ABSTRACT
This part of the book sheds light on how we can understand persuasion through digital games from a theoretical perspective. The authors in this section discuss different perspectives on how digital games can be used with the intention of influencing the attitude and behavior of players. Their contributions go beyond the utopian and dystopian discourses on persuasive games and the debate on their validity that centered game scholars’ attention when this new field of research was emerging more than ten years before this volume was published. Therefore, we reflect critically on the role and the value of digital games to be used as a medium for persuasion, we pay attention to the medium itself and its characteristics, and we provide theoretically grounded propositions on how to work with persuasion within digital games. Together, these chapters not only demonstrate that persuasive games have become part of our contemporary media culture, they also provide a critical discussion of what the role of persuasive games is in our current media landscape. These chapters also pay special attention to the role players have in the process of persuasion through digital games and how their characteristics and performances should be taken into consideration in this process.
