title: We Don’t Play As We Think, But We Think As We Play: Evidence for the Psychological Impact of In-Game Actions
abstract: Games are able to convey meaning that influences players’ beliefs and attitudes via their mechanics (aka “procedural rhetoric”), but recent work suggests that this is likely to be effective only when combined with traditional ways of conveying meaning (e.g., music, imagery, narrative, etc.). To investigate the specific component of rhetorical influence that comes from game mechanics, we constructed a city management strategy game that allowed us to independently vary narrative framing and game r