Meaning What? - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 151

us, the players, to draw on a whole wealth of meanings to do with fi ctitious future
societies and their advanced technologies.
The backdrop of a black screen with just a few white pixels signifying stars is
not only very effective but was just about the only backdrop that was possible. We
have already discussed the compelling nature of the spaceship's elegant movements,
the result of the inertial physics model and the way the spaceships respond to the
few simple commands. All this very beautifully signifi es weightlessness which in
turn is a signifi cation of space travel and deep space. This is a very simple package
by today's standards but is still a very effective one.
The intertextual reference to comics and sci-fifi lms rather than the reality of
the NASA space program, the inertial physics, and the stark interstellar backdrop
all cleverly evoke the myth of space travel. Space travel is a myth because we take
it as a given that one day humans will really travel between the planets and other
star systems the way they do in mass media. Space travel seems so natural to us that
we do not seem to wish to question its very possibility. At present science seems to
be saying that to travel beyond our own solar system may not be possible at all, let
alone practical. Voyager II has taken over thirty years to reach the edge of our solar
system and will take hundreds of years to reach another. Interstellar space travel is
a myth that Spacewar cleverly evokes and subverts to its own purpose.
Finally, Spacewar illustrates an important aspect of semiotic theory that we have
mentioned but in no great detail; the notion that signs gain their meaning in many
cases simply because their signifi ers are different from other signifi ers. The words
“ tree ” and “ free ” both have well understood signifi eds to English speakers but the
signifi ers themselves are arbitrary; they only map onto their respective signifi eds by
convention, a cultural convention that has grown up and evolved over hundreds of
years. The two spaceships signify difference rather than good or bad, alien or human.
If we put this general semiotic analysis alongside the aesthetic analysis we
conducted in Chapter 3 we get a pretty complete picture of how and why Space-
war works.
The question we posed toward the end of Chapter 4, “Two Rail-Shooters,” was
essentially, “How do we explain the additional aesthetic levels that Rez appeared to
exhibit?” The question is not a simple one to answer. For Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the
game's lead developer, the additional aesthetic levels were derived from the aesthetic
ideals of the synesthesia school of artists, painters, and composers; in particular the
painterly aesthetic of Kandinsky. From synesthesia we get the notion of sounds
evoking visual images, visual images evoking vibrations, and vibrations evoking
sounds (and so on and so on). Synesthesia as statement of intent by a group of early
twentieth-century artists and composers is in many respects a desire for, a prediction
of, the kinds of “artworks” that computer games at their best can realize.
From Kandinsky 's style of painting, we also get the visual aesthetic of Rez.
From trance music we get the musical aesthetic, the particular musical codes that
govern the game's soundtrack. But there is a problem here. Many game players will
be familiar with the musical codes of trance music; it is a major part of youth culture.
This is not even an intertextual reference; the music in the game is trance music and
was written by musicians who work in that genre. The player does— partially at