Big Game Hunting - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 177

Genre and
Activity Profiling

Aesthetics and
Twitch Factors

Perceptual
Opportunities

Semiosphere:

Social Codes,
Textual Codes
(e.g., the inside-out
code), Technical
Codes, etc.

Generalized
Interaction
Sequences

Computer-Based
Signs

Code
of
Interaction

General
Semiotic
Theory

Figure 12.1 Semiosphere for video games. (See color insert.)

of semiotics. Activity profi ling and twitch factors are somewhat different in that they
take the results of semiotic processes—game reviewers trying to communicate what
particular games mean to them—and derive statistical patterns from them. So, activ-
ity profi ling and twitch factors are more akin to social science. But all the theories
from Part I of this topic are concerned with the game as a whole and feed in to our
semiotic analysis.
Figure 12.1 is a simple diagram that models the relationships between all the
theories we have studied and used in this topic. It is essentially a model of the
semiosphere for games and interactive entertainment.
If we start at the top right hand corner and look at the top two boxes we see the
theories we introduced and applied in Part I of this topic. These are all fairly general
theories that look more at a game as a whole. Carrying on down the right hand side
we get content-specifi c theories that seek to analyze what a game is actually about,
the specifi cs of gameplay. On the bottom left of the diagram there are a series of
boxes, all of which are specifi cally semiotics based. Notice that eventually, all arrows
from all boxes lead to the code of interaction. This is the conceptual place where