Double Fine Adventure and the Double Hermeneutic
Videogame
Veli-Matti Karhulahti
University of Turku
Kaivokatu 12 20014 Turku, Finland
[email protected]
+358505336559 the same game skeleton, give or take an algorithm. [2]
ABSTRACT
This paper establishes a hermeneutic method for interpreting
videogames. The method is termed double hermeneutic
because of the player’s ability to affect the interpreted
information. The double hermeneutic differs between games
and game types, forming different double hermeneutic
circles (DHCs) that players must access in order to
experience games according to their designs. The paper bases
its argument on the adventure game and suggests that the
traditional point-and-click interface and 2D representation
support the adventure game hermeneutic, which functions in
synergy with the form’s aesthetic discourse.
Author Keywords
Hermeneutics; aesthetics; adventure games.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.4. Hypertext/Hypermedia. Theory.
General Terms
Design; Theory.
INTRODUCTION
On March 12, videogame developer Double Fine achieved
over three million dollars in funding for their upcoming 2D
graphic point-and-click adventure game on Kickstarter—the
project being the largest crowd funded videogame to date
[26]. What made players invest in a title that was deliberately
announced to employ worn-out visual representation and a
dated game interface? The academic interest of this question
lies in the ontological permanence of the videogame, as
described by Espen Aarseth:
From Crowther and Woods’ original Adventure via
Myst and Duke Nukem to Half-Life, Serious Sam, No
One Lives Forever, Max Payne and beyond, the
gameplay stays more or less the same, the rules
likewise, but the game-world, as a corollary of
Moore’s Law, improves yearly (along with expanded
development budgets). If not, the new games would
never sell at all. Where is the new adventure game with
retarded graphics that was successful? It does not exist.
Take away the game-world, and what is left is literally
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As Double Fine confirms, the elegance of the skeleton’s
clothing is not necessarily measured by its novelty, however.
In the far-reaching continuum of cultural progression
videogame skeletons are not an exception. While
technological innovations have radically shaped the façade of
contemporary cinema, the recent Award winning black-andwhite silent film The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius 2011)
similarly implies that the eloquence of a cultural object is
more likely an index of creative utilization of the form’s
limitations than a measure of its costume’s age [17].
In understanding the success of these so-called retro
phenomena, a conceivable contestant to the above aesthetic
essentialism is nostalgia. In the everyday sense of the word,
as yearning for an earlier experience, it does explain some of
the appeal of Double Fine’s project, leaning as it does on
gaming conventions that emerged no more than two decades
ago. It is evident, nevertheless, that nostalgia cannot fully
explain the broad recognition of The Artist since only a
minority of its audience can be assumed to possess former
experiences of silent films to an extent that is required to
generate the nostalgic effect.
In context specific terms, as proposed by Jaakko Suominen,
nostalgia can alternatively be seen as “an aesthetic repetition
style of media culture, which refers strongly to the
audiovisual” [30]. As per Suominen’s proposal, it is the
displayed signs that define nostalgia rather than the means or
media employed for their presentation. In this respect, certain
2D figures (Pac-Man) and film elements (intertitles) may be
able to evoke nostalgia, but neither 2D game representation
nor the silence of film is nostalgic in itself.
This paper suggests that the primary reason for the high
interest shown towards the Double Fine Adventure lies not in
nostalgia but rather in its anticipated aesthetic discourse; in
interpretation of an outcome of particularly standardized
creative limits. Just as the silent film1 is a distinct modeling
of the film skeleton, the adventure game is a distinct
modeling of the game skeleton; an individual expressive
form or as Aarseth puts it, “a unique aesthetic field of
possibilities, which must be judged on its own terms” [1]. In
this paper the regulated method of judging is understood as a
1
A more accurate parable than that between the adventure
game and the silent film would be one between the adventure
game and the graphic novel, as it will later turn out.
regulated method of hermeneutic interpretation that pays
respect to the form’s aesthetic discourse. The following
discussion will focus on distinguishing the idiosyncratic
hermeneutic required to interpret the adventure game, which
will in the process expose the adventure game as an
individual expressive form.
The study will begin by defining a generic method for
interpreting videogames, the videogame hermeneutic. What
makes it distinct from most methods of media interpretation
is the fact that playing a videogame always involves
introducing new information to the interpreted system or
affecting information that already exists in it. Interpreting
videogames is thus not merely a process of generating
understanding, but also a process of generating action, a
double hermeneutic.
The second section suggests that the regulated methods of
interpreting different (types of) games may be seen as
exclusive double hermeneutic circles (DHCs) that players
must access in order to experience games according to their
designs. 2 The model is elaborated through a close
examination of the DHC of the adventure game. The
adventure game hermeneutic will be found exceptionally
polarized as it invites the player equivalently to inducing
interpretation that aims at generating ludic understanding of
game elements and to non-inducing interpretation that aims
at generating aesthetic understanding of game elements (with
the caveat that generating ludic understanding is also partly a
question of generating aesthetic understanding because of the
ludic aesthetic).
The third section returns to answer the question posed at the
beginning by arguing that the use of the ingrained point-andclick interface and visual 2D representation supports the
evenly polarized adventure game hermeneutic and in the
process promotes its ludic, poetic, and visual aesthetics.
DOUBLE HERMENEUTIC VIDEOGAME
According to the hermeneutic tradition, interpretation is
grounded on understanding. One of the pioneers of modern
hermeneutics, Martin Heidegger, claims that
all interpretation, moreover, operates in the forestructure […] Any interpretation which is to
contribute understanding, must already have
understood what is to be interpreted. [15]
Heidegger’s claim concerns even the simplest everyday
actions. People converse with words that are defined by other
words; choose products that match with their previous
pleasurable experiences; make judgments through cultural
2
In his book The Ethics of Computer Games (2009) Miguel
Sicart discusses the videogame hermeneutic from the
perspective of ethics. He establishes a “ludic hermeneutic
circle” that aims at explaining games and game play in a
phenomenological framework. Because of the significant
differences between Sicart’s approach and the approach of
this paper, his theory will not be treated here—which will
also cut down complexity and potential misinterpretations.
conventions; and steer their cars with the learned skill of
driving.
The hermeneutic process may also be used to explain some
aspects of aesthetic engagement: when listening to music,
examining paintings or watching movies, the audience’s
methods of interpretation vary depending on the medium and
its means of expression. People learn to interpret different
aesthetic objects in different ways.
Yet the way in which players interpret videogames differs
critically from interpreting most other cultural objects. As the
act of game play—the ongoing interpretation of the game—
involves configuring the videogame object itself, the altering
interpretations affect not only the interpreter’s understanding
but the interpreted as well.
Nick Montfort describes the videogame hermeneutic in
practice. In Twisty Little Passages he discusses the text
adventure as “interactive fiction” (IF) and reveals its
hermeneutic nature through the exchanges between the
player and the game. These exchanges consist of commands,
which correspond to the input provided by the player, and
replies, which correspond to the output provided by the
game:
An input that refers to an action in the IF world is
a command […] Outputs that follow input from
the interactor and describe anything about the IF
world and events in it (including the inability of
the player character to enact a particular action as
commanded) are replies […] As command and
reply correspond to input and output, so exchange
corresponds to cycle. [23]
The interaction between the player and the game establishes
a cycle in which interpretation leads to configuring action
and its feedback. The knowledge gained from the feedback
can be explicit or inferred, meaning that players may perform
specific actions to obtain specific information, or they may
alternatively learn by interpreting information they did not
attempt to obtain [cf. 20]. In both cases the feedback
nevertheless affects skills and knowledge on which the
player’s future actions are based, labeling the cycle as
hermeneutic.
This concerns even the basic acts of vicarious movement, be
it controlling a paddle in Breakout (Atari 1976), shifting
between static screens in Mystery House (Sierra On-Line
1980), or taking careful steps in Thief (Looking Glass 1998).
When a player opens a door by pressing a button, it is not
merely an implication of causality between the button and
the door, but generates her or his understanding of the game
world in general: buttons open doors [13]. Like Pavlov’s
dogs, players shape their behavior to correspond with the
environment, which again leads to actions that result in new
understanding-shaping feedback.
The videogame hermeneutic can be connected to the double
hermeneutic of social sciences as introduced by Anthony
Giddens. Giddens proposes that in contrast to natural science,
which involves the non-inducing hermeneutic of generating
analytic understanding, the social sciences involve a double
hermeneutic since the concepts and theories developed apply
to the world constituted of the activities of the
conceptualizing and theorizing agents:
The implication of the double hermeneutic is that
social scientists cannot but be alert to the
transformative effects that their concepts and
theories might have upon what it is they set out to
analyze. [12]
Videogame play follows Giddens’ notion of social sciences.
As described, playing a game is not merely a non-inducing
act of generating understanding but an inducing process in
which the player additionally configures the interpreted. This
double hermeneutic method of interpretation outlines the
nature of videogame play.
In Planescape: Torment (Black Isle 1999) players make
interpretations of the game’s non-player characters (NPCs),
yet the interpretations not only generate the player’s
understanding of them but also affect her or his actions
towards them. If a NPC is interpreted as a valuable
companion, the player may want to invite her to join the
quest. If the NPC is interpreted as harmful or hostile, the
player might choose to ignore or attack her. As the player’s
understanding of the NPCs develops according to the
received feedback—the game’s interpretation of the player’s
actions—the player’s performance becomes more refined in
the game context.
However, as Jonne Arjoranta points out, the fact that
particular interpretations result in improved performance in a
game “does not mean that there is only one possible correct
interpretation of the game itself, but that the game supports
some and opposes some interpretations” [3]. Games and the
entities of games can be interpreted in many ways, but only
selected interpretations contribute to successful play. In the
end, the act of playing a videogame is a multilayered double
hermeneutic process in which the player’s interpretations
repeatedly shape both the player and the game.3
DOUBLE HERMENEUTIC CIRCLE
Despite the fact that the emergent nature of the videogame
may and often does result in play that is not taken into
consideration by the designer, the ways in which players
perceive and take action in games are always specific to the
particular design [26]. Therefore the point of departure in
analyzing videogame interpretation must be the designed
system; notwithstanding that it may occasionally lead to
unexpected player behavior.
As designed systems, the key factors in interpreting and
experiencing games are the player’s skills and
preconceptions; the latter here understood as general
foreknowledge. As skill and knowledge requirements
predefine the ways in which games are designed to be
experienced, regular game play can be considered to follow
Heidegger’s hermeneutic principle:
What is decisive is not to get out of the circle but
to come into it in the right way. [15]
In the light of Heidegger’s principle the variations of the
videogame double hermeneutic, the regulated methods of
interpretation, can be seen as exclusive double hermeneutic
circles (DHC) into which players must come in the “right
way” to experience games according to their designs. This
means possessing both skills that correlate with challenges
and knowledge that supports those skills and helps
understand the language of the game in general.4 The DHC
model of videogame interpretation is next elaborated through
an examination of the adventure game and its aesthetic
discourse.
When Double Fine announced that they would make an
adventure game [27], they referred to a specific game type
that Clara Fernández-Vara [10] has discussed at length in her
doctoral dissertation The Tribulations of Adventure Games:
Integrating Story Into Simulation Through Performance [see
also 25, 28, 32]. Despite the articulate term “adventure,”
these games are essentially defined by their story-driven nonkinesthetic challenges, fiction puzzles [16]. Two key motives
hence guide the adventure game player: the ludic interest in
solving the puzzles, and the poetic interest in acquiring and
interpreting narrative or other aesthetic literary information.
Whereas both motives are usually recognized by all players
of games with narrative elements—and by some players of
games with no narrative elements—the poetic bias of the
adventure game is exceptionally heavy. In sum, an equivalent
recognition of ludic and (poetically inclined) aesthetic
interests as well as the mastering of skills that are needed to
pursue them constitute the requirements for accessing the
DHC of the adventure game.
The primary skill needed to traverse the adventure game is
that of puzzle solving. The fiction puzzles of adventure
games are not unlike other puzzles that require accurate
reckoning and insight thinking to be solved [10, 18]. An
inclination to those skills not only helps one traverse the
game but also enables appreciating its ludic puzzle aesthetic,
the “aesthetics of mind” [6]. From this perspective, the
player’s interpretations are driven by the ludic interest in
game entities, meaning that objects and events in the story
world are interpreted as equipment for solving the puzzles.
While these inducing interpretations ignore many of the
interpreted entities’ aesthetic qualities, they generate the
player’s ludic understanding (which can also involve an
aesthetic aspect) that contributes to advancing the game.
3
4
A game may be designed and programmed to run a double
hermeneutic process of its own so that its interpretations alter
according to player behavior [8]. In this case, videogames
(and sociology) could be described as two-way double
hermeneutic systems.
On one hand, accessing a game’s exclusive DHC does
come close to Suominen’s mode of nostalgic play,
retrogaming, in which “everything superfluous has been
eliminated” and what is left is an exceptionally refined
performance within learned rules and situations [30].
Figure 1. The Black Mirror (© Future Games 2003). Used
by permission of the artist. Note the sculpture at the
back of the room and the panel paintings on the wall. Art
by Michal & Pavel Pekárek.
The adventure game The Black Mirror (Future Games 2003)
is set in carefully crafted gothic scenery. The story world is
portrayed by static images with deliberate layouts that follow
the art style with embedded frescos, panel paintings,
sculptures and stained glass. Details of the imagery are
emphasized with dense chiaroscuro contrasting. The player,
nevertheless, cannot focus solely on these aesthetic features
if she or he wishes to advance the game—the image is ludic
too. Whereas a fruit basket may be merely a minor
component in an image’s aesthetic interpretation (Figure 1),
it can simultaneously be the most significant component in
its ludic interpretation (in this case, the player needs to find
something edible to solve a puzzle elsewhere). 5 Since
advancing a game is normally a consequence of recognizing
and executing the ludic functions of game entities, the player
can hardly rely on aesthetic interpretation alone.6
Markku Eskelinen argues that even if “text adventures are
overwhelmed by descriptions, the latter do not serve
descriptive purposes there but instead support the completion
5
It cannot be stressed enough that the inducing
interpretations that aim at generating ludic understanding can
and should be discussed in aesthetic terms as well. It must
also be noted that the split between the inducing ludic and
the non-inducing aesthetic interpretation is not limited to
visual images but concerns the expression of text adventures
and other text-based games equally. The so-called “hidden
object games” in which the player is challenged to look for
items that are hidden within pictures would make an
interesting comparison study.
6
As Ragnhild Tronstad [31] points out, games are sometimes
exhausted without reaching an understanding of their entities.
Here Tronstad’s notion can be connected to the fact that
some fiction puzzles and entire games are solvable by the
method of trial and error; the player need not necessarily
figure out the solution (reach an understanding) but can solve
the puzzle and even finish the game by trying out all the
possible combinations of manipulatable entities.
of the quest” [7, cf. ibid. pg. 280]. The argument is visibly at
conflict with the view presented by this paper, which holds
that the adventure game invites the player equivalently to
(poetically inclined) aesthetic interpretation; in other words,
that the purposes of its descriptions are not ludic alone. The
assertion relies on the form’s convention of affording more
feedback than would be essential for progressing the game.
Where most videogames employ dialogue to give hints and
to
advance
scripted
events,
adventure
games
characteristically provide the player with numerous lines to
read and to choose from of which only a minority are of ludic
significance. While these additional dialogue options are
superfluous from the perspective of puzzle solving, they
introduce metanarratives, witticisms, and wordplay that
invite the player to poetic reading. The constituent is
correspondingly manifested through the manner in which
adventure games typically reward unsuccessful player
actions with lengthy but ludically insignificant feedback, as it
will be demonstrated later on.
A comprehensive
understanding of the adventure game object does not
therefore reflect solely on its ludic call to overcome
challenges and on its narrative appeal to restore behavior [cf.
10] but also on its facet of poetic reading.
It is time for some intermediate conclusions. Ludic
interpretation is always inducing, but not all inducing
interpretations are ludic. Aesthetic interpretation is
essentially non-inducing, but not all non-inducing
interpretations are aesthetic. Although aesthetic interpretation
is essentially non-inducing, inducing ludic interpretations are
also potentially aesthetic since ludic engagement is always
charged with aesthetic potential of its own. The adventure
game hermeneutic is an exceptionally balanced combination
of inducing ludic and non-inducing aesthetic interpretation,
for which the act cannot be discussed solely in terms of game
play. Accessing the DHC of the adventure game to be able to
experience its ludic and aesthetic to the full requires players
to constantly shift their methods of interpretation along
changing game states.
STATIC HERMENEUTIC OF THE ADVENTURE GAME
What made players invest in the outmoded Double Fine
Adventure? While the case no doubt involves a nostalgic
aspect, the videogame double hermeneutic constitutes a
methodology through which the phenomenon can be
analyzed in more detail. This section elaborates on the
polarized hermeneutic of the adventure game, its regulated
method of interpretation, and suggests that the interest shown
in the upcoming production is rather based on expectations
concerning the particular aesthetic discourse than on the
yearning of a nostalgic rerun.7
7
Al Lowe’s Kickstarter project that was launched as a frank
nostalgic reboot of Sierra’s extremely popular [24] Leisure
Suit Larry adventures form the same era reached a funding of
$655 182 [21], which is a fifth of Double Fine’s amount.
While comparing the two projects is more or less futile
speculation, it is tempting to read the marginal as the weight
of non-nostalgic expectations.
Before closer examination of the synergy between the
adventure game’s DHC and its aesthetic discourse it is
inevitable to elicit the already touched on factor that
separates the form from other story-driven videogames: the
lack of kinesthetic challenge. Although the introduced
action-feedback-learn-repeat cycle is the motor of all
videogames, the non-kinesthetic nature of the adventure
game leads to statically consecutive gameplay in which
cycles run only by ”one input / output at a time, e.g. one
cannot walk and talk to someone at the same time” [10]. This
enables sustained interpretation, which is scarce in
videogames that demand vicariously kinesthetic, time-critical
performance. John Hospers’ matured example concerning
film interpretation turns out to be useful in explaining these
interpretive differences of games:
When a man is actually involved in a shipwreck,
he just does whatever he can to save himself. He
cannot here lavish attention on the details of
sinking. When, on the other hand, he watches a
movie about it at some later date he may give it a
very close attention, and even feel fascinated by
the turbulent water and the ship’s final lurch. [14]
Similarly, when players are challenged kinesthetically8 or by
other modes that involve time pressure, their interpretation is
forcefully governed by the ludic task. While the inducing
ludic interpretation has a central role in adventure games too,
their consecutive, static nature provides a time-free
framework in which all interpretation is done as a sustained
practice that comes close to the interpretation of classic
novels and paintings.
From time’s point of view, then, the two cases in Hospers’
example are actually equal. In both escaping the shipwreck
and in watching a film time is a critical component. What
eventually separates them is their differing hermeneutics: the
escape is governed by inducing interpretation that aims at
affecting the scene, whereas the film is governed by noninducing interpretation that aims at generating an aesthetic
understanding of the scene. In addition to the separation
between inducing and non-inducing factors of interpretation,
it is thus useful to distinguish between time-critical and timefree factors too. In the described context, the adventure game
hermeneutic is an inducing/non-inducing hybrid that takes
place in a time-free framework.
games conventionally choose not to employ time-critical
elements. Some of the most fundamental outcomes of the
static game time are the “concatenated” [10] puzzle
structures in which puzzles are parts of other puzzles. This
concatenation also defines the form’s narrative structure: it is
not merely an unfolding sequence of events but a loose set of
poetic strings that the player must weave into a story [18]. In
the same way that observing any game rules is a promise of
greater pleasure than the gratification of an immediate
impulse [33], so an aporetic fabrication of a concatenated
story is an experience that promises an enhanced narrative
epiphany.
In her historical design analyses Fernández-Vara [9, 11]
shows that the level of abstraction in adventure game
interfaces has increased through time, which has resulted in
the diminishing of the variety of possible player actions.
Whereas the early parser interfaces provided dozens of
available commands, the recently proliferated contextual and
gestural interfaces offer rarely more than a couple. As the
reformation facilitates finding and identifying elements that
advance the game, it also prevents “the player from trying
out actions that help her learn more about the fictional
world.” This ludically impotent experimentation constitutes a
central part of the (story-driven) poetic of the adventure
game, as is manifest in an example by Jon Cogburn and
Mark Silcox. They claim that most of the jokes and character
development in the Broken Sword games (Revolution 1996-)
take place when the protagonist
tries to use the wrong object for any given job
(e.g., the clown nose to pick a lock, or the
underwear to bribe a potential informant).
[Through these experimentations he] gradually
emerges as a humorously likable, albeit incurably
pompous and self-satisfied character in the broadly
Dickensian tradition. [5]
Since a significant part of the poetics of the adventure game
rests on the possibility of discovering the story world via
exploration and configuration, limiting the available actions
directly alters both the designer’s means of expression and
the player’s technique of reading. Although limiting actions
does not directly reduce narrative or other poetic
information—jokes and character development can be
conveyed via other means as well—it strips down the
concatenated structure of the particular aesthetic discourse
The time-free framework also results in disconnecting the
that is based on the player’s active weaving through
adventure game’s visual aesthetic from the visual aesthetics
explorative and configurative performance.
of games and films that are defined by the moving image. The
following subsections argue that the ingrained point-and-click Reducing possible commands also affects the adventure
interface and visual 2D representation function in synergy game's ludic aesthetic. While the fiction puzzle has several
with the DHC of the adventure game and in the process forms of which not all require object manipulation (e.g.
promote the expression and reception of its ludic, poetic, and integrated riddles and jigsaws), the possibility of
visual aesthetics.
manipulating game world objects is the most crucial element
in defining its distinctive aesthetic [18]. With fewer available
Point-and-click Interface
commands game entities become less configurative, which
Limiting the time given to solve a puzzle also limits the
subverts the mechanic of object manipulation. Even though
puzzle. Hence, to enrich the elegance of puzzles, adventure
simplicity may be developed into an aesthetic merit as well,
simplification by restricting configuration means ultimately
8
A challenge is kinesthetic if altering the input device alters
the effort that is required to overcome it.
revising the features that give the fiction puzzle its unique
ludic form.
Whereas abstracting the interface does not necessarily reduce
available actions, the practical difficulties in performing
complex object manipulation through abstracted interfaces
allows a more or less faithful correlation between the two, as
Fernández-Vara’s research confirms. Under these
circumstances the point-and-click interface functions as a
compromise between the more complex yet more demanding
(e.g. text parser) and the simpler yet more limiting (e.g.
gestural) alternatives. Even though the point-and-click may
likewise be reduced to extremely abstracted forms (e.g. Myst,
Cyan 1993), it can currently be considered a highly operative
tool in terms of the multi-configurative puzzle ludic that is
difficult to exploit through interfaces without cursor control,
such as through those employed in Escape from Monkey
Island (Lucasarts 2000), Ico (Team Ico 2001) or Dear Esther
(Thechineseroom 2012).
Ultimately, employing the point-and-click interface enables
designers to explore the adventure game’s poetic as well as
ludic possibilities, which are in synergy with the form’s
established hermeneutic.
2D Representation
Alex Stockburger correctly observes that, as a rule,
“particular types of rules and gameplay result in very
distinctive forms of audiovisual representation” [29]. Relying
on Stockburger, Connie Veugen [32] argues that the specific
rules and gameplay of the adventure game benefit from 2D
representation. She grounds her argument by stating that
along with 3D representation players had to learn a “whole
new visual grammar even though the game genre, the
platform and the basic narrative did not change.” By altered
visual grammar she refers to the way in which manipulatable
objects are typically highlighted in 2D but evenly detailed in
3D; and to the manner in which exploring 2D games appears
to happen in closed stages contrarily to the open exploration
of 3D games.
While Veugen’s concern about players’ ability to adapt to
new visual grammar is relevant for a study of a specific
audience, it is irrelevant from the perspectives of narratology,
rules, and gameplay. As long as the adventure game
maintains its polarized hermeneutic—the balanced
combination of inducing ludic and non-inducing aesthetic
interpretation—and its concatenated narrative structures, the
player will eventually adjust to the latest image, be it a new
form of object representation or exploration. Conversely,
what the described changes do affect is the form’s visual
aesthetic.
Literally speaking, there is no 3D image as long as the image
is projected on a flat screen. When it comes to videogames,
movement designates the dimensions of the image. What
defines the so-called 3D game is not the image itself—2D
games may and often do represent a third dimension as
well—but the possibility and necessity to explore all the
three dimensions. Consequently, the reception of visual art
in 3D games is never merely a static examination of an
image but also an active exploration of space (or more
correctly, place). In these terms, the visual aesthetic of the
adventure game can be considered to benefit from 2D
representation.
In his study of the film image, Rudolf Arnheim notes that
“the change of speed not only served to adapt visual
movement to the range of human perception, but also
changed the expressive qualities of an action” [4]. Arnheim’s
notion applies to the videogame too. The differing speeds
and modes of movement in games result in differing
possibilities of expression and reception; the visual aesthetic
of action games, for instance, is inevitably related to the
player’s dynamic performance in the virtual environment. In
Bioshock (2K Boston 2007) the 3D representations of ice and
water have significant aesthetic roles as time-critical
challenges invite the player to interact with the environment
in a kinesthetic, vicariously tactile manner.
For its lack of kinesthetic challenges, the visual aesthetic of
the adventure game is, in turn, more related to statically
representational media that invite the viewer to careful
examination independent of temporal dynamics. This results
in the general notion that the worlds of adventure games are
conventionally explored one location at a time, scene by
scene, subject to the limits of the screen [e.g. 10, 23, 28].
While these locations surface as independent visual
compositions, they are better understood as pieces of an
image set, which is explored in a narrative frame. This
visual-narrative fusion comes close to the aesthetic
discourses of comics, allowing the adventure game to be read
as a challenging graphic novel. Since visual 2D
representation upholds both the expression and reception of
static images, it can be considered a factor that supports the
adventure game’s comic book aesthetic.
As Tim Schafer, the studio founder of Double Fine, notices,
choosing 2D also allows a mode of visual expression that
cannot be fully realized through 3D:
One of the things I missed about the 2D graphic
adventures is that you would be able to have a great
Figure 2. Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin
Hood (© Sierra On-Line 1991). Used by permission of
Activision Publishing, Inc. The story world is explored scene
by scene, which is reminiscent of reading a graphic novel.
Note the speech bubble subtitles. Written and directed by
Christy Marx. Art by Kenn Nishiuye.
artist expressing themselves directly on the screen;
not having to go through 3D shaders or any other
complicated technology that might change or alter
their vision. [27]
Whereas rendering hand drawn pictures in videogame
graphics unavoidably alters their original vision, a 2D
digitalization is always less processed than the additionally
layered 3D one. It is thus no wonder that when comic artists
and illustrators such as Christy Marx (Figure 2), Benoît
Sokal (Figure 3) and Steve Purcell moved to the game
industry, they chose the 2D adventure game in particular as
their artistic platform. In the discussed respects, the use of
2D representation promotes the visual aesthetic of the
adventure game rather than merely enhances its nostalgic
charge.
recognizing even more complex hermeneutic relations in
videogames; as in multiplayer games, to take the most
obvious example, one may always distinguish plural
interpreting agents.
While the concepts were discussed in terms videogames in
particular, one should be aware that inducing as well as noninducing interpretations are also the methods of everyday
interpretation. Hence it may be possible that the double
hermeneutic contributes additionally to the understanding of
games and game play in general.
Drawing on the upcoming Double Fine Adventure, the DHC
of the adventure game was given a closer examination. The
adventure game was found to invite players equivalently to
inducing interpretations that aim at generating ludic
understanding of game elements, and to non-inducing
interpretations that aim at generating aesthetic understanding
of game elements. This was accompanied with the remark
that whereas ludic interpretations are always inducing and
aesthetic interpretations essentially non-inducing, inducing
ludic interpretations hold aesthetic potential too, since ludic
engagement is always aesthetically charged.
Lastly, adventure game interpretation was recognized to
function in a time-free framework, which allowed a
suggestion that the point-and-click interface and visual 2D
representation support the evenly polarized adventure game
hermeneutic and in the process promote its ludic, poetic, and
visual aesthetics.
Figure 3. Syberia (© Microïds 2002). Used by permission
of Anuman Interactive. The details of Benoît Sokal’s
visual art call for close examination, which is supported
by the time-free double hermeneutic circle of the
adventure game.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper defined videogame interpretation as
predominantly double hermeneutic because of the player’s
capability and disposition to affect the interpreted
information. In addition, the paper argued that the double
hermeneutic differs between games and game types, forming
different double hermeneutic circles (DHCs) that players
must access in order to experience games according to their
designs.
The act of double hermeneutic interpretation was termed
inducing, which refers to the interpretor’s goals of generating
understanding in order to affect the interpreted. Inducing
double hermeneutic interpretations were contrasted with noninducing interpretations, which aim at generating
understanding of noneffective goals. Eventually, the two
were found strongly connected to time-critical and time-free
factors, which were distinguished as frameworks (with an
infinite mixing potential) in which both inducing and noninducing interpretations take place.
It was also noted that games that run double hermeneutic
processes of their own can be understood as two-way double
hermeneutic systems. This observation paves the way for
Furthermore, the gradually elaborating field of game studies
has already conceived theories that result in entirely different
interpretive viewpoints. Relying on Graeme Kirkpatrick’s
[19] notion of videogames as emergent performance without
sense-meaning, for instance, results in a conclusion that
makes the videogame fundamentally non-hermeneutic. While
this view provides an interesting angle by challenging the
concept of interpretation, it in the process detaches the
videogame from several expressive avenues that have so far
been connected to its aesthetics. The hermeneutic question is
therefore ultimately an ontological one, and turns back to
pursue the basic understanding of the videogame object
itself.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Graeme Kirkpatrick for his constructive
comments and Pippin Barr for his lasting patience for
proofreading. I would also like to thank the anonymous
reviewers of the Fun and Games conference, especially the
one who added a separate text file with valuable criticisms.
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