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The Context of Meaning
To see these abstract ideas in action, we'll turn to a thought experiment from Swords and Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games by Neal and Jana Hallford. To illustrate how players learn what something "means" through interaction, Hallford and Hallford describe a player exploring a world in an adventure game. The player comes across a button set into an otherwise featureless wall. The curious player pushes the button to see what happens—and a secret door opens up in the wall. Pushing the button gives the player access to a new part of the game world. Hallford and Hallford note that by providing the player with this scenario—push button, open door—the game designer has given the player a "rule" about how the game world works. The action push button results in the outcome open secret door. Armed with this rule, the player should be able to use this knowledge throughout the game to make informed decisions about how and when to push buttons. The meaning of the button press is both integrated and discernable,two requirements of meaningful play. The interaction is discernable, because the player clearly sees the secret door open as a result of the action of pressing the button. The interaction also appears to be integrated, because the player has discovered a universal rule about how buttons operate in the game. Hallford and Hallford then ask us to imagine the player in another location somewhere later in the game. The player spies yet another partially hidden button along the edge of a wall. If the action > outcome meaning of the button were integrated, the player should expect that pushing the button will open a secret door. But when the player pushes the button, to his surprise a damaging fireball of doom comes out of the wall instead. What just happened? Why did the button unleash a lethal fireball, rather than open a secret door? Here is where Hallford and Hallford's analysis ties directly to the concept of play and representation. They write, If the designer hasn't provided some kind of clue about what sets this button apart from the door-opening variety, they've just violated a rule that's already been established by the game. The value of choice has been taken away from the player because they have no way of knowing whether pushing the button opens a door or whether it will do some catastrophic amount of damage. While this would certainly add a heightened degree of tension to the pushing of any buttons in the game, it really is nothing more than a way of arbitrarily punishing the player for being curious. Even worse, the value of the things that the player has learned are now worthless, making the winning of the game more a matter of chance than of acquired skill. When the meaning of an action is unclear or ambiguous, meaningful play in a game breaks down. How might meaningful play in this situation be reestablished? Hallford and Hallford suggest one way to remedy the situation by adding a small visual detail that gives the player some idea of the consequences for pushing a particular type of button. Blue buttons open secret doors. Red buttons unleash fireballs of doom. [2]
This example demonstrates how game meanings can be engineered to create meaningful play. Color-coding buttons to denote consequence establishes a system of meaning. Players are, over time, able to determine which buttons are "good" and "bad," and can make informed choices about their actions in the world. This system implicates the player directly, for the meaning of a button is only ever established through player interaction. As Hallford and Hallford note, this design strategy "will also have the added bonus that players will pay a little closer attention to their environment to see if there's anything new around them that may lead to new kinds of experiences."[3] In short, the rules and context of interaction help to establish "what things mean."They do so by creating a very specific set of conditions within which a particular object or action becomes meaningful in the course of play. Making sense of signs relies, in part, on the movement between known and unknown information. Players in Hallford and Hallford's hypothetical adventure game, for example, might come across a sign for which they don't have meaning (red button) within the context of signs for which they do (blue button). Familiar meanings generate new meanings due to the formal relations between known and unknown signs. What is important to note here is that players gain information about the game world by interacting with it, by interpreting it, by playing with signs to see what they might do or what they might mean. You find a button that is red and blue. What can you guess will happen if you press it? Will you take the risk to find out? Creating context as a mechanism for sense-making is a critical concept for game designers. It is why our definition of game design refers to the design of a context, rather than an artifact. The design of play is the design of an interactive context from which meaning can emerge. [2]Neal Hallford with Jana Hallford, Swords and Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001), [3]Ibid. p. 154.
