Essential books (and texts) about game design & gaming concepts - EPISODE V

In this moment I'm reading "Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames", a very good book from Ian Bogost. Click here to buy. Another essential edition to your library with great ideas for new researches.



And I want to share two important .PDF texts about persuasive technology below:

BERDICHEVSKY, Daniel & NEUENSCHWANDER, Erik. Toward an ethics of persuasive technology. Communications of the ACM, May 1999/Vol.42, No.5 (click here to download)

FOGG, B.J. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do (Chapter 3: Computers as persuasive tools). Morgan Kaufmann: 2003. (click here to download)

Persuasive games

In a very objective way, persuasive games are games that influence players to take action through gameplay.

Despite being just another terminology in the world of games, I think it is important to pay attention to it.

According to Ian Bogost (author of "Persuasive Games”, founding partner of "Persuasive Games Company" and Professor of Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology), games can communicate differently than other media; in this context they not only deliver messages, but also simulate experiences. While often thought to be just a leisure activity, games can also become rhetorical tools.



In the website http://www.persuasivegames.com we can find a lot of good examples of this gaming category. Some of them deserve special highlights, like "Windfall" - a very creative strategy game about building wind farms to create clean energy profitably. Another one is "Fatworld", a very curious game about the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.

The great question about this subject is: does it work?

I think it’s early to answer this question and we need a lot of research in this area to have a more objective view. One thing is sure: games are not just for fun.

I really recommend Mr.Bogost's book to cast a light in this discussion. Enjoy!

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Reference:

BOGOST,Ian. Persuasive Games. The MIT Press, 2010 (paperback) http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/persuasive-games