What lies below is the first part of a 25 page analytical paper I wrote for my English dept. Junior Independent Study. I realize many people here on this site won't enjoy or even want to see someone posting something like this, but I just thought it would be fun to put it up, just for kicks. If you don't like to consider games or narrative in an intellectual way or don't like to consider anything in a intellectual way, save your time. Anyway here it is:

Watching someone master a complex game system is fascinating. It is like watching someone learn a new language in the space of a few minutes. When I played my first video game at age five on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), I was learning a language, or perhaps I should say, learning how to learn a language. The thousands of language systems comprised by the video games on computers and the seven generations of video game consoles since the popular Nintendo Entertainment System (1985 in North America, Europe, Brazil, Australia) or Famicom (1983 in Japan) have profoundly affected my generation.

The oddity and entrancing quality of video games struck me when I was watching my college roommate play a popular zombie/horror game, Resident Evil 4. He began by learning the button system: first the analog stick to make Secret Service Agent Leon Kennedy walk or run, a button to call the president’s daughter whom Leon is rescuing, a shoulder button situated in a place of a trigger to shoot his gun, another button to equip or unequip the weapon, another button for contextualized actions, a button to draw up the item inventory and another for the map. Then he had to learn his objectives. In this case, first he had to explore a dilapidated building in order to navigate past an upturned truck that is blocking Leon’s way. Then he had to find a way to kill a zombie quickly (scary!). Then it was time to conduct search and rescue through a complex series of passages, enemies, and traps.
As I watched Tom play it struck me how much he had to learn to even take his (or make Leon take his) first steps in the game. What also struck me was the way in which he was playing the game. It was quite amusing to see my roommate matter-of-factly, with a stern expression of concentration, dispatch rapacious zombie creatures. He was engaged with the story and the atmosphere, but primarily he was engaged with the mechanics of the game. Tom was able to so calmly defeat the zombies because he was one-step removed from the horrific story and atmosphere by virtue of the game system.

Video games produce an effect of liminal alienation. The player, at the point of picking up the controller is engaging the liminal space between worlds. Therefore he is alienated from them. The interaction, substitution for and confusion of game and narrative are substantial in this act of alienation. The quality of the game in tandem with narrative functions displays the structural nature of language and encourages knowledge of semiotic domains (language systems). The schematic of a game is a more straightforward way of simulating the interactions of an individual within a semiotic domain. Video games encourage intellectual activity and domain awareness through their complex process of distancing and engaging the player, and by the nature of their varying game domains combined with narrative and theatrical elements. They also encourage intellectualism through the ways in which they distance, or alienate the player, much like an unrecognized form of theatre. As video games relate to theatre, the issue of semiotics informs the way that relationships between player and protagonist operate and the general dynamics of the video game space. Video games are essentially a participatory theatre. The implications for this new form of theatre are multifold.

Third-person perspective in video games, which consists of a sort of puppeteer/puppet relationship between the player and the in-game protagonist, performs an alienating function on the player. In the context of a narrative or game, the instigation of this brand of puppetry effectively removes the player from both his own self and from the in-game narrative and action. The player, instead of resting either entirely in his own domain or in the domain of the game, rests in between, performing the actions of the protagonist while he watches them being performed. The phenomenon of being aware of one’s own actions in relation to semiotic domains is not unusual, this is simple cultural awareness or awareness of systems. It is the separation of the player from the exact physical actions of the in-game protagonist that creates this effect of liminality. The gap in translation between pressing buttons and the physical actions of the protagonist creates this effect. As the player presses the buttons of the controller or keyboard to perform the actions of the protagonist, the player is forced to acknowledge the gap between personal and in-game domains.

Pressing buttons instead of performing the actual physical actions of the game or narrative also encourages the player to think about the signification of the actions of the in-game protagonist. It widens Saussure’s gap between the signifier and signified. Let me explain. In Saussure’s scientific analysis of language, he conceived of two distinct elements in language. These are the signifier and the signified; together these comprise a whole sign that is a word or concept. Saussure defines the signifier as a concept, and the signified as the correlative sound/image of language (60). The relationship between signifier (letters and a word) to the signified (sound/image) is arbitrary; therefore a ‘gap’ exists. This gap is further widened through the dual game and cultural languages of video games through the effects of differentiated association. In this case, as in most cases, differentiated association refers to the idea that there are two signifier/signified sets pertaining to performing the actions of the protagonist in video games. Differentiated association can also be described as the translation between associated, but separate and therefore differentiated actions within the same time frame. So first, there are the buttons on the controller or keyboard that signify the actions in the game, and then there are the actions in the game that signify a particular meaning. The gap between the quality of pressing a button and the separate distinct action performed by pressing the button is alienating and calls into question the domain-based association with symbols and signification.


An example of this phenomenon can be found in just about any video game, but I shall give an example. In the game Shadow of the Colossus, every time the player presses a button it corresponds to a single motion or action within the game. In order to jump in the game, the player presses a single button; in order to perform multiple actions such as holding onto a ledge and moving, the player must press two buttons simultaneously. In some cases, such as horseback riding while shooting a bow, the player must conjunctively press three buttons separately or at the same time. This creates a close, yet differentiated, connection between the physical actions of the game player and the corresponding actions of the protagonist. The nature of this in sync correspondence involves the player effectively in the distinct actions of the protagonist. Although there is an intimate tie between the player and protagonist for every action, obviously their respective actions (that of pressing several buttons and shooting a bow) are very different. Due to this differentiated association, the player is at once within and removed from the in game action and narrative.

These dual sets of signifier/signified relations do overlap in the case of the video game as the actions of the in-game protagonist form both the signified in the signifier of the exterior player’s actions, and in the signifier of the signified meaning of these actions within the game or story. Nevertheless, this overlapping does not preclude a full connection between the actions of the player and the actions of the protagonist, because their respective actions are operating within separate and distinct semiotic domains. Any given game has its own set of rules (semiotic domain) for which buttons signify certain actions. Within every game that possesses narrative functions, this set of rules correlates to a separate and distinct set of sign relations. The actions of the protagonist in turn signify its final situational meaning, which lies within the larger semiotic domain of society. Can separate semiotic domains, that is, two separate sets of rules and agreements concerning language, communicate between each other? According to the model I have just provided, they can in fact.

Video game theorist Laurie Taylor explains the arrangement of a video game and player according to spatial dynamics:

The video game player must perform at multiple levels while playing a video game. In this regard, the player in play is present in more than one spatial domain. Lev Manovich and Sherry Turkle have argued that this multiple presence is typical of new media interactions. One might argue that the video game player, because she generally accesses information stored on her local computer (online games with remote servers are an important exception), does not experience multiple presences as she does with other new media objects which are housed remotely. But, this observation neglects that the telepresent state is based on existing in multiple conceptual spatial domains, not on existing in separate physical areas. The telepresent state means that the subject exists in multiple areas in such a way as to be able to effect change in that (or those) other areas while also being able to effect change in the subject's physical space (Taylor).

So, the telepresent state is a phenomenon of one being both here and there at the same time. This telepresent state is not exactly the same, but is equivalent to the communication between semiotic domains I have mentioned (or at Taylor names it, spatial domains). As I have said, this telepresent state in video games accounts for semiotic domains as well as spatial domains, because a telepresent state in video games (at least) is not created simply by a visual or sensational extension through space. It is facilitated by extension through differentiated space; in this case, differentiated means the difference in distinct semiotic domains. The telepresent state begins to explain video games’ similarity to the theatre-space and especially the telepresent relationship between puppeteer and puppet. For the purposes of this paper, Taylor’s telepresent state is what I call differentiated association.

As the separation between signifier and signified conceived by Saussure relates to puppetry, this raises questions about the nature of the communication between the puppeteer or game player and the in-game character. In the model of puppeteer and puppet, this differentiated association encourages the player/actor/puppeteer to consider particularly the signification by the signifier of the protagonist’s unique movements. As the player puppeteers control the actions of the protagonist, they are effectively located outside of the semiotic domain of the game and its cultural meaning in that they must be presently situated within the separate domain of the correlating buttons and actions. For example, in the game The Sims, the player/puppeteer controls a family of up to eight Sims. The player directs the Sims on the basis of instructing them to interact with objects, such as a television set, a piece of furniture or another Sim in order to fulfill eight basic needs. The actions of the Sim as manipulated by the game player form the entirety of the narrative. The action of the player pressing a button to make the sim enter a hot tub forms the first semiotic domain. After the player’s actions, the narrative of the game plays in front of the player, forming another distinct domain, which is the culturally constructed meaning of the narrative (the Sim stepping into the hot tub). In pressing a button to make the Sim enter a hot tub, the player is observing and therefore removed from the larger cultural sign relationship that the narrative elements in the game belie, through his involvement in the more specific and intimate sign relationship of performing the game outside of the narrative.