Sutton- Smith defines rhetoric as “A persuasive discourse, or an implicit narrative, wittingly or unwittingly adopted by members of a particular affiliation to persuade others of the veracity and worthwhileness of their beliefs.” (Salen et al. 2004 p. 9)
The popularity of gaming increases year by year. With new consoles and equipment available for gamers to use there is no wonder the demand for games is ever increasing. In the past five years the amount of genres available within games has grown considerably. The average age of gamers is 33 years old. 25% of gamers are over 50 years of age and 38% of all gamers are women. These surprising statistics allow manufactures to produce games for all audiences in different concepts for different gamers.
I decided to concentrate on manhunt as this created so much controversy with the press and players of the game. It was even blamed for the murder of a teenager. The game was released in 2004 by Rock star games also the creator’s of the extremely violent Grand Theft Auto. The game after being released was given an ‘R’ rating making it forbidden to sell or rent to anyone under the age of 18. The game is banned completely in
My housemate has the game and after learning about it I asked if I could see if it was all it cracked up to be. It was extremely scary from the start, almost like going on a rollercoaster. Slogans like “Turn off the lights...” and “Get ready to kill…” Player options include Fetish or Hardcore are used for normal of difficult mode. The images for me were the worst for example dead bodies and scary looking clowns. Then players are able to act like the ultimate killing machine on a manhunt. In gamer jargon, Manhunt is known as a "stealth" game, meaning the player must sneak about and eliminate obstacles.
I feel that rhetoric can be applied to man hunt as it is basically implying that it is ok to kill in circumstances where you will not be stopped. There are no cultural values to make audiences believe that this kind of behaviour is wrong. I hated the game but maybe that’s because I am a girl, that kind of horror should not have ever been made available to children in the first place.
On the contrary being a girl I love the Sims. There is no negative rhetoric involved, it is child friendly providing you use the correct version and I feel a great learning tool for children to understand things about everyday life. Ok it is a computer game but at the end of the day there is no shooting or killing and it basically shows a virtual human being doing the same as we do. The intentions are straight forward and simple the game is easy and child friendly. At the same time it is calm and relaxed and does not influence players values beliefs or behaviour.
Word Count 400.
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