“Battle Arena”: the video game as an inventive context

Abstract

Then aim of this article is to discuss the relation between video games and cognition analyzing the first author’s experience with the game “Defence of the Ancients”. This online game is cooperative and competitive. The playing experience is discussed through the Ian Bogost’s method of Procedural Rhetoric analysis, considering not only the elements of the game, but a broader process involving actions from software and player. By this research it was possible to build tools to think about this game as an invention space focusing its description on the functionality that the games require of their players. In this perspective, the set of symbols arranged by the game only acquire meaning through the action of the player and are not properly interpreted from the spectator’s point of view. The rules, in turn, do not determine action, but define the player’s conditions of a possible experience. These features allow the operator to create a less descriptive and more operational type of knowledge, a more embodied know-how, which is configured from the rules of the game, but that is not so destitute of thought.