Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Symbology and Us!

The people who create video games, as well as the people who consume and consider them, tend to be visual people. They create art in the style of their favorite games, papering the walls of message boards from 4chan to Deviantart with their own rendering of their favorite games. And a quick survey of the talent present in the gaming enthusiast community shows that there are far more competently drawn comics and fan art entries than there are well produced pieces of writing and music (even the enthusiast press seems to suffer a paucity of talent in the writing department).

So, working off the assumption that games are fundamentally visual, rather than verbal or tactile, experiences it behooves us to analyze the components of these experiences. And while there is much to be said of the manner in which characters and areas are created and defined in terms of game experience and animation, it seems as if we all too often ignore the symbols inserted into these games, the meaning-dense visuals developers spend oh so much time creating to jam their games full of the subtextual meaning that the medium loves so well. As such I want to sit down and go through a handful of the symbols from contemporary games and break down their symbolism and effectiveness. Heeeere we go!

The Animus Symbol

Assassin’s Creed is rich with symbolism and subtext. Each faction seems to have its own set of symbols, from the Assassin’s big open quasi-triangle to the overtly Christian imagery that the vast majority of templar surround themselves with. But when you actually examine these symbols within the context of the game they lack an abundance of meaning. Even the Assassin symbol itself, with its use of open space and implications of careful violence, is a pretty shallow affair. The various religious symbols, which could’ve leant the game some degree of philosophical depth beyond its relatively straightforward idea of positive nihilism, are all but ignored in the construction of non-historic areas.

When all of these faction symbols are stripped away we’re left with is the Animus’ sync symbol – a simple collection of lines that occasionally shifts to show your character’s status. The Animus symbol might not even be considered a proper symbol– it’s basically a UI element. But it is emblazoned in certain areas, constantly prominently displayed and if we were to get into a Joycian discussion of sign-signifier dynamics to justify its symbolism people would get even more bored with the site and just drop off completely. So let’s take it as a symbol at face value.

It’s pretty basic. Three lines that shift to show proximity to the mindset of a character at a given time, moving between a tight little swirl, and two triangles which pulse with different degrees of severity. When all is well and you’re doing just what the game wants you to do the symbol is calm, inactive. It’s a tight collection of geometric shapes forming something unassuming in the upper left hand corner of the screen, minimizing its spatial occupancy and providing an almost meditatively simple object that you can glance at in order to remind yourself that, hey, everything is pretty okay right now.

But when the action starts, which is normally when Assassin’s Creed gets fun and you start deviating from both what “the character actually did” and what the developers want you to do the symbol goes apeshit. It starts getting excited. During chase segments it lets you know that you’re getting away, offering reassuring little yellow pulses, suggesting that you find a hiding spot and watch those dumbass guards run for a while, but more or less willing to let you do your own things and just look good.

And during combat is goes crazy, going red and flashing like mad. The god damn thing is raging at you, telling you to fight or run, to live in the moment the game presents you with then and there. Some games would have a little flag pop up or an exclamation point to let you know that it’s action time, but Assassin’s Creed has a blossoming geometric flower that insists you pay attention, not to the flower itself but to your own actions. When the Animus symbol glows red it’s time to pay attention. Pause that DVD you had on while you were running rooftops and watch the shoulders of those guards as they shake and shift towards you. Get serious, because this is your time to shine.

By increasing its negative space while simultaneously calling attention away from itself, the Animus indicator at its most exciting completely represents the fundamental idea behind Assassin’s Creed as a game – that the systems that are created for us are far more interesting when we feel we’re subverting them, when they open up and allow us to treat them as playgrounds rather than storybooks. While some structure remains it is there to ground us, not to control us and certainly not to dictate our course of action. Sure, it might get in the way of the story and it will have to be resolved at some point if we want to continue the plot of the game, but the Animus’ blooming, its simplicity and its ability to call attention both to and away from itself all make it the perfect symbol for the first Assassin’s Creed game. That said, I totally understand why it was removed for the sequel and replaced with a silly little wanted indicator, completely bereft of any interesting symbolism in terms of game mechanics but far more adept at displaying iterations of noteriety.

Half-Life’s Lambda

There are few games more gifted at subtext than the Half-Life series. For all that can be said of the frequent delays, relative simplicity and almost total information blackout regarding upcoming entries in the series it is difficult to deny that the artists who craft Half-Life’s world are excellent at making subtle choices that speak volumes with relatively little information on the surface. Just look at the makeup of City 17, Alyx Vance’s outfit and yes, even the prisoner like jumpsuits the various unliberated citizens
found themselves in. All of these artistic choices, in and of themselves asthetically pleasing and functional, did volumes to establish the world of Half-Life 2 and what it meant to reside there.

But perhaps no symbol, worn or otherwise, did more to express the ideas behind the Half-Life series than the humble lambda which adorned your HEV suit. Ostensibly the symbol of a lab team, oddly stationed across the freaking base from where you pick up the suit in a classic example of video game logic, the lambda is, like most of the afforementioned symbols, mostly absent from the first game. It occasionally appears, but it is nowhere near as saturated as it is in Half-Life 2, which is really where the themes of Half-Life began to coalesce more clearly for me as a player. Still, the choice of the lambda is no mistake, and its use speaks volumes about what the entire Half-life series wished to accomplish.

On its surface the lambda is simply a stand-in for the universal decay constant, a term in equations determining the half-life of various elemental compounds, among other things. Get it?! But even this naked parallel explains the choice of the symbol. The Half-Life games are about change. Violent, ugly change that people don’t get to choose, change they’re forced to deal with, change they have to evoke, at times, to survive, and this change always involves destroying systems and structures, killing people and generally defying authority. Half-Life is fundamentally a game about unstoppable natural forces of time destroying the things we’ve attempted to establish, and how awesome and, at times, serendipitous these forces can be.

And when we consider it in a greater context the lambda takes on new meanings. To broaden our scientific horizons, it also represents Planck’s constant, a term in the deBroglie relation which expresses the relationship between matter as particle and matter as wave, the wavelength itself, and the heat of vaporization of a substance. It relates the physicality of objects to their state as energy, recognizes the duality of the existence of all matter and codifies the manner in which this duality occurs. Half-Life’s frequent missives with the G-Man and its various forays into interdimensional travel all rely heavily on the ideas, scientific and theoretical, that the humble lambda represents.

The lambda also has significance as a countercultural symbol, specifically one adopted by gay and lesbian groups. In a world such as Half-Life’s, where tradition and submission to authority are an invitation to disaster and where our ability to function romantically as human beings is quite literally oppressed by an inhuman and unsympathetic group of sexless overlords, it’s quite easy to parallel the struggles of the human resistance with that of the GLBT movement within the western world. But that’s a whole other essay. For now let’s just leave it at this: there’s quite a bit of subtext to the lambda, and even the discussion of the lambda is, in a way, part of Half-Life’s modus operandi. It’s unclear just how many of the meanings I just rattled off were intended, and it’s unclear as to whether or not that matters. Half-Life is a game where the meaning of most things is unclear, and the meanings we insert as just as important as what its creators at Valve intended.

The Chains of Rapture

Back when Bioshock first came out I read a review on a Sony fan-website which may or may not have been a parody. With fanboys it’s hard to tell sometimes. It opened with a biting critique of the chain tattoos of Bioshock which smirkingly suggested that the chains were supposed to help us establish ourselves as a former prisoner who was heading home to his family. Anyone who’s played Bioshock even briefly knows that this has absolutely nothing to do with the game and is, in fact, far from the case. As far as I can tell Jack has never done any prison time, although who knows what happened to him on the surface.

But the conceit of being a prisoner to something is key to the story of Bioshock, and the chains do an excellent job of symbolizing the binding force of narrative that forces you through the events of the game. With its stated emphasis on choice presenting players with a constant reminder of their lack thereof was an interesting choice on the part of Levine and the rest of Irrational games. One of my first essays delved into this subject in more detail, discussing the manner in which Bioshock used the traditional narrative framework of games to characterize and structuralize human bondage in a way that made me incredibly uncomfortable when I first played through it. And while the chains do symbolize this bondage, their design speaks to much more. Still, since I’ve written at length about this before I’ll do my best to keep this next section brief, a paragraph by paragraph breakdown of the way the chains operate as a more immediate symbol:

The manner in which they’re etched on the character’s arms, a persistent reminder, drives home the manner in which narrative constantly inserts itself into gameplay, even as we’re active encouraged to avoid it as we seek out hidden areas and secret subplots. It reminds us that even though we’re killing or saving little sister we really don’t have many options, and we’re only really doing that in an effort to move the story forward.

Then there’s the naked representation of them as pressing an element of the chains of Rapture upon the character, forcing the character to assist others even if he chooses to work selfishly. They in a way validate Ryan’s philosophy: your survival in Rapture demands that you assist people, even if you do not believe they have your best interests at heart. Even if you don’t trust Atlas you’re still going to work with him to kill Ryan. What other choice do you have, spare death?

And then finally, there’s the makeup the chains themselves: solid black borders with spaces in between, connected by solid lines which bind them together. Maybe it’s the liberal arts college student in me, but I read this as an invitation to the player to improvise whenever possible and accept that, at times, certain things will need to be done in order to advance the game. While you’ll never be pressed especially hard to do so you will, inevitably, have to swim to Rapture, have to kill Ryan and, eventually, have to undo Fontaine. It’s the choices you make in between that make your experience interesting and worth talking about. The things we fill these spaces with are the things that make Bioshock worth playing, and while they won’t shatter the chains they will change their meaning in a different way for each person.

The Vault Boy

A historic discussion of the Vault Boy as a symbol might be more appropriate than a textual one, but I’ve little patience for researching the various ways in which the original design team at Black Isle built up their iconic little buddy. What I’ve got great aplomb for is instead the discussion of what he has become to the game.

Originally a UI element intended to establish the tone of the game-world with new players as they created their character, the Vault Boy would eventually become a sort of spokesman for the Fallout world, just as much as the badass Brotherhood of Steel troopers kitted out in T-51bs. But whereas the Brotherhood of Steel represented the inherent gravity and violence in a post-apocalyptic world the Vault Boy made sure we knew just how hilarious it was as well. World laid to ruin? The values of society missing or completely absent? Daily life a struggle? That doesn’t mean you can’t laugh about it.

The Vault Boy, with his unassuming and unrelenting smile, could be placed in any number of circumstances without ever losing his good humor. Sometimes he’d be surprised, or maybe a little sad, but he always bounced back, grinning madly and wielding a minigun or demonstrating the proper way to sneak, study or shoot. He was a symbol for the sort of duality that Fallout has always contained, that mix of deadly serious violence, human emotion and genuine self-aware humor which begs us to think of the society that pushed these characters towards these circumstances and what the pillars of these society would think of what they have wrought.

But he’s also a symbol of our determination as players. In Fallout very nearly everything wants to kill us, from the tiniest rat to the meanest of Super Mutants, everybody wants a piece. The few people who aren’t looking to kill us sound like Macguyver or want us to kill people who sound like Macguyver. We need the joy implied by the Vault Boy’s perennial grin to get us through our day to day.

What’s more, he embodies everything he left behind and futility of those values and ideas in the world that you are pressed out of the vault into. He is, in many ways, a viewpoint both into the game’s present and past, an easy mouthpiece that allows both players and authors to speak. He’s a classic icon, an idol used to introduce you to each and every element of the Fallout world in shorthand. And that’s pretty awesome.

And so ends my brief and arbitrary list of symbols, none of which were used in mass-media marketing campaigns (aside from Vault Boy, debatably). These symbols, the manner in which they introduce and convey the ideas behind their respective games and the power they have over us as gamers is something we all too often ignore, and I just wanted to try and get people thinking about it. So if you’d like to discuss them at greater length in this post, or if you just want to bring up a symbol you find particularly important or influential, feel free!