The Rhetoric of Reputation

One of the questions following my presentation was whether it's believed if video games could one day surpass the movie industry. I found this story about the battling of sales between the newest Grand Theft Auto game and the comic-based summer movie Iron Man.

I found this funny video about questions George Stephanopoulos won't ask John McCain. Gotta love the repeated use of the shot of the back of George's head so they don't have to lip sync any. Watch his hand move up and down over and over.

While my paper tends to be more analytical in nature, there is one point that seems to need to be argued. The video game industry seems to be adapting many characteristics of the movie industry. The point that needs to be argued more than the other points in my paper is the fact that the video game industry relies on storytelling.

Claim - Contemporary (qualifier) video games rely on storytelling.
Grounds - Many bestselling games have a complex story.
Warrant - Storytelling games with high sales numbers reflect the industry's reliance on storytelling.
Backing - Sales numbers of games with complex stories. Positive reviews of games with complex stories.

A common question asked by nearly every three-year-old at one time in their lives...Let's see what Sherri Shepherd thinks!

If anybody is having trouble finding a site to provide the Google Page Rank without having to install the Google Toolbar, I found this site that helped me out. The calculation takes a little bit, so if it seems like it's taking too long, just hold tight and don't hit the refresh button. I got impatient a couple of times and took about twenty minutes to actually get the site to work.
So don't hit refresh! :P

I came across this article this morning. For those of you who don't know who Florida-lawyer Jack Thompson is, he has been blaming video games for just about every case of youth-oriented violence for the past 7 years or so. I, admittedly, have a bias on the issue; I was introduced to Jack Thompson through gaming-oriented webcomics. However, a blogger on MSNBC writes a good article concerning society's tendency to search for a scapegoat for several different issues. Benedetti makes a good point in her article about scapegoating, and I feel it's a pretty interesting read.

I don't know if anyone in particular is keeping up with this, but Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer of a $44.6 billion buy-out. This is a pretty big shock considering that Yahoo! has been going nowhere fast. Maybe if Yahoo! can make some miracle recovery, it's proof that big business can still be thwarted on the internet. If a terrible search engine like Yahoo! can thump Microsoft, imagine what the determination of Anonymous could do!

The topic I will be covering is closely related to the blog entry I recently posted. I will be examining the rating systems of video games as implemented by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (or ESRB). I will be using Slashdot as my online community.

I came across this article that includes an example of how sometime reputation can be a little extreme. The article is about the controversy over an Xbox 360 game which has gotten a bad reputation for depicting a sex scene as part of the game's story. The representation of the game is incredibly unfair, and the gaming community makes a point with reputation systems.

Read for yourself, it's pretty funny.