RHETORICS AND GAMES

Every video game express some values and believes called rhetoric. According to Burk rhetoric is" a persuasive discourse, or an implict narrative, wittingly adopted by members of particular affiliation to persude others of the veracity and worthwilness of their beliefs"(Salen, Zimmerman 2006, p. 302).This phenomena is clearly visible in games like Manhunt or Doom 3.
Those games are well known for fighting and killing everything what is on the player way.Those kind of games are seen in the society as bad which may provocate violence. Especially Manhunt, where you can see a lot of violence.The key point in the game is to kill everyone on your way if not they will kill you. So the rhetoric of the game is shouting that killing and fighting is good.
This attitude sometimes lead to so called Moral Panic, which actually happened in 2005 when Manhunt was banned in several countries and shops because of its extreme violence. But this has lead to even bigger amount of buyers and players.
The opposite situation is with Samorost 2 where the main character is trying to find his dog.And his only weapon is his brain.It is a puzzle game, and the player have to do everything in correct order to find the dog. The rhetoric of the game is showing us that to solve the problems we need to use our brains, we need to think and this will lead us to the victory. The game is totally against the violence and as i was looking through its reviews you cannot find a bad one, again opposite to Manhunt Samorost through the rhetoric was accepted by the society.
Looking at rhetoric's in the game Sims we can say that it promotes a healthy attitude towards life. For example you need to manage your sim money in order to pay the bills and buy some food, you need to socialise with others to make the sim happy, clean the house etc. This game is good for children as it teaches them that you need to earn money , pay the bills, and socialise in order to survive.It can also teach that you have to be careful with spending the money, if you would buy some goods as TV or new bed you will not have enough for the basics as food or water.
The game is like a real life and may help some kids to understand the value of money.