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Emergent Representations
In the "X" of Tic-Tac-Toe and in the action of Checkmate, we see that games create meaning through the interplay of system and context—but this operation is not unique to games. System and context represent a general semiological approach to understanding how representation works. For example, consider spoken or written language. Language is structured by grammar, the formal system that gives its individual elements meaning. Yet the meaning of any utterance of language is also contextual. The phrase "Don't have a cow" means two different things when spoken by a dairy farmer or by Bart Simpson. The interpretation of the phrase relies both on grammatical structures and the context of the speaker.
Meaning is emergent. When we use language, as when we play a game, we are playing within the limits that the rules allow. To speak a sentence is to play with words—but only in ways that the rules of language permit. A paradox of meaning is that although simple rules shape every utterance, the total number of potential statements is nearly infinite. Both language and games represent complex emergent systems, in which possible outcomes far exceed the formal complexity of the rule-system, an idea we explored in Games as Emergent Systems. As Jeremy Campbell notes in Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life, "A modest number of rules applied again and again to a limited collection of objects leads to variety, novelty, and surprise. One can describe all the rules, but not necessarily all the products of the rules—not the set of all whole numbers, not every sentence in a language."[1]
Representation in games emerges from the relationship between a rigid, underlying rule structure and the free play of meaning that occurs as players inhabit the system. Game designers must pay close attention to the play of meaning within a game, crafting individual instances of player interaction within a larger field of representation. As a game designer creates a system of rules, he or she is also creating a vast space of representational possibility, a space that becomes meaningful through player interaction. [1]Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), p. 127.
