1. Games & Meaning: the rhetoric of Puerto Rico and beyond Faculty of Education,University of Chester th 11 December 2014Sebastian Atay (@bizarrelaughter)

2. a historian 3. An anecdote! 4. he h eh heh 5. Procedural rhetoric 6. Procedurality refers to a way of creating, explaining, or understanding processes. 7. processes define the way things work: the methods, techniques and logics that drive the operation of systems, from mechanical systems like engines to organizational systems like high schools to conceptual systems such as religious faith. 8. Rhetoric refers to effective and persuasive expression. 9. Procedural rhetoric, then, is a practice of using processes persuasively. 10. Procedural rhetoric as design philosophy Procedural rhetoric as tool for critical analysis Games are a subset of procedural media Games are a legitimate art form Computers are perhaps best suited to procedural rhetoric 11. Why aren't we talking about this more? 12. In 1493 Christopher Columbus discovered the eastern-most island of the Great Antilles. About 50 years later, Puerto Rico began to really blossom through you! 13. Minimises the West's oppressive practices (#4) Denies the achievements of non-Europeans (#5) Reproduces a Whig version of history which renders the West as principal catalyst of progress (#2) 14. Another anecdote! 15. Racism doesn't exist 16. The great majority were free people who went there voluntarily for the economic opportunities 17. How do you think anyone arrived there if not by boat? 18. These are just little brown tokens, nothing else. They don't symbolise anything else than "workers" as they are [...] that's why we never considered a color change - and we won't also in future. 19. intent doesn't matter 20. What are the rules of the system? What is the significance of these rules? What claims about the world do these rules make? How do I respond to those claims? 21. In 1493 Christopher Columbus discovered the eastern-most island of the Great Antilles. About 50 years later, Puerto Rico began to really blossom through you! 22. Repurposing 23. board games as procedural media 24. BONUS CONTENT: UNLOCKED 25. These are just little brown tokens, nothing else. They don't symbolise anything else than "workers" as they are [...] that's why we never considered a color change - and we won't also in future. 26. Another another anecdote! 27. I believe that most of the meaning of a game, ethical or otherwise, emerges as the result of play but in a complicated way. 28. I don't think you can locate the meaning in some formal or structural qualities of the game rules or materials, nor can you locate it solely in the performance of the players. 29. The meanings emerge out of a complex network of interactions between the formal qualities of the game system, the explicitly representational aspects of the game's materials (theme, images, language, narrative), the experience of an individual player, the way the game is used within the player community, the way the game evolves over time as players explore it, etc. 30. Thank you!