Summary
Since the 1972 release of the first commercial home video game console Magnavox Odyssey, video games have become a steadily growing form of entertainment. As the technology advanced along with time, the question emerged: Can video games have a place in society as more than a style of media that can employ the art of rhetoric to construct stories and provide effective communication? Play/Write: Digital Rhetoric, Writing, Games, edited by Douglas Eyman, the author of Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice, and Andréa D. Davis, the co-editor of Metamorphosis: The Effects of Professional Development on Graduate Students, answer this question by exploring the intersections of video games and rhetoric through various forms of interaction and play to show how this medium has a unique identity in the field of media. The book serves as a collection of chapters split into four parts, which each address different methods of applying writing surrounding the gaming space. The foundation results in a thorough analysis of multimodal rhetoric through the lens of multiple video games that typically originate from the period of the late 1990’s and early to mid-2000’s.