Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

eferent” [35]. At the origin of the theory of signs we find the Peircian triangle: representamen,
interpretant object.
“A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect
or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign,
or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign.
The sign stands for something, its object.” [80]
It is easy to recognize that there is an obvious connection between the object (the state of the
water in the dam) and the sign or representamen (the flashing light bulbs), but if water was the
necessary condition for designing the apparatus, it is not sufficient for its semiotic functioning. The
operator would interpret/decode the signal in the form of flashing light bulbs and infer a meaning
even if the signal was sent by mistake, a faulty electrical wire or deliberate fabrication.
It is useful to adapt to games the traditional communication model in order to understand
relationship and flow of information from game designers to players (figure 6):
Figure 6: Jakobson’s communication model applied to games
Game designers provide temporal and spatial structures embedded into a game to elicit certain
actions. Players are not just passive receivers of the act of communication since they are required
to make sense and interpret events in the game world and meaning is not extracted or discovered,
but constructed. The tangible outcome of players’ interpretation is their behaviour in the game.
Speculations on the reasons and the context behind any in-game choice made by the player remain
unfathomable unless a closer look is taken with qualitative eyes to the empirical player.
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