reclaiming agency beyond procedural rhetoric

In an essay often cited by rhetoric and composition scholars and students, Ian Bogost defines procedural rhetoric as the way a video game argues based on the coding system of the game. A videogame develops a world that a player learns to read, and successful reading of the game leads to success in the game. Learning how to play as lara croft, to explore the levels to find hidden weapons and treasures makes a player more successful at beating the game. Finding hidden coins and mushrooms helps Mario rescue the princess faster. In these types of video games, the agency of he game (and therefore the power) according to Bogost lies in the coding of the game. The player has no agency, no power, they simply learn to read the domain and then to defeat the game.

The same would hold true of a game like SimCity 4. The player learns to read the game, they learn what the symbols mean, they learn how to zone different sections, and how to grow their cities. They learn to read the coding of the game to work toward beating it. However, SimCity players don’t stop at that point, instead, some participate in online forums, creating mods, help guides and fanfiction surrounding the SimCity games (and their ability to play/manipulate the game). In these cases, the player is in possession of the agency of the game, the player learns to read the game on their PC playing by themselves, then moves their play to virtual community spaces where they can reclaim their agency by participating outside the game. In this case procedural rhetoric does not limit the players, it does not help explain game play. In these cases, players have not read the game as agency on their computer screen that they simply learn to read. They see the game as extending beyond the boundaries of the coding sequence developed by the game developers, and they have reclaimed their agency through fandom. Fandom is agency, and fandom is outside procedural rhetoric. It makes use of the game structure in things like fanfiction, but it reallocates the agency to the players who manipulate the coding to meet their own needs. In this way, in a game like SimCity, players demonstrate their agency through a site like simtropolis.com. they demonstrate their agency through their participation, their creation of mods, and their creation of fanfiction.