All Work and Play - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 157

Chapter 11
All Work and Play
We've got work to do. Games are about doing work; the work of restructuring the
syntagmatic relationships between signs to achieve new relationships, new signifi ca-
tions benefi cial to the player. Remember, in the last chapter we talked about one of
the characterizations of computer games as being the diachronic relationship between
syntagmatic relationships. In other words, at any one time we can take a sort of
perceptual snapshot of the signs on offer and their meaning. This meaning suggests
to the player, connotes, a different relationship that he/she desires and tries to
achieve, or fears and tries to prevent. In turn this results in the construction of a
different relationship out of the many that were possible, one that may or may not
resemble the one desired or feared. Playing a game is therefore about constructing
a particular diachronic ordering over syntagms; again, one out of all those possible.
Computer games are one example of a very particular type of texts in which we
know we have to work to fi nd meaning.
Remember, in Chapter 4 we talked about agency as being concerned with inten-
tion and perceivable consequence and in Chapters 7 and 8 we talked about perceptual
opportunities and, in particular, attractors and rewards as a mechanism for relating
them. Well, the semiotic relationships in the paragraph above offer us a theoretical
basis for considering agency in a more rigorous manner. Essentially, all the theories
we have considered in earlier chapter were semiotic theories; read on.
In this chapter we will start by examining the nature of the work we have to do
in order to fi nd the meanings we need in order to play games. We will then go on
to look more specifi cally at signs that signify interaction and how they do this and
the nature of such signifi cations. The object of the chapter is to characterize “the
work of meaning” and where the player fi ts into this. In the next and fi nal chapter
we will attempt to put together a semiotic model of the whole meaning of a game.
Part of this semiotic model will be the “Code of Interaction,” the underlying rules
that game players use to fi nd meanings in games and thus to be able to play them
at all. In the fi nal chapter we will also attempt to answer the question of “What is
a game? ”