In order to mature properly, videogaming not only needs a Citizen Kane moment; it needs a little humdrum too
Think of any media form – say writing, photography or film. Now think of all of the things you can imagine doing with it. I like to think of this as the “possibility space” – a spectrum running between so-called high art at one end, to tools at the other. High art doesn’t have to be hoity-toity snobbery, and it… read more
Persuasive Games, my book about games and rhetoric, is now available.
My new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, is out and shipping from Amazon.com or your favorite bookseller. The book is about how videogames make arguments. I offer a theory of rhetoric for games, then I discuss a great many examples from commercial and non-commercial games, focusing on the areas of politics, advertising and learning. The book should… read more
The Expressive Power of Videogames
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon A book about how videogames make arguments: rhetoric, computing, politics, advertising, learning. Videogames are both an expressive medium and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis,… read more
Who I am and what I do
Looking for a bio (long, short)?Looking for photos of me?Want my curriculum vitae?Trying to contact me? Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning author and game designer whose work focuses on videogames and computational media. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an… read more
About making games ordinary. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
Fashion mogul Marc Eckoâ??s eponymous clothing company now brings in $1 billion a year in revenue. Recently, Ecko has branched out from rhino-emblazoned t-shirts, shoes, and underpants to popular media, including the consumer culture rag Complex Magazine, the extreme lifestyle YouTube knock-off eckotv.com, and the 2006 video game Mark Eckoâ??s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.
On the uses of in-game ads for cultural reference. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
Monopoly has a long, complex, and generally unknown history. Perhaps the most surprising historical curiosity about this classic game about being a real estate tycoon is that it was originally created with an entirely different set of values in mind.