Crider 1 Adam Crider Dr.

Harris Composition II 22 November 2013

Rhetorical Analysis: Be a Gamer, Save the World The article Be a Gamer, Save the World was published on the Wall Street Journal website on January 22, 2011 by Jane McGonigal, the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future. The article is about how video games can help build social bonds and how gamers can help change the world around them. The article was originally published to the Wall Street Journals website and has been circulated by textbook since then. Microsoft, at the time of the articles publication, had just released the widely debated Kinect which was thought to bring a lot of change to the console market through its innovative sensors. (Kinect for Xbox) The immediate audience for the article was educated individuals that have the opportunity to influence change in the world and people who are in a position of power at a company that can implement what is being discussed in this article. The article was intended to inform the audience on the benefits of video games and how gamers can help create real change in the world through crowdsourcing.

The article starts off talking about how many critics consider videogames to be a mindnumbing waste of time, but the author claims that videogames fulfill a genuine human need and that games are a key resource in solving some major real-world problems. The real world does not offer some of the challenges and social bonding that videogames can offer in a virtual environment. Motivation in the real-world is not as effective as motivation within a video game. A good game will satisfy gamers almost every time they play a game, but in the real-world that rarely happens. Gamers are more likely to keep trying something if they fail in a video game

Crider 2 than if they were to fail the same number of times in the real-world. Games these days are more sophisticated with stronger plots and a have compelling story lines. Games can be useful for solving real-world problems by using the creativity of the human brain along with the large number of gamers in the world. It has been proven that if there are enough gamers working on a project, such as a game to fold proteins for biochemistry work, that they can out perform a supercomputer at the same task. Another example of this would be the game EVOKE, created for the World Bank Institution, gives players the ability to design and create their own social enterprises. More than 50 new companies were created and are still alive today because of the players in the game. All of these games are just examples of what can be done with the power of video games. The facts given throughout this article build the logical appeals for this audience while the credentials and publisher of the article give the ethos appeals. The pathos appeal throughout this article is not very effective and the article has very little pathos appeal. The audience for this type of content does not respond well to emotional appeal.

The article establishes extrinsic ethos by stating the credentials of the author. Ms McGonigal is a director of game research at the Institute for the Future, which makes the audience believe what she says about videogames more than an author that might lack these kind of credentials. Intrinsic ethos is built throughout the article by providing good statistics and facts about the subject. The statistics are assumed to be reliable because the Wall Street Journal is a credible source that would not publish a story if it contained invalid facts or statements. If the audience does not find the author credible, the facts that she presents, the millions of active gamers and how efficient they are at finding creative solutions to problems, are enough to build enough intrinsic ethos to believe what she is saying. A middle-aged businessman would find this effective because they like to hear the facts about a subject and know that a source is credible through solid evidence and through experience gained through reading the article.

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Pathos appeals are not very effective for this type of audience because it does not sound very convincing. This subject is hard to argue through emotional appeal because it is mostly a fact driven discussion and argument, but there are some appeals to pathos that the article tries to get across to the audience. Emotions such as sympathy try to the reader feel sympathetic towards poverty in 3rd world countries and small access to clean energy. The article also talks about the emotions that apply to the video games and does not directly appeal to the audience itself. It brings up the fact that videogames consistently fulfill genuine human needs that the real world fails to satisfy. The article acknowledges the fact that people can be emotionally fulfilled by videogames, but it does not try to appeal to that emotion, instead it just gives facts about them. The emotions that it does appeal, such as helpfulness in relation to problem solving, make the audience think about how videogames can affect society and how much it can help the world.

The author makes the claim that videogames can be a key resource to help solve some of the worlds problems. This logos appeal is backed up through a lot of statistics and facts presented throughout the article. The statistics start by giving an idea of how many active gamers there are and how much money that videogame industry is making a year. The statistics and facts then start to talk about how people usually play games and how that kind of power can be used to affect world issues. The message that the author tries to get across is that there are a lot of active video game players in the world and if they all played a game to help world hunger, poverty, or any other major world issue then they could have a major impact on those issues through collaboration and innovation. It gives real evidence to back up the opinions that are state in the claim.

Crider 4 This article does acknowledge the opposing claims and evidence for those claims, but it does not try and refute them. The ethos, pathos, and logos that are used throughout the article help to make the claim more impactful and seem more genuine. The ethos and logos are the biggest appeals in this article because of the audience being more business minded people. It affects them more because they like all the facts and evidence for the claims that are being made, while the logos is not as big of a factor in helping grab the audience.

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Works Cited "'Kinect for Xbox 360' Is Official Name of Microsoft's Controller-Free Game Device." 'Kinect for Xbox 360' Is Official Name of Microsoft's Controller-Free Game Device. N.p., 13 June 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. <http://www.microsoft.com/enus/news/features/2010/jun10/06-13kinectintroduced.aspx>. McGonigal, Jane. "Be a Gamer, Save the World." The Benefits of Videogames. The Wall Street Journal, 22 Jan. 2011. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527487045907045760924603029908 84>.