A piece written by Joseph Leray on his blog. He’s a pretty cool dude. First, I wanted to say that I’m equally bad at reading fantasy, even after writing essays about symbolism and studying novels and plays in AP English. I still don’t pick up on this stuff in a first reading, which means wasting time reading again to notice that the author constantly refers to a certain symbol. It’s not difficult! I’m probably just too used to either reading for fun (and not looking for deeper meanings) or reading because I have to (and trying to finish as quickly as possible). The good news is that I won’t have to do that ever again :D
However, I wouldn’t make a post just to say that. The same can be said of playing a game - there’s a literal layer and a symbolic layer, not just to what happens (mainly, things the developers wrote) but also to what you do as a player. Analyzing the stuff that happens in cutscenes and dialog is no different from analyzing literature or film. But the things that you do, the actual interactive process of choosing to do something, is something few people know how to analyze. It’s mainly just the designers themselves who know what they were trying to say. The problem is, there’s no easy way to learn how to analyze the process of playing - either you practice by thinking very deeply about a game you know well, or you read things other people have written and learn bit by bit.
It’s something you have to design for, though, because it’s not like every game has “meaningful” gameplay. Shooting someone in Call of Duty doesn’t symbolize a whole lot beyond power fantasy. On the other hand, killing a colossus in Shadow of the Colossus has a lot of symbolic meaning. The thing is, you need a certain amount of “literacy” in the medium to get that. Otherwise, it’s just a thing that you do. If the developers don’t incorporate some sort of literal reference or hinting to the symbolism of the player’s actions most players won’t notice. So why design something most people won’t understand? I think that point of view is holding back a lot of games.
Still, we do get the occasional shining example in mainstream games, and there are plenty of fantastic indie games with deeper meanings. Although we usually find out about their deeper meanings on developer blogs and interviews. Meanwhile, we’re getting more and more sources for deeper analysis and discussion among industry folk. Now all we need is a liberal arts degree where you do nothing but play games and write essays about their deeper meanings, and we’ll be a real legitimate art form!