Stranger 109

For those who missed it last night, author and game designer Ian Bogost was on the Colbert Report last night. He was on to promote his new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Games. If you have not gotten a chance to read the book, I highly recomend it for a number of reasons. First, it is really the first comprehensive attempt to address video games as a persuasive medium. Educational scholars who research games like James Paul Gee have have been making arguments about the positive side of gaming for sometime, but Bogost takes many of Gee’s ideas and goes beyond the realm of education. Like so many of us who strive to carve out a legitimate space for the videogame medium within the larger mainstream culture, Bogost addresses how the procedural nature of gaming positions it as unique for persuasive endeavors ranging from education to advertising and to political discourse.

Second, if you have never played any political or social game, the book provides an extensive catalogue of games along with indepth analyses. I would have never thought to play Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS until I read his chapter on how the game functions not as a celebration of consumer culture like The Sims series does, but instead provides a procedural way of thinking about how capital functions. And this is ultimately the strength of Bogost’s argument throughout the book; that games have this seemingly innocuous status as playthings for children. Meanwhile as a medium they offer the unique capacity for explaining complex ideas through models we interact with. In the case of Animal Crossing, the cartoony appearance of animal characters causes us to dismiss it as simplistic and not capable of complex analysis (I am guilty myself of doing precisely that). But as Bogost explains, “Animal Crossing can be seen as a critique of contemporary consumer culture that attempts to persuade the player to understand both the intoxication of material acquisition and the subtle pleasures of abstention.” As children play games like these they start to think about complex ideas in terms they understand; however, the game is hardly just for kids. My wife’s recent obsession with the game certainly speaks to the game’s ability to transcend any age barrier and enthrall even the most sophisticated of adults.

In true Colbert form, the interview seemed to be a lot of setups for Colbert to roll out his purposefully daft observations that serve as his own commentary on ignorance. He made comments such as: “How is a video game going to teach me anything? I mean other than say unless I play Pac-Man, teach me to eat little white pills.” And Bogost being a good sport played along and made some sound points about what the book argues. The context of a interview like this certainly is not the most ideal for conveying such complex ideas as are articulated in the book, but hopefully the Comedy Central demographic, which we can assume a fair number of gamers to be included, will have their interest piqued by the segment. They may not go so far as to buy the book, but will hopefully go to Bogost’s website to explore these kinds of games. Either way, I thought Bogost handled himself well. Too often when academics venture into the mainstream media they forget their audience and wind up being a punchline. Bogost successfully avoided that and played along with Colbert in a way that made the piece both funny and informative.