ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how examples and theories of persuasiveness in design connect to concepts of cultural sustainability. Central theories on the ontology of play have pointed to the opposition inherent in all play against having an aim and a purpose to fulfil that is external to play itself, arguing that when play is forced to serve an external purpose, the playful experience is corrupted. As a consequence, play and games are not easily utilised as rhetorical tools. The chapter argues that their persuasive force is intimately connected to our experience of engagement, of being-in-play, which seems to rest upon their being performed for their own sake and not for the sake of obtaining something else. The contested status of the popular marketing strategy of 'gamification' is due partly to this dilemma, as is the problem of using games as a motivational tool in, for example, education.
