By pev (February 2, 2009) (Question 2)

After doing the reading I played a little bit of a new video game for Playstation 3 called Resistance. It’s a great game, but I found it impossible not to think about it in terms of Persuasive Technology. Literally, the entire game is a colletction of stimuli designed to convince you to continue pressing buttons on the controller. Certain things were noticeable even before the reading – the presence of an omniscient disembodied radio voice who coordinates your virtual army squad’s movements and actions, the linear way the terrain unfolds (you literally cannot leave the paths laid out for you). These perfectly illustrate the spectrum between persuasive and coercive. And all the other elements were present as well – a great example of Arrangement Detection is the way that the ammunition counter on your weapon depletes as you fire it-something that has yet to be accomplished in real life to the best of my knowledge.