After reading half of Persuasive Games I began to understand virtual reality, rhetoric, and persuasive games better. Many video games encourage people to do things such as eat healthy or save money in order to buy something. The saving money aspect can be seen with the “Kool-Aid” game because the player has to buy the Kool-Aid packets and save them to get the game. Some advergames such as Tapper are not educational because they use alcohol as a focus point.
Bogost presents a “Procedural Literacy” chapter that was very education and informative for me because I am an English major. I never thought about games containing literacy. Some video games contain puzzles or problems that the player must solve in order to win the level. One example was the game Tetris because it makes the player use there cognitive abilities to win before the block reaches the bottom. Bogost also included the literacy concept with procedures and how game designers develop games. This makes sense to me because a programmer must use proper literacy in order to make a game procedural. The video game “Sim City” shows this idea because the player is able to learn about the environment and how planning is important when building a town, road, bridge or anything.
Instead of thinking that video games are just fun I learned how they contain many everyday aspects. The use of “procedural literacy” and “advergames” let me understand how companies and designers use games as a learning tool or for advertising. Every game teaches a concept either through a procedure or marketing technique.