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.
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