History of Rhetorical Peaks

This history of Rhetorical Peaks draws on several of the articles and presentations written on the project. You can find a more detailed account of the project’s development and its theoretical underpinnings by referring to those sources, available on the Publications, Presentations, and Awards page. The video embedded below also covers the history of the project and gives a more specific sense of the design of the game and how it has been used in classes.

During the 2006-2007 academic year, the Game Design/Virtual Communities Workgroup in the DWRL began developing Rhetorical Peaks as a tool for use in introductory rhetoric and writing courses. The game was developed as a module for Atari/Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights using the Aurora Toolset that accompanies and enables modification of the game. The toolset specifically allows users to manipulate the terrain, characters, objects, and game-play of Neverwinter Nights in order to build their own virtual spaces and create interactive plots. The original version of the game confronted students with the mysterious death of Professor Gorgias, a rhetoric instructor in the town of Rhetorical Peaks. Players could complete three different quests in order to accumulate clues and evidence about the cause of Professor Gorgias’s death, and each quest focused on one of the classical rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos. Although this prototype was not tested in classes, it was entered in the Science, Technology, and Society Game Court competition where it tied for third place.

In the 2007-2008 academic year, the workgroup applied for a Faculty and Student Teams for Technology (~FASTTex) grant in order to develop a stand-alone version of the game. During this time, new content was developed for the game, shifting the narrative away from the basic quest structure of the original prototype toward a more open-ended playing experience. Although both versions of the game offered players multiple explanations for the death at the heart of the game, the new direction in content focused more on robust characters that presented a range of possibilities for rhetorical analysis. Upon receiving the grant, in the summer of 2008, the workgroup partnered with the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment (DIIA, sponsor of the ~FASTTex grant) to develop the game in four different platforms: PowerPoint, Flash, Unity, and Second Life. Developing the game in different platforms allowed the DWRL to consider which digital environment was most conducive to the goals of the game, and it allowed DIIA to study the investments, expenditures, and payoffs corresponding to various platforms. Rhetorical Peaks was the first project showcased in DIIA's Case Study Series, and it was also highlighted by the Center for Teaching and Learning.

The Flash and Unity versions of Rhetorical Peaks were tested in classrooms during the 2008-2009 academic year. Both versions proved useful as one-day activities that allowed students to practice skills related to rhetorical analysis and argumentation. Ultimately, the constraints of the Flash version made it more useful in this context than the Unity version. While the latter grants players the freedom to explore a 3-D world, it does not contain enough content to reward adventuresome students, and students who focused on exploring the space did so at the expense of playing the game and engaging with the relevant content. The Flash version of Rhetorical Peaks was played outside of DWRL classrooms in 2009 and 2010. Christine Alfano incorporated the game into a class at Stanford, and her students commented on their experience here. We were able to discuss the game with Alfano's students via Stanford's Cross Cultural Rhetoric program, and Scott Nelson described the experience here. Pavel Zemliansky played the game with his students at James Madison University, and he encouraged students to reflect on the game with reference to Ian Bogost's notion of procedural rhetoric. Based on our experiences testing the game in DWRL classes and taking into account the feedback from these other classes, the Flash version of Rhetorical Peaks was updated in the summer of 2010 to clarify the structure and goals of the game.

The Second Life version of Rhetorical Peaks was developed further and tested during the 2009-2010 academic year. Members of this year’s workgroup also conducted a study on the use of the Second Life version in a RHE 312: Writing in Digital Environments course. The results of this study were presented at the Rhetoric Society of America conference in May 2010, and the class was described in an article about the DWRL in a university publication. Possibilities for further development of the game were explored at the Humanities Gaming Institute at the University of South Carolina in the summer of 2010. At this point, the DWRL is considering future possibilities for Rhetorical Peaks and for pedagogical and rhetorical gaming generally.

Rhetorical Peaks - A History from Matt King on Vimeo.