'' The second element is concerned with using communication, in this case, a game to influence another person's mental state. We have chosen to specify this mental state to the person's attitude. Defined as, a learned global evaluation of an object, person, place, or issue. Linking persuasion to attitude change and not to, for example, direct behavioral change, is in keeping with current psychological knowledge that sees any behavioral change, as proceeded by at least short-term attitude change. For example, a positive attitude regarding Syrian refugees, precedes actually helping them. The third element emphasizes the freedom of the persuadee in order to set persuasion apart from coercion, that is forcing the persuadee to do something. The practice of persuasive gaming, is very much characterized by this freedom of choice. If a player decides to stop playing, the persuasive message will not be communicated. So persuasive games are serious games, made with the primary intention of changing or reinforcing specific attitudes. Game developer and theorist Ian Bogost, brought the idea of persuasive games into prominence through his book, 'Persuasive Games'. In his theorizing, the principle mechanism of persuasion is procedural rhetoric. This concept links persuasion by means of games, to the long tradition of rhetoric as the art of persuasion, which dates back to Aristotle in classical Greece. Procedural rhetoric holds that, the meaning of a game is tied up with the computational nature of digital games, in particular, the execution of rules. The game's rules show how a part of the real world works. Players then get to grips with these rules, and will come to similar conclusions about the world, and develop specific attitudes. Tying persuasion to rules, underlines that persuasion is dependent on interaction, which sets persuasive games apart from media like television, or newspapers, or pamphlets, where the persuasive messages are generally one way, that is from media content to the audience. Bogost attributes a key role to game developers, as they shape the procedural rhetoric in the game's mechanics. If they'd succeed in designing proper procedural rhetoric, the persuasive message will unfold smoothly during play. Bogost's procedural rhetoric has become influential, especially among game developers, but it has also been criticized. Game researcher Miguel Sicart, criticizes Bogost for his one-sided focus on design properties, while disregarding the creativity of players. In procedural rhetoric, it is as if persuasion is an almost automatic consequences of playing. In Sicart's own words, the meaning of a game, cannot be reduced to its rules, nor to the behavior derived from these rules, since play will the process of appropriation of those rules, a dialogue between the system and the player. It is quote, appropriation amounts to a creative interpretation of the rules that may very well go beyond what was built into the games mechanics. What we have learned from Bogost and Sicart, is that persuasive gaming can be best understood as a meaningful network of game and players. Bogost's procedural rhetoric holds that a particular design is required, if we want the game to be persuasive. Sicart, on the other hand, advocates a player oriented focus, arguing that the message of a persuasive game is conveyed in the act of playing. Despite their differences, they agree that persuasive communication as such, takes place in the interactions between game and player. But they do not conceptualize the nature of persuasive communication. We need to turn to other theories for that. In the next lecture, we will discuss the theory of persuasion that was developed by psychologists Petty and Cacioppo.