Over the past several years, video game studies have benefited from attention to important tools in the discipline of rhetoric. Most notably, Ian Bogost has introduced the concept of procedural rhetoric. Although Bogost defined rhetoric primarily as persuasion, there is no such definitional harmony among rhetoricians. In this article, I explore possibilities for a rhetorical understanding of video games beyond persuasion. The 2014 iOS and Android game First Strike is an example of the repetition compulsion as a means of compensating for the perceived traumatic Real. In examining this game, I hope to show that the intersection of psychoanalysis and rhetoric allows a productive account of simulation and suggests a way forward beyond the impasse of contingency and structure, attending the formal aspects of trope that make certain procedures durable sites of affective investment and enjoyment.
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