Gamified Persuasion: User Experiences of Online Activation Service

Persuasion And Games

Persuasion is understood as an attempt to convince someone to do or think differently than they are used or prefer to. Ultimately the intention behind persuasion is to change someone's behavior or thinking towards more desirable patterns. Persuasion is based on rhetoric, the art of discourse, aimed towards an improved capability to inform, persuade or motivate those who are being informed (Bogost, 2007a; Bogost, 2007b; Corbett, 1965).

Considering rhetorical persuasion, computers are a promising platform: they can be programmed to tirelessly bombard the user with a combination of text, sound and images – as digital games do. Ian Bogost (2007a; 2007b) has studied the procedural rhetoric in persuasive games. According to Bogost (2007a), procedurality is the programmability of computers to react on the feedback from various inputs. Thus, procedurality can be understood as interpretative manipulation of symbols (Harnard, 2004). Procedural rhetoric is a method of using the expressive power of digital games in persuasion (Bogost, 2007a). Summa summarum, digital games have the potential to effectively persuade users by using a selected set of images, text and sound, based on the user feedback.