Poke-Rhetoric

As I was reading the chapter in Gameworks on rhetoric (the one that starts with the conversation about Pokemon), I was struck by this quote:

Good game designers, like good advertising agents, are particularly skillful at knowing intuitively what will capture the audience's attention . . . [Game] developers adorn games with plot details that depend on rhetoric functioning conditionally. (90)

I think skilled game designers are also good at creating subcultures for their games complete with specialized language and rhetoric. This pulls the gamers in to create a higher investment in the actual game.

I went through that conversation and underlined every word that was either unique to the subject or reappropriated to mean a different thing. Here is a list of the words I found:

• Game Boy Advance
• Web
• evolved
• Spearow
• Fearow
• trainer
• LCD
• discovered
• trained
• fought
• traded
• Poliwrath
• water stone
• Pokerus
• Game Boy
• Pokemon's
• stat experience
• Internet

Some of those words are used in everyday conversation--Web, Internet, and LCD, for example--but in the rhetorical context of the conversation, they mean different things. The Internet refers to a system of connecting two Game Boy Advances together for the purpose of the game (I'm assuming, based on the context). Web retains its normal meaning in this context, as does LCD.

The words that are completely reappropriated--evolved, trainer, trained, fought, traded--create a new language or way of communication between the gamers without having to create entirely new words. The game designers deliberately crafted these meanings in order to create a culture around a specific game, and apparently to great success. In 2000, the Pokemon games were the top selling games of the year (74).

Finally, the new words--Poliwrath, Spearow, Fearow, water stone, Pokerus--are entirely unique to the game and further pull the gamer into the experience. The rhetoric of Pokemon is brilliant and extremely effective.

I realize the chapter on rhetoric is more about the rhetoric of game development, but I think this shows how the linguistic "art" of creating a game can make it more successful as a gaming experience (one that apparently crosses into everyday life outside the game) and a business venture.

So now there's the golden question: so what? I think, as tech writers, we need to deliberately create a rhetorical universe through the language we use if we ever work on games. Being away fo how language shapes a gaming experiences makes it more immersive and, if paired with excellent gameplay, will be profitable/successfull. Look at World of Warcraft. Azeroth, Night Elves, Loraereon, Horde--these words have a specific meaning in the context of the game but also create a rhetorical world for the players to exist in, a language with which to communicate with each other, and generally immerse the players into a more satisfying experience. I'm wondering how this applies to the chapter, though. Is this rhetoric functioning exigently, in a quotidian way, or conditionally? Or may none of the above?