Trigger Happy
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there is nothing left of him at all. In his mania of
consumption, he has eaten himself.)
What about Pac-Man’s little cousins below the
playing area? By videogame convention, these
represent the number of lives he has in reserve. While
the Pac-Man in play is almost entirely symbolic,
therefore, the smaller ones function both symbolically
and indexically. As a group, they constitute an index of
“how many,” in the same way as counting beans. This
is an indexical function, remember, because the number
of yellow disks is congruent with, or “points to,” the
number of tries a player has left. There is a similar mix
in the large dots (one might even call them blobs) near
the corners of the maze. Like their smaller brothers,
they are symbolic (of pure, abstract food), but their
increased size also functions indexically. They are
bigger in circumference, and hence they are bigger in
utility—better for you. Pac-Man earns ten points every
time he eats a regular dot, but fifty upon eating a blob.
The blobs have a further function: as power-ups.
When Pac-Man eats a blob, he may for a short while
turn and chase the ghosts that have thus far been
pursuing him. We can now say that in semiotic terms,
power-ups actually function as second-order signs—
