Visualizing Persuasive Structures in Advergames

Abstract

Since the publication of Ian Bogost's two first books (2006, 2007), procedural rhetoric has been the focus of attention of many scholars working on persuasive strategies in digital games (e.g., Heide & Nørholm 2009, Flanagan 2009, Swain 2010, Ferrari 2010). This paper aims to demonstrate that other persuasive dimensions could complement procedural rhetoric to design games with advertising purposes. This paper initially explains the value of use for each one of the persuasive dimensions that could appear in an advergame: narrative persuasion, procedural rhetoric, visual rhetoric, audiovisual rhetoric and textual rhetoric. Then a framework to analyze and visualize the persuasive structure of advergames is proposed, explained and defended. Finally the model is applied to three case studies.