No, not really. We’ll get to a much longer, rigorous post on the semiotics of video games. But let’s at least start here, with a quote from video game theorist Gonzalo Frasca:
Traditional media are representational, not simulational. They excel at producing both descriptions of traits and sequences of events (narrative). A photograph of a plane will tell us information about its shape and color, but it will not fly or crash when manipulated. A flight simulator or a simple toy plane are not only signs, but machines that generate signs according to rules that model some of the behaviors of a real plane. A film about a plane landing is a narrative: an observer could interpret it in different ways (i.e. “it’s a normal landing” or “it’s an emergency landing”) but she cannot manipulate it and influence on how the plane will land since film sequences are fixed and unalterable. On the other hand, the flight simulator allows the player to perform actions that will modify the behavior of the system in a way that is similar to the behavior of the actual plane.
So one key difference between representational media – literature, film etc. – and simulative media is that of modeling behaviours and rules into a system, rather than just aesthetic objects. To produce ‘a scene’ in representational media is to arrange aesthetic objects (whether visual, linguistic, filmic etc.) in a particular spatial, temporal ways. To produce an arena in simulative media is to strucutre a system of rules and behaviours that then allow for action within that arena. So, getting back to our view of a plane in both film and a game:
To an external observer, the sequence of signs produced by both the film and the simulation could look exactly the same. This is what many supporters of the narrative paradigm fail to understand: their semiotic sequences might be identical, but simulation cannot be understood just through its output.
So that’s the start. The next step is to figure out how meaning-making happens within the simulative space. Because if one cannot interpret the game by representation alone – by only looking to what is shown – then we need to think about how pressing buttons in a particular context produces meaning.
Think of it this way. You’re playing, say, a third-person shooter and you’re in a groove. ‘You’ are ducking behind cover, seamlessly switching weapons and reloading, both becoming your avatar and superceding it in a feeling of mastery and control. There are at least two things going on: one where you identify with the avatar on screen that is ‘you’; and another physical experience of pressing buttons to make your avatar-self do things. Both are loaded with a kind of cultural weight, the actions on-screen and the feeling of pressing buttons to make things happen. How we interpret that – how we mentally relate to that tripartite construct of the audio-visual, the interactive and identification – seems key to how video games mean.
#1 by A.J. Rowley on January 8, 2010 - 7:58 am
I’d not thought of it like that. Interesting.
Also: The phrase “video game theorist” will be running around my head, kicking things over for quite a while yet. Way to go!
#2 by Tim on January 8, 2010 - 7:48 pm
Let me add another wrinkle; the distinction between open-ended and closed-ended simulations.
In a closed-ended video game, you’re manipulating your avatar to match a particular predetermined pattern. Think about Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., or the original set of Final Fantasy RPGs — in each of those cases, the winning strategy involved either deducing the pattern from the system or recalling it from memory, then matching that pattern. “Okay, here, you have to go get the raft, because you need it to get to the island for the other dungeon; and when you fight that guy, you hit him with a silver arrow, then your sword…”
So there’s a kind of “ideal avatar” that you’re trying to match your own avatar to. Guys who try to beat Metroid in the shortest possible time without taking a single hit are taking this to its extreme end. It’s almost game-theoretical at this point — there’s a single ideal strategy, and all you have to do is follow it.
Open-ended simulations are very different. If there are no particular patterns to recognize or sequences of tasks to fulfill (or those tasks can be exchanged for others, creating an infinite number of equilibria), suddenly your identification with an avatar takes on a new meaning. It’s life, kids.
#3 by Nav on January 9, 2010 - 1:30 am
Ooh – the teleological tyranny of simulation
But there’s a mid-point between those two extremes. Take Half-Life 2 (which I just finished *yesterday*): there is ultimately a linear path and sequence of events that one needs to act out in order to proceed/finish.
At the same time, there is some degree of choice and ‘freedom’ in how one goes about achieving set goals. And that choice is, I think, partly about personality, about a set of subject-ive conditions that also produces the subjective half of signification i.e. the specific uniqueness of a given utterance and its reception (the analogous corollary to the fixed nature of simulations would, I think, be the discursive-material constraints on signification).
So I think part of the experiential difference of these linear-but-not simulations is the production of what I tend to think of as provisional micro-narratives/simulations where I ‘choose’ to act in particular ways, following particular paths. One can, after all, play fast or slow, aggressive or covert etc. etc. So in terms of figuring out a kind of semiotics in this – one that, at a give point, escapes the signification of representational systems – you have to move into some consideration of unique, temporally located experience of playing a particular way. The “ideal avatar” is therefore an approximation of self as imagined by the self, realised (as much as possible) in the constraints of the game world. It’s me as much as Valve will let me be me.
(P.S. Sorry for the clunky theory-speak – I’m just starting to think again.)