Abstract Berlin: Martin Thiering and Stephan Günzel

Perspectives and spatial frames of refences: Semiotic spaces in video games

Keywords (5): Perspectives, Spatial Frames of Reference, Semiotic Spaces, Video Games,

Polyvalency

Perspectives are based on spatial construal mechanism in multimodal virtual environments

(Sweetser 2013). Langacker focusses on visual experience, especially organization principles

such as trajector-landmark organization and perspectives based on gestalt-theoretical

principles (see also Langacker 1987; Talmy 2000). However, given the multimodal nature of

human perception, cognition, and interaction, the perspectivzed conditioning of human-

computer interaction is reflected semiotically different representations (e.g., Aroni 2022;

Sweetser 2013). In addition, such virtual or hybrid environments offer specific affordances

altering a player’s spatial behavior. This is most prominent in impossible worlds such as in

M.C. Escher’s image Relativity (1953) applied in computer game puzzles.

In this paper, we investigate perspectival strategies and spatial frames of reference as they

have been observed when players combine various modalities of expression to describe their

interaction with spatial artifacts such as paintings, buildings, architectural models (e.g., CAD,

BIM), imagined spaces, and video games. The description focusses on perspectival strategies

whereby players submerge into their mental representation of an artifact, thus perceiving and

experiencing it from an internal vantage point. The different semiotic systems at work during

such processes are understood as underlying categorization patterns of spatial orientation

processes (Thiering 2015, 2018, in print).

This study’s main aim is to identify different perspectival strategies (Schwingeler 2019) in

selected puzzle games. First, the study surveys perspectival shifts in dynamic visual scenes as

they occur in 1 st /3 rd person shooter, strategic computer games or puzzles (Günzel 2012, 2019).

The human capacity for constructing and relating objects in space depends not only on

objectively given features, but also on subjective encoding and perspectival decisions based

on the stage analogy (Langacker 1987; Talmy 2000). There is no neutral or absolute construal

of a situation; rather, human beings deal with construals that either encode or do not encode

the speaker’s viewpoint. Hence, the player’s perspectives are expressed through different

viewing strategies.

Second, the empirical part examines how study players describe the experience of playing

differently computer games. The analyses elucidate spatial viewing mechanisms of orientation

and navigation in different virtual realities, considering different cognitive parameters such as

spatial frames of reference, geometry, viewpoint and perspective, and figure-ground

asymmetries (Levinson 2003; Talmy 2000). First/third person games or VR Non-Euclidean

puzzles (e.g., Antichamber, Miegakure, Disoriented, NaissanceE) endorse different

perspectives not only applied by the person playing the game (i.e., the player holds a tool and

takes on this perspective), but also provided by specific affordances of a given specific game,

e.g., orienting oneself in a labyrinth using a compass, map, clock-based orientation or an

unknown house gathering different gadgets, following sounds or symbolic references. When

experiencing this kind of dynamic semiotic contexts, the player’s viewpoint shifts from

egocentric to allocentric and from bird's-eye view to hodological perspective accordingly.

References:

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Günzel, S. (2019). What do they represent? Computer games as spatial concepts. In: Espen

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