Meaning What? - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 148

• Interpretive Codes: To do with both psychology and culture.
• Perceptual codes , e.g., those of visual perception
• Ideological codes , more specifi cally, we may list the “ isms, ” such as indi-
vidualism, liberalism, feminism, fascism, materialism, socialism, objectiv-
ism, and populism.
We can see that the codes for computer games that we have been discussing so far
are textual codes of mass media to do with the kinds of communication interactive
media such as computer games afford. Remember, “text” in semiotics refers to
anything in which we can fi nd meaning and so could be a fi lm, novel, TV program,
and so on. In a very real sense this topic is an investigation of the codes we need to
be familiar with if we are to fully understand computer games.
In support of the mass media code for computer games we have also been
talking about most of the other textual codes in one sense or another: aesthetic codes
which deal with general approaches to the representation of game worlds; genre and
stylistic codes which govern particular approaches to building game world content;
the code of arithmetic for symbolic representations of health, wealth, damage,
scores, and so on.
However, one of the reasons for studying semiotics in the context of computer
games is that to fully understand how people make sense of and fi nd pleasure in
computer games we need to employ a whole range of codes, social and interpretive
as well as textual. Many of the questions we left unanswered in Chapter 9 can now
be answered by considering codes from outside the confi nes of the textual mass
media codes of computer games. It is easy to see just how important the whole range
of social codes, particularly verbal, bodily, and behavioral codes, are to playing the
majority of computer games. This is particularly so with the increasing inclusion of
role playing in a whole range of games.
There is another way in which games can make use of codes and this is the
notion of the intertextual code that is the borrowing of textual codes from other
communications media. We noted that Blade Runner does this quite cleverly by
employing various codes from fi lm noir for such things as lighting, framing of
scenes, plot, and characterization. Intertextual codes can be a very effective way of
enriching the context of a game by making references to other media we know and
understand.
In fact the whole notion of games derived from fi lms is a premeditated use of
intertextual codes as marketing tools. The pod racing episode from Star Wars:
Episode One is a quite blatant example. You would have thought that two Jedi
Knights would have found a way of getting their spaceship repaired without having
to rely on and risk the life of a young boy; and did it really require a full half hour
of the fi lm? The only possible justifi cation is to sell the pod racing game that was
an integral part of the fi lm's marketing strategy. The intertextual swapping of codes
in this case is bidirectional: the pod racing track with its huge grandstands, elaborate
canyons, tunnels, and rock arches exemplify a very familiar code for the presentation
of racing games; the game itself makes reference to the plot and characters and other,
more general fi lmic codes of sci-fi .