Persuasive properties

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Del curso dictado por Erasmus University Rotterdam

Serious Gaming

178 calificaciones

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Serious Gaming

178 calificaciones

Have you ever wondered how playing games can help us to train people, deal with societal challenges or raise awareness of contemporary social issues? In this MOOC you will learn the ins and outs of games that are designed with exactly those purposes in mind: serious games. We will define serious games and discuss the different types that have been developed. We will explain why people like to play them and what impact they may have. State of the art theories from game studies, philosophy and media psychology will be used to help you understand how serious games work and how they appeal to players. The potential impact of gaming is addressed in detail by discussing persuasive games, which aim at changing the player's attitude. Throughout the MOOC, theoretical insights will be illustrated with playful animations and case studies of serious games that are developed by world-class companies in the city of Rotterdam. This MOOC is particularly interesting for you when you are a student considering to study digital media such as serious games, a professional interested in the opportunities these games may create for your organization, or a game developer who wants to know more about the impact serious games can have. Are you ready to broaden your vision on serious games? Join this course and be inspired!

De la lección

Persuasive Gaming

How can a game influence the attitude of a player? In this module, we will dive into a specific kind of serious games: persuasive games. Rhetoric and psychological theories will help you to understand how the process of persuasion works. And we will analyze in practice how persuasive games can help us to feel empathy for poverty-stricken teenagers, what it feels like to have autism or understand the impact of gun violence.

Introduction to persuasive gaming4:30

Persuasive properties6:07

The process of persuasion5:48

Conoce a los instructores

Jeroen Jansz
Full Professor
Media & Communication
Mijke Slot
Dr.
Media & Communication

[SOUND] >> 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 1, 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 [INAUDIBLE] will lead you away.

>> Persuasion theorist Daniel O'Keefe,

developed his ideas long before serious games became popular.

But his theory turns out to be very much applicable to persuasive gaming.

This is how he describes persuasion.

A successful intentional effort at influencing another's mental state through

communication in the 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 a O'Keefe means.

As it simply does not makes sense to say, I persuaded him, but I 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

sort of behavioral change as preceded 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 traditional rhetoric

as the art of persuasion, which dates back to Aristotle and 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 games mechanics.

If they succeed in designing proper procedural rhetoric the persuasive message

will unfold smoothly during play.

Bogost 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 if persuasion is an almost automatic consequence of playing.

In Sicart's own words, the meaning of a game cannot be reduced to its rules,

nor to its behavior derived from these rules, since play will be a process of

appropriation of those rules, a dialogue between the system and the player.

In this quote, appropriation amounts to a creative interpretation of the rules

that may very well go beyond what was built into the game's 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 procedural rhetoric holds that a particular design is required if you 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 Cachoppo.

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