All Work and Play - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 168

Layout

Consequences Gameplay Limits

Signs of
Intervention

Interactive

Controller/
Ghost

Object Side Effects

Actor

Figure 11.1 Relationships between computer - based signs. (See color insert.)

There is a general pattern to all this which the diagram tries to make clear.
This is a characterization of the “mechanics of interaction”; the general causal
relationships between signs irrespective of what they might signify. At this level
no distinction is made between Pac-Man and Ryo Hazuki, between the tumbling
blocks of Tetris or the getaway car you drive in Driver; they are all interactive
signs. That distinction is made in other levels of the meaning-making process. We
see that the diagram is divided up into four zones. The whole background is the
domain of the layout sign which takes no part in interaction but where those other
levels of meaning are to be found. The right hand zone belongs to the controller
and ghost signs which in general establish limits on the gamespace. The central
zone belongs to the signs of intervention, the interactive sign and the actor sign,
and is where the principal gameplay takes place. The left hand zone belongs to the
object sign and is where other consequences of gameplay are made known: the
sounds of walking, eating, and gun fi re; displaying frags, lives, and other side
effects such as health and damage.
We believe game players have this low level model of gameplay in their minds
and build it up as they play games and use it to play new games. Not that they know
about CBS necessarily. CBS, as used here, are a theory of game play and the diagram
is a model that attempts to make the mechanics of this model clearer. Game players
build up their own version of this model in some nonverbal, unconscious level of
their minds. We believe this is the foundation of game play. Some games, of course,
Tetris in particular, don't have all that much more to them than this bare-bones
mechanics and are certainly not lesser games because of it.