How Boing Boing undermined its own argument against Amazon Kindle
There’s been a strong and decidedly split reaction to Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader, which was released this week. As of today, Amazon reports that they have sold out of the device, so people are obviously buying it. But concern over its closed nature, including binding users to Amazon’s DRM-based sales channel, have helped the reader earn a 2 1/2… 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
On the potential to release new games for old consoles via Wii's Virtual Console. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
Now that Nintendoâ??s Wii has finally hit the streets, we can really start assessing its potential impact on the future of video games in general, and serious games in particular. With all the fuss after Nintendoâ??s announcement of the consoleâ??s official name six months ago, itâ??s easy to forget that the company promised nothing less than a â??Revolutionâ? â?? the… read more
In First Monday 11, no. 9., Special Issue #7: Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace
Videogames have dominated popular culture for some time, but only in 2004 did they make a significant break into the world of politics, advocacy, and activism. This paper provides an overview of a variety of types of games used for political speech, from endorsed party messages to activist dissent. After explaining the state of the field, I discuss approaches to… read more
From Popular Communication 4, no. 3 (2006)
Based on cognitive linguist George Lakoffâ??s notions of metaphor and frame as the principle organizers of political discourse, this article offers an approach to analyzing political rhetoric in videogames intended to carry ideological bias. I then argue for three ways games function in relation to ideological frames — reinforcement, contestation, and exposition — through examples of political games (Tax Invaders),… read more
An exhibition of political games
In Fall 2004, Gonzalo Frasca and I curated an exhibition of political games called Videogames with an Agenda. The exhibition marked the UK opening of the documentary film The Corporation. The show ran from October 16 to November 7, 2004 at the exhibition space in the Curzon Soho, a theater in London’s Soho district. Featured games included work from Molleindustria,… read more