All Work and Play - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 161

For another thing, we cannot signify to the computer, it doesn't do semiotics.
Or rather, it doesn't reason in any way that could be analyzed using semiotics.
Computers compute, algorithmically. We do not signify to the game engine in the
hope that it will make the kinds of meanings we wish it to. We issue a command to
the engine to move Pac-Man this way or that and the engine responds by doing what
we ask, if it can, or not, if it can't. Pac-Man will only keep moving in a certain
direction until he encounters a wall then he will stop until we issue a command that
moves him in a different direction along a corridor.
Such commands are essentially nonsemiotic in the sense that not only is the
game engine's response algorithmic but the immediate outcome of our command,
our button press, is an electronic communication—not a signifi cation — between the
interface peripheral and the game engine. Trondstad (2001) discusses the relation-
ship between semiotic and nonsemiotic acts in the particular context of MUDs and
goes on to suggest that the interplay between the semiotic and the nonsemiotic is
fundamental to interactive digital experience. We try to reconfi gure the signs in a
game—so as to be able to construct desirable signifi cations —by means of nonse-
miotic acts which intervene in the running of the game engine.
Follow the fi rst link for Spacewar in the List of Games at the back of this topic
and you' ll fi nd a photo of two people playing the game in 1962: the year it fi rst ran
on a PDP-1 at MIT. On the right you will see the circular display, while on the left
you will see two (suited) players with the game switches in their hands. Apart from
the suits, the scene is so recognizably “people playing a computer game” that it' s
almost uncanny considering there was no computer game culture at the time. What' s
also uncanny is the apparent unconcern in the games world for really understanding
what is going on here. Read on!
SIGNS OF INTERACTION
Let's look at the relationship between the signs of intervention and the signs of
interaction that games engines offer us. By “signs of interaction” I mean the specifi c
signs in the audio-visual game world that we seem to be able to affect by means of
the signs of intervention together with all those signs that we can indirectly affect
and those that might be able to affect us. Essentially, this is what POs and agency
talk about. In Pac-Man this might appear relatively straightforward: we have four
signs of intervention and they are all directed at Pac-Man himself. A typical interac-
tion sequence (IS) in Pac-Man would be:
1. We select an attractor , a group of uneaten “ food ” dots.
2. We form an intention to eat the group of dots.
3. Keeping the attractor in view and thus the intention in mind , we issue
commands to Pac-Man— we make nonsemiotic acts via the signs of
intervention—to move him towards the food. We monitor the perceivable
consequences until a reward on offer enables our intention . This might
involve several changes of direction to get him to where the food is.