Posts Tagged ‘semiotics’

Can we feel empathy in a video game? In his essay Adamant Bodies. The Avatar-Body and the Problem of Autoempathy, Adriano D’Aloia argues that we hardly can because of the relationship we need to maintain with our game avatar. The player is foremost busy in dealing with his intra-subjectivity, “the mediation between the actual user’s Self and the virtual avatar’s Self”. There is a lack of Otherness. The player’s hyperactivity, at the same time enunciator, character and spectator, makes it even more difficult for him to establish an empathic relation with the characters of the video game. Paradoxically, passivity allows the spectator to fully mirror the emotions coming from a movie, which is very different from the kind of involvement required by video games.

Where does the video game end and the real life begin? With the arrival of simulators, augmented reality and social networking games, frontiers becomes harder to define. And so is the magic circle that separates the fantasy world from the outside world. But is there really a real, outside world that would be exempt of any fantasies? And could video games be completely isolated from their cultural context? Is the concept of magic circle not outdated? In his essay Spatial Typologies of Games, Alex Wade suggests instead to locate video games using the three spaces of Henri Lefebvre: perceived space (how we interpret space), conceived space (space of science and rationality) and lived space (the space where we live). He adds another dimension, digital space. Video games are multidimensional in his model, and need to be situated on the four axes.

By Mathias Jansson

How old is Super Mario and how long is a life in videogames? Mario Gerosa and Jennifer Grace-Dawson’s paper Chronology and Historicization in Virtual Worlds and Video Games begins with what seems to be an obvious statement: “Time in virtual worlds is not the same as in real life: in virtual worlds there is a different experience of time.”  If we read a book, see a movie or play a videogame we can experience years of history in the realm of a couple of hours. The real time is in the narrative structure crunched into a room-time that is moving a lot faster than our own time, jumping from event to event and skipping the transport holes, i.e. the boring parts.

What is the essence of a game? Is it its set of rules or the story it tells? This is put in simple terms the academic debate that dresses ludologists against narratologists. Most of video games have both, rules and a narrative. But what about games like Tetris? Do they also tell a story? In his essay, Bridging the Narratology-Ludology Divide. The Tetris Case, Jack Post argues that Tetris does, at the condition we extend the concept of the narrative. According to Roland Barthes, “Narratives of the world are numberless and distributed amongst very different substances (languages, gestures, images) and present in many genres to which we could of course add computer games.”

By Mathias Jansson

In the paper The Collapse and Reconstitution of the Cinematic Narrative: Interactivity vs. Immersion in Game Worlds, Otto Lehto wonders what a game is and comes with the following observation: “The game narrative needs to be ‘written’ (played) before it can be ‘read’ (interpreted). Games provide fluidity of interactive immersion: the interface as the place of the merger between the player and the game.”

How can we make sense of a video game? In his essay, Manic Miner under the Shadow of the Colussus: a Semiotic Analysis of the Spatial Dimension in Platform Video Games, Joaquin Siabra-Fraile argues it is thanks to “pragmatic net of objects”. What can be done with objects of a video game determine the logical space of actions. The regularity of that logical space, or system, enables meaning. Immersion is the acceptation by the player of that net of logical conditions; it is the only way for him to make sense of the goal and to complete the video game.

By Mathias Jansson

A key characteristic of a videogame could be that it has rules. You have to follow certain rules to succeed in the game. The rules could be as simple as in Pong, hit the ball, or as complex as in Civilization, build an empire from scratch. In his essay Interpretive Cooperation and Procedurality. A Dialogue between Semiotics and Procedural Criticism, Gabriele Ferri describes the cooperation between players and rules as follow: “Users’ cooperation with an interactive matrix generates a ludic discursive universe inside the TIAG (this-is-a-game) layer in which gaming interactions are acknowledged to be fictional. When the focalization is shifted inside it, users abide to TIAG interpretive rules and temporarily set aside encyclopaedic knowledge of the world – not being surprised, for example, by the height of Super Mario’s jumps.”

by Dario Compagno, Ph.D. in Semiotics at the University of Siena, Italy

This is the introduction of an annex discussion to the Semiotics of Video Games exhibition. It was lead by Dario Compagno on facebook in October 2010. Please visit the discussion page to see the reactions, and don’t hesitate to post yours.

by Gabriele Ferri, PhD student in Semiotics at the University of Bologna, Italy

This is the introduction of an annex discussion to the Semiotics of Video Games exhibition. It was lead by Gabriele Ferri on facebook in September 2010. Please visit the discussion page to see the reactions, and don’t hesitate to post yours.

References:

• “Computer Games, between Text and Practice“, edited by Dario Compagno and Patrick Coppock
• “Gamer Theory” by McKenzie Wark, read few quotations from his book.
• “Persuasive Games” by Ian Bogost, read few quotations from his book
• “Video Game Spaces” by Michael Nitsche, read few quotations from his book.