My Rhetoric of Video Games Pt. 1 - Introduction

To me, rhetoric was always term that belonged solely to politicians and advertisers.  It was a menacing method of wordplay that allowed nasty men and women in suits to fool the public by skirting around real issues or to persuade consumers into buying products they did not need.  Dictionary.com proves that I was not alone in my misconceptions on the subject with its first entry, defining the term as “the undue use of exaggeration or display; bombast,” putting a negative connotation on the word rather than the artistry that Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks attributed to it (Dictionary.com).  The only connection I would’ve been able to make to the term “rhetoric” for video games is how players seem to have their own language/references that they type in the game’s chat client that corresponded to particular strategies or practices within the video game.  However, thank to my Rhetoric class at Trinity, I have a new appreciation for the term, and can now see how games like Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft can possess a rhetoric all their own.  Using Barry Brummet’s Rhetoric in Popular Culture as assistance, I have tried to understand how this rhetoric made the game incredibly popular here in the United States, but more importantly how it became a national phenomenon in South Korea.  The idea here is to examine how the general populous was persuaded to make a major change in their nation’s culture over a video game that was never intended to become so wildly popular that it would become a national pastime.  Maybe by looking at this cultural shift, it can shed some light as to how the transition can be made in our educational system to approach games in a different light.
 

To clarify what I mean by rhetoric, I am not going based off of Aristotle's approach, but rather the theories posed in Barry Brummet’s Rhetoric in Popular Culture, a refreshing, and more importantly, up to date stance on rhetoric in society that asks us to “think about how everyday actions, objects, and experiences affect us and those around us” (Brummet 4).  Instead of the traditional reading, writing, and speaking, Brummet believes that we truly experience and learn about our culture in a nontraditional text, or a “set of signs related to each other insofar as their meanings all contribute to the same set of effects or functions” (Brummet 29).  I immediately agreed with him, mostly for my earnest belief that video games are just as much a high art form as music, film, or literature, because I feel that these games give just as much a glimpse into today’s society as any formal article written about the state of the youth today or documentary about the same subject. I believe that there is a persuasive language behind these games, as can be seen when considering which games are popular in society, and realizing that they definitely have their own rhetoric and connotations that make them relevant and widely played.  How much time one spends playing, what genres a person plays, where they play, when they play—all of these factors make up Brummet’s definition of a text, and paint a specific image of the type of person who is playing the game.  The question that remains though is where do they stand in society?  Apparently, it depends entirely on where they live:  America or South Korea.