Beyond Iconic Simulation

Joris Dormans

Simulation & Gaming, 2011, vol. 42, issue 5, 610-631

Abstract: Realism remains a prominent topic in game design and industry research; yet, a strong academic case can be made that games are anything, but realistic. This article frames realism in games in semiotic terms as iconic simulation and argues that games can gain expressiveness when they move beyond the current focus on iconic simulation. In parallel to natural language, indexical and symbolic simulation are investigated. It is argued that indexical and symbolic simulation reduce the number of parts of simulation without affecting its structural complexity and emergent behavior too much. This leads to a perspective on games that pays more attention to the expressive power of relatively simple game mechanics. This perspective helps designers to maximize the effectiveness of game mechanics in communicating general knowledge embedded within the game system.

Keywords: complexity; emergence; game design; game mechanics; iconicity; realism; representation; semiotics; simulation; symbolism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1046878111426963 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:simgam:v:42:y:2011:i:5:p:610-631

DOI: 10.1177/1046878111426963

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Simulation & Gaming
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().