Len Talmy writes in Toward a Cognitive Semantics (2002) that: Any old tapestry or painting that in effect depicts a story by showing a number of figures and activities together suggesting a succession of events, but one that the viewer must piece together through her own self-determined sequence of visual fixations, is as much an example of interactive fiction as any modern computer-based form. (426) This is of course false, with any standard definition of interactivity. I think “modern computer-based form” is here a neat place-holder for games (other interactive digital works would also work), despite him not wanting to specify it. Computer games are of course more interactive than your typical painting. The key to understanding this is to separate interaction from interactivity. ...

It is very common for role-playing games to extend rules meant for one thing to cover other fields. The archetypical example of this is using combat rules for other conflicts. This has been the standard way of building rules since Dungeons & Dragons started extending rolls beyond hitting things. First, it was resistance rolls, then skill rolls, when adventuring needed to include things beyond monsters in damp caves. But the overall structure of things remained: you roll a D20 and add some bonus (possibly negative) to see if you succeeded. This is extending the original combat rules beyond the scope they were originally designed for. ...

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had comic a while back about political speech. The idea was that, if you replace everything except nouns with nonsensical words, people will still be able to follow the speech. They concluded that if you can get the point from the nouns, the rest is a waste of space. Of course, it was a joke. But it still shows us something about language. However, this is not a feature of political speech, but language in general. It is often packed with information, and people are very good at deciphering meaning from fragments ...

This fall has been mostly about cognitive semiotics. It is very different to return to basic research on a field where I’m almost completely a newcomer. New terminology and new theory - a lot to take in for a mind so used to the familiar. Hopefully this semester will shake some of the entrenched views into new approaches. One of the classes has me writing about literary arts. I’m writing an paper about meaning effects in literary works, and how they could be translated to work on video games. If the paper comes out good, I’ll try to turn it into a proper research paper next spring. ...

I used to run a lot of Mage: the Ascension. Nobilis has almost perfectly taken its place, but for a nostalgia trip, there is no replacing the original. Having tried Mage: the Awakening I feel like they are not even remotely about the same issues. Awakening has a nicer rule system (with its own problems and issues), but that’s about all it has on the older game. I really liked the metaphysics it was based on, even if some of it was really ad hoc. ...

I’ve recently been playing Apocalypse World in our weekly playing session. It is a generally good game, at least if you prefer the style: violent, apocalyptic, sexy (certainly the first two, not necessarily the last one). It is also interesting when it comes to issues of gender. And it is definitely gender, not sex, that is in question. Let me elaborate by describing the character creation process: You choose a name for the character from a list of names provided. Most of them are simply absurd enough to be gender neutral - like objects from a time past, with purpose long forgotten. I’m also told Baker plays around a bit with this in his writing, playing around with gender assumptions. I chose the name last in creating a character, but opted for “Man”, adding “the” to it after consulting the other players. ...