The Sims 2 or Persuasive Games

The Sims 2: Seasons Expansion Pack

Author: Greg Kramer

Everything You Need to Enjoy All Four Seasons with Your Sims!

• Detailed lists and stats for all-new objects and socials.
• Master the art of making the best love potions, energy drinks, health boosters, and more.
• Tips and tricks to grow the perfect garden and catch fresh fish to grill on the barbeque.
• Navigate the 6 new career paths and learn to master every job to become a success in any field.
• Get all the info on the changing seasons to make the greatest impact on your lot.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: What’s New
Chapter 2: Seasons
Chapter 3: Weather
Chapter 4: The Sim’s Guide to Gardening and Fishing
Chapter 5: New Careers
Chapter 6: New Objects
Chapter 7: New Socials
Chapter 8: New NPCs and PlantSims
Chapter 9: Build Mode Additions
Chapter 10: A Tour of Riverblossom Hills
Chapter 11: Jobs by Career Level
Chapter 12: Objects
Chapter 13: Socials

Book review: Understanding the Mind of Your Bipolar Child or Methods of Group Exercise Instruction

Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames

Author: Ian Bogost

Videogames are both an expressive medium and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing on the 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogost analyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric.

Bogost calls this new form "procedural rhetoric," a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a unique persuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not only can videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can also disrupt and change those positions, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasion has already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, and education. Bogost is both an academic researcher and a videogame designer, and Persuasive Games reflects both theoretical and game-design goals.