Essay · 2014 · Open access
This article aims at highlighting semiotic devices that are proper to the field of game design. By analyzing how current games handle their story telling, it will try to identify the process of signification within games in order to understand how it could be enhanced.
This article will make use of concepts from Ludology, Semiotics, and Narratology; yet this paper's intent is to give new perspectives in the domain of game-design. It is a first attempt at identifying a language specific to games; a language that would permit the emergence of richer contents within games.
It is likely that games have the ability to convey emotions, ethical values or stories. Some games already do. But we have yet to understand the workings of this signification. What really belongs to games? What is borrowed to other forms of art?
Keywords: Game semiotics, game design, ludology, narratology, game studies
Self-published in 2014 as a Kindle Direct Publishing e-book (ASIN B00Q1A0170), about 45 pages. Free full text on ResearchGate; the Kindle edition is on Amazon.
This essay is the origin of the notion of ludophrase and of the actum, tactum and factum, later developed into the Ludic Framework and the doctoral thesis Emergent Languages.
APA 7
Seraphine, F. (2014). The Intrinsic Semiotics of Video-Games: In Search of Games' Narrative Potential. [Essay]. Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon), ASIN B00Q1A0170. https://www.fredericseraphine.com/publications/intrinsic-semiotics-of-videogames/
@misc{seraphine2014the,
author = {Seraphine, Frederic},
title = {The Intrinsic Semiotics of Video-Games: In Search of Games' Narrative Potential},
howpublished = {Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon), ASIN B00Q1A0170},
note = {Essay},
year = {2014},
url = {https://www.fredericseraphine.com/publications/intrinsic-semiotics-of-videogames/},
language = {en},
keywords = {Game semiotics, game design, ludology, narratology, game studies}
}