Rhetoric of a Rage Quit II: Identification, Feedback Loop, and Assessment

Video games bring together three crucial elements under the disguise of entertainment contributing to a "rage quit": identification, feedback loop, and assessment. Identification is a concept that rhetoric and composition scholars attribute to Kenneth Burke, which oversimplified, means we feel a personal connection or relationship with something. For gamers, identification is accomplished through players assuming the role of an avatar (a virtual representation of themselves), which may be heightened due to what perspective the player is playing in (first-person or third-person). Although gamers are able to distinguish fantasy from reality, a strong sense of identification is established within the context of the game and its presentation of rhetorical situations, which is evident when players discuss their losses. Players often describe losing by saying something like "I died" before making another attempt from a previous point within the game.

James Gee identifies an interesting feedback loop that video games rely upon in order to persuade gamers to spend significant amounts of time on task, which he describes as a cycle of "run-jump-die-repeat," but another aspect worth considering is whether or not that feedback loop is providing players with positive or negative feedback. Players often receive positive feedback from video games through some sort of a reward system, whether through earning a certain amount of Experience Points contributing toward an increase in level, or a dramatic cut-scene. The positive feedback acts as encouragement to the player and the player responds with more time invested into playing the game. However, a "rage quit" happens when players lose or "die" too often and they stop playing the game due to anger. Another culprit of "rage quit" is emotional distress or depression due to the same scenario (players lose or "die" too often), but with a different trigger: discouragement. If success equates with encouragement, then its counterpart is failure and that equates with discouragement. In both instances, players still quit playing the game because the amount of negative feedback received overcomes the amount of positive feedback from the game.

As rhetoric and composition scholars, we understand receiving feedback as assessment, which is something most people fear (especially in writing classes). For writing assessment, Edward White provides context explaining why students fear writing assessment through sharing stories about instructors who say something like "I'm going to bleed all over these papers this weekend" referring to their use of red pen, making students associate blood with red pen on their papers because it seems like their writing is bleeding. White's descriptions not only help us understand that students fear assessment, but also that writing is personal and since gaming is a form of new media writing, then gaming is also personal. If gaming is not a personal activity, then no identification would take place and a personal connection is required.

Rhetoric of a Rage Quit

Here is a scenario gamers are familiar with and experience with variable amounts of frequency: A player is playing a video game and he or she experiences a problem within that game that he or she is unable to overcome. The player continues working on the problem with constant unsuccessful results and he or she becomes increasingly angry with every failed attempt. The player eventually experiences a "rage quit" and expresses his or her rage through yelling or cursing at the game and quits playing the game. An extreme "rage quit" often results in broken equipment such as a controller.

For people who witness a gamer experience a "rage quit," the gamer's reaction and behavior resulting from a video game appears irrational or immature, which leads to them openly scolding the gamer and expressing their dissatisfaction by saying things like "It's only a game" or "Don't take it so seriously." However, before scolding and dismissing gamers for their "rage quits," we must make an effort to understand that scenario. If we understand the rhetoric behind a "rage quit," then we might understand why college students drop from writing courses and develop better strategies to prevent the phenomenon.

From an outside perspective, a "rage quit" looks like an irrational or immature response to failure, hence why people scold and dismiss such behavior as bad. However, something most people do not understand is what gamers are raging about in a "rage quit" and Richard Lanham is able to help us understand what is actually happening when we witness a "rage quit." Lanham asks us to think about primate behavior and imagine a primate failing a task. Naturally, the primate becomes upset and begins whooping and hollering, which we believe is because it failed a task. Lanham corrects us and claims the reason primates become upset is not because they fail at doing something, but rather, because they invested so much time and energy into it and then have nothing to show for it. The same reasoning is true with gamers and "rage quit." Gamers are not raging because they lost a match or "died" again. Gamers rage because they invested significant amounts of time into playing a game and they are left with nothing to show for it. No reward, no proof, nothing to symbolize their investment.

Maybe students who drop our writing courses are experiencing similar feelings of anger or distress because they interpret our feedback as negative and it outweighs the positive. Maybe students feel like they exhausted all of their available options and believe dropping is their only option left, like the gamer. OR maybe instructors like us are more like the people who scold and dismiss gamers and their "rage quitting" because we refuse to understand the behavior from their perspective. We may never be able to fully control "rage quitting" or dropping, but we can at least make a stronger effort to minimize them.