Trigger Happy
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whereas Pac-Man is abstract, largely symbolic, Voldo
(left) is a triumph of iconic or pictorial representation.
Now what does this do for the player’s sense of
involvement with the game? The unique feature of
videogames, after all, in terms of the structure of their
consumption as a medium of mass entertainment, is
that we are not merely spectators but participants. And
we participate by identifying with “our” character on
screen. A gameplayer whose ship has just exploded
does not say ruefully, “The ship just exploded”; he
says, “I died.” So might it be true that we cannot
“relate” to characters who are pictorially too well
defined? J. C. Herz thinks so: “Characters in Mortal
Kombat have fingers and stubble. You watch them.
Pac-Man has one black dot for an eye, and you
become
him.”
We might interpret this claim by suggesting that a
game concentrating on the interplay of symbols is a
richer experience than one involving mostly icons. A
game of Snap, for instance, consists entirely of
comparing icons (the pictures on the playing cards),
whereas a game of chess is symbol manipulation in
excelsis. The requirement of the player to treat game
objects not merely as pictures but as symbols represents
a greater cognitive challenge.
