Research On The Meaning Of Games As Social Texts

With the development and popularization of the Internet,the development of China’s digital industry has made significant progress,and the online game market has been expanding and developing toward diversification.As an important form of human entertainment,games enrich people’s daily life,bring them an immersive game experience,and make a deep impression on social life.Since games arise from social life and are the products created by human beings according to existing social practice,there is inevitably a collateral relationship between games and social reality.The game is a response to the social reality,but not only a virtual mapping of the real life,the game subject participates in the game for self-expression,and participates in the meaning production of the game together with the game maker,and the game is also a kind of mapping beyond the reality.Starting from semiotics and text sociology,this paper considers a game as a kind of text and explores how the symbols within a game text participate in the meaning-making of the game and how the game text is presented through the practice of various ideational systems.It is found that game rules and game algorithms are the carriers of game meaning expression;rules specify the way of game text participation through restrictions,rules present the external meaning of game text,and algorithms show the internal meaning of game text through repetition and accumulation.The way the game text presents meaning is mainly through the narrative subject of the game text-the virtual subject to creatively interpret the symbols within the game,the game player cannot directly participate in the game expression,but has to express and create himself with the help of the image within the game.Intertextuality determines the meaning generation of game texts.The intertext of game text includes vertical intertext and horizontal intertext.The vertical intertext is the intertext between the text and the text,the narrative language of the game,the game medium and the social reality all have intertext with the text.The horizontal intertext is the intertext between readers and authors,and the intertext of horizontal texts cannot be separated from the participation of audiences on the one hand and the response of authors,i.e.creative groups,on the other.Finally,the paper makes a confrontational reading of games,reflecting on the resistance and subversion of power by players behind the game carnival and the problems of digital labor and sexism in game texts.