Agency, Control and Power in Video Games: The Procedural Rhetoric of Inside
Agency, Control and Power in Video Games: The Procedural Rhetoric of Inside

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines Inside, a 2016 puzzle-platformer indie game that thematises questions of play, agency, autonomy and control, and therefore operates as a critique of ideology through its procedural rhetoric. The term was coined by Ian Bogost in his 2007 book on video games and it refers to an innovative mode of persuasion and argumentation, in which an idea is communicated not through verbal or audiovisual means, but through the rule-based processes of the game. Because the player engages in an interactive relationship with a semiotic system and becomes an active agent instead of a passive consumer, video games have a fundamentally different toolkit for persuasion than traditional media. This rhetoric becomes even more ideologically charged, when the gameplay can be interpreted as a model for real-life processes, for example complex social mechanisms. To gain theoretical insight, the case study highlights the game’s procedural mechanics, which creates analogies between its inherent logic of control, characteristic of mainstream video games, and the illusory sense of agency in contemporary neoliberal societies.

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