Meaningful Mechanics - Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design - page 298

Intertextual Irony
Difference in meaning between multiple layers of a game can be used to create an
effect that Umberto Eco refers to as intertextual irony . Intertextual irony is created
when a game's (or book's or film's) style refers to well-known genres or settings out-
side the game, while at the same time contrasting that message with an opposed
meaning on a different layer. A game that uses intertextual irony a lot is Grand Theft
Auto III and its successors.
Grand Theft Auto III offers many layers of meaning. First there is the game itself,
with its mechanics that allow the player to steal cars and commit various acts
of crime. For that reason it has been called a joyride simulator or a “SimCrime”
game. The game is set in a city that resembles New York. Many of the city's sites
and inhabitants refer to real locations and common stereotypes. The game is filled
with references to popular culture. You can find many advertisements in the virtual
environment for brands that look convincing at first glance but are quite ironic
at a second glance. For example, you might see an ad for a film called Soldiers of
Misfortune , with the tagline “They left together but come back in pieces,” which
sounds like a typical movie tagline but whose meaning is quite the opposite of the
usual blockbuster bravura. The car radios offer a choice of soundtracks complete
with fictional commercials and weird jingles that sound right but are really disturb-
ing if you pay closer attention to them. For example, one radio station proudly
advertises that it owns several networks and satellites but also ten senators. You hear
commercials for a company that mails pets in boxes and a reality television show
that has ex-convicts fight it out in the city streets with real weapons until there is
only one left standing. Playing this game, it is hard to miss all these references and
jokes, and it satirically suggests a relationship between the criminal lifestyle of the
game's main character and the over-the-top consumer society he is part of. If any-
thing , Grand Theft Auto III is a deeply satirical game that holds up a distorted mirror
to society. The game mechanics generate a vast accumulation of wealth that any-
body within the world of Grand Theft Auto seems to aspire to, no matter what the
methods of accumulation are.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas provides another good example of intertexual irony
based on the contrast between appearance and game mechanics. In San Andreas the
player character needs to shop for clothes; the more expensive his clothes are, the
greater his sex appeal is, a vital statistic required to succeed in certain scenarios. One
of the most expensive shops is called Victim ( Figure 12.8 ). On the one hand, the
shop name alludes to the urban gangster lifestyle the character and player suppos-
edly identify themselves with, but at the same time, you should wonder who exactly
is the victim here when your character finds himself spending thousands of dollars
on a new outfit. Your character's criminal lifestyle means he can get the money he
needs to buy outfits at this exclusive shop, but he risks his life in doing so, adding a
completely different dimension to the shop's slogan “to die for.”