Rhetoric and Composition: The Persuasive Power of Video Games as Paratexts

Given the title of the course, your immediate questions may be: 1) what is a paratext?; 2) how are video games persuasive? Throughout this course, we will go over theories in rhetoric, such as "procedural rhetoric," to help you understand why digital games are socio-political texts that actually make claims about the physical world. We will go over writing composition and textual strategies with which to participate in collaborative writing exercises. Essentially, we will learn to play, analyze, and write about digital games together.