Videogames como máquinas semióticas complexas: a emergência dos interpretantes nos jogos digitais

• Autor(a) principal: Bittencourt Neto, Levy Henrique
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_SP
• Texto Completo: https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/22417
• topic: Semiótica; Semiose; Videogames; Semiotics; Semiosis; Videogames; CNPQ::ENGENHARIAS

Based on the concept of complex system and Charles S. Peirce‘s theory of semiotic machines as ones that generate interpretants (NÖTH 2007), the study investigates in how far video-games can be understood as complex semiotic machines. The argument that videogames have characteristics of complex system has been supported in studies by Juul (2011) and by Salen & Zimmerman (2012), who have shown that structures of high complexity can emerge in playing videogames. Once put into operation, the game may give rise to unpredictable pat-terns in the players‘ actions and their outcome. When the video game is played effectively, there is no way to foresee all possible results created by the rules of the game and the gamers‘ actions. The act of playing, called gameplay, and the complex structures that emerge in the course of a gameplay are described as processes of semiosis. Semiosis emerges from the rela-tionship between player and the rules of the game. Processes of semiosis occur in triadic in-teractions between players, rules, and the gameplay, which involve signs, determined by ob-jects (the rules of the game), and which result in interpretants. The players are determined by the rules of the game like object which determine a sign, but each game has its specific rules and particular ways of being played so that videogames will never be played in the same way. The way of playing is necessarily determined by the rules stipulated by a particular game. Player–rules–gameplay constitute the triadic process of semiosis in videogames. In this sys-tem, the consequences of the player‘s action can be understood as an interpretant. These in-terpretants will then be signs in subsequent processes of game semiosis. Game semiosis has unpredictable consequences. The game‘s features of unpredictability and novelty are clearly linked to Peirce‘s phenomenological category of Firstness. The results of the game are the interpretants, which are phenomena of Thirdness. However, not all videogames allow the emergence of interpretants. Salen and Zimmerman (2012) define the term ―playful meaning-ful interaction‖ as the outcome of the players‘ actions and the rules of the game only if such actions are meaningful. Therefore, in Peircean terms, meaningful play interaction is the pre-requisite of genuine semiosis in videogames. Videogames are only semiotic machines when there is meaningful playful interaction. Otherwise, gameplay results only in processes of qua-si-semiosis